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Do Marketing Automation Better Use Lead Paths to Put Outcomes First Rather than simply saying "we want more conversions from our emails," companies should take a step back and look at how a marketing solution can impact their entire ecosystem. To achieve ROI, most companies have to build awareness, generate leads and quali- fy them. Only then can they close. After the sale, companies need to retain customers and resolve customer needs with strong service. The larger impact of marketing communications produces a need for marketers to examine how automation touches all of these functions. How can marketing software maximize speed, efficiency and results? This is where starting with KPIs and analytic dashboards can make a big difference. Considerations for Marketers Software and process can do seemingly mag- ical things to optimize your marketing, but you need to understand what you're optimiz- ing first. Understanding your Key Performance Indicators – such as opens, likes, list growth, website visits or simply leads generated– is your first step. Spend some time looking over your current metrics and think about how you would use them to optimize your marketing plan. What can you measure? Social? Email? Web? What will you use to determine the design and suc- cess of your marketing? Understand your KPIs and design a pro- gram to maximize what is most import- ant to you. Use your automation soft- ware to design campaigns and drivers that deliver the right message, at the right time, to most effectively nurture and convert your prospects. - Brendon O'Donovan – Product Marketing Manager, Vocus, Inc. #1 Begin your marketing automation system by building KPIs and outcomes from the beginning, spanning the ecosystem. To succeed with campaign management and KPIs you must understand lead flow. You can't create KPIs for a market- ing automation system if you don't know how leads come into the system, by what means and how they successfully become more interested and convert. From Lead Paths to KPIs When you can identify the components of the lead path, it becomes possible to optimize individual pieces within the marketing system and increase revenue. Let's build a hypothetical example to illustrate our point. An aerospace company uses social media to attract potential airplane buyers to its website. It uses blogs and infographics to keep people on the site, and white papers and blogs to encourage them to identify themselves as leads. Because buying airplanes can take years from initial interest through RFP to close, the lead is not called when first identified. Instead, they enter a nurturing system with specific types of email and content. Only after they exhibit certain behaviors, such as register- ing for a company trade show event or downloading specif- ic information, does the lead receive a phone call. If the aerospace company was only using marketing auto- mation for email, it would not be able to analyze its larger performance. However with systems like the Vocus Market- ing Suite, it could do a lot more. A company can see how individuals are interacting with it on social media channels like Twitter and LinkedIn, and determine which of those people visit the site and what types of content they prefer. From there, the company can see how these social leads identify themselves and convert. This creates an opportunity to use the analytics dashboard to measure specific components of the company's marketing ecosystem by using automation software. #2 " "

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