Marketing: The Next Thing to Automate?

Your MSP business has automated reporting, monitoring, and help desk workflows. Why not automate marketing as well? Once the sole domain of only the largest MSPs, marketing automation platforms are simpler and less expensive, and now viable for a significant number of MSPs.

Consequently, marketing automation technologies can present a huge opportunity. Marketing automation enables MSPs to build intelligent, programmatic management of the entire lead lifecycle, so they can better capitalize on the leads generated, make sales and marketing staff more productive and ultimately boost sales. To illustrate, here’s a sample scenario for how an MSP could leverage marketing automation.

All Star MSP exhibits at a local business conference. As part of the exhibitor package, the company receives a spreadsheet with the contact details for the 220 individuals that attended. All Star’s marketing coordinator uploads the list into the company’s marketing automation platform, which then automatically does the following:

• All lead details are mapped against the existing prospect database. Existing leads are updated to reflect their participation in the event, and any additional details and updates are made. New leads are added to the database.
• All leads are assigned a score based on such attributes as industry, role and current and prior activities.
• Based on the scores assigned, 25 leads are identified as marketing qualified leads, and routed immediately to the appropriate sales representative for follow up.
• 20 contacts will be updated in the database, but left out of ongoing communications, according to prior opt out requests.
• 175 leads are separated into three separate market segments, and are automatically sent tailored emails that reference the event, provide information about All Star and offer a description and link for a white paper on a relevant topic.
• For a two-month period, every two weeks, each of these leads will also receive communications that are tailored to their market segment and phase of the buying process.
• Based on ongoing activities, lead scores for each lead will continue to be updated. For example, for those leads that don’t respond for a given length of time, points may be subtracted. For others, points may be added based on email opens, Web page visits and resource downloads. Once lead scores reach a given threshold, they are forwarded to sales representatives as appropriate.

In this scenario, the value of the initial marketing investment is maximized, sales gets to focus solely on the highly qualified leads that are most likely to buy and marketing gets the insights it needs to track the process, optimize it, and make smarter plans and investments to further build the pipeline.

Given all these benefits, is a marketing automation platform right for your business, right now? The answer may be yes, but it may be no. How do you decide? To get complete details, be sure to download our new white paper “Marketing 101 for MSPs: Marketing Automation”. The paper outlines the key capabilities of marketing automation, the benefits it can provide MSPs and some practical steps for getting started.

Ken Vanderweel is marketing director, service providers, Nimsoft. Monthly guest blogs such as this one are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship. Read all of Nimsoft’s guest blogs here.