Your board or CEO should appoint a key person to “own” the project regardless of whether they plan to be the eventual head of Marketing Automation. A pivotal role will be to underwrite the uptake of the system to make sure you get the maximum benefit from it. They should be a business person rather than an IT bod. The role should include;
- Understand the company’s revenue generation process from gathering the first lead to closing the sale
- Understand operations and how data flows through the organisation
- Understand the system and its full potential
- Be able to communicate new concepts in a way that is relevant to individuals to maximise uptake and design input
- Be flexible enough to help individuals or departments map out their content requirements
- Understand metrics and how they benefit aspects of the process
The other critical team members of your Marketing Automation team will be the lead qualification team. Telephoning all of your contacts in order to qualify them can ensure that effort is put in where it counts. The system may also help build the profiling data with emails, web activity, and scoring. This process must be done properly as it will be an integral part of the system moving forward.
