Marketing Automation systems when used correctly increase the quality of the leads you send over the wall to sales. However, to the marketers using these systems, there are a number of hurdles to realizing the promised results from the investments they have made. In fact, according to SiriusDecisions in 2014, “85% of B2B marketers using a marketing automation platform feel that they’re not using it to its full potential.“
A recent blog post from Biznet digital called out the following four constraints to using Marketing Automation:
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Lack of informed employees to manage marketing automation
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Poor contact database quality
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Lack of content
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Complexity of marketing automation software
Many of my recent conversations with marketers at all organizational levels support these ideas. For example, here are quotes from conversations I have had with marketers at several Fortune 1000 companies.
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“We find it challenging to automate the development and distribution of updates from our blog post”
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“We have market owners who would need to update their landing pages quickly, but find corporate marketing a bit of a bottleneck”
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“It is very time consuming replicating the work that we do on our blog, and again placing it into the newsletter”
The story here is that what makes these Marketing Automation systems great is the power of the software and all it can do to manage marketing programs, data and provide quality leads. But (there is always a but) it is exactly that power which introduces the challenges that arise when the application usage is distributed to a variety of users from field marketing and partner marketing to different marketing departments or divisions of an organization responsible for driving sales. The Marketing Automation owner wants to empower their marketers with an easy pathway to manage their own needs for communication and campaigns while also adhering to corporate compliance and high level organizational goals.
This communication challenge is a bottleneck for most organizations. The workflow is complicated, slow and not automated. To alleviate these issues and adhere to corporate messaging compliance, organizations may turn to an agency to manage communication but this can be an expensive option that does not fix the workflow problem and there are still bottlenecks. ContentMX has created a platform for marketers that makes it easy to quickly develop content and it creates a vastly improved workflow to create and deliver email newsletters to a targeted list through your Marketing Automation system, and directly post to a website, blog or social media outlet. This workflow can include a step where the content is placed in a pending state for review and then be approved for distribution. The improved workflow has saved many organizations time to develop and deliver content, not to mention the cost savings that result.
The benefit of using ContentMX Cloud is best described by one of our customers:
“Previously, the process of building a newsletter was time-consuming and cumbersome. It required a lot of duplicate efforts, as we posted each story in our Emagazine, as well as in the Eloqua template. With ContentMX Cloud, the process has been significantly simplified. I only have to create the stories in our Emagazine and then simply click to populate the ContentMX newsletter template. It’s a snap! Thank you Content MX Cloud!”
– Lisa Schindler, Marketing Communications Manager, Arrow ECS
Our customers are engaged with some of the top marketing automation platforms and even highly trained users of these applications are experiencing bottlenecks. This is especially true in large organizations who focus on many vertical markets, yet have only one or two marketing automation managers. For these marketing automation professionals there is just not enough time in the day to receive and tag all the different campaigns that need to go out.
As a result business groups will go rogue and find a way to work around the corporate marketing process, sometimes even going as far as purchasing their own email marketing system. This leads to a loss of messaging control for corporate marketing. I have talked to sales professionals who are actively using solutions like Constant Contact to communicate to their own lists, even though their corporate marketing program has invested in Eloqua or ExactTarget.
ContentMX Cloud was developed to alleviate the workflow problems associated with email newsletters, content creation and content delivery for marketing organizations. We want organizations to deliver a consistent marketing message that meets the needs of both corporate marketing and field organizations but does so in a way that makes everyone’s job easier. We also believe that driving more conversations through these mediums further promotes customer success and have built in a variety of ways that your sales teams, partner teams and customers can share this content and increase engagement. Building and delivering email newsletters drives more engagement with your customers so it should be a quick and easy process that anyone can accomplish. Posting articles across a variety of mediums should happen at the touch of a button. ContentMX Cloud has integrated with Marketing Automation systems to solve these challenges and improve your organizational workflow, saving you time and reducing your costs.