Seven Marketing Automation Myths to Ignore - Illustrated Edition

I’m sad.

I’ll be giving a speech in Milwaukee next week on marketing automation myths, and early in the preparation process had the idea of illustrating it with mythical creatures from the films of Ray Harryhausen, the stop-action animation genius whose best known images are probably the skeleton warriors in Jason and the Argonauts (1963).

This led to many pleasant hours scrolling through galleries of Harryhausen images. I even found an illustration that vaguely matched the theme of each myth.

But there’s a problem. Every bit of presentation-giving advice, training, and experience I’ve ever had tells me that these illustrations will distract attention from my points rather than reinforcing them. The responsible adult inside of me knows I have to get rid of them while the fun-loving child says, Yeah, but they're just so cool. 

This blog post is my compromise: I’ll publish them here, which will make dropping them from the actual presentation much less painful. **sigh**

So, the illustrated version of my talk goes like this:

Marketing Automation Myth Busting: we start with Mighty Joe Young, Harryhausen’s 1949 tribute to King Kong. I could tell you he’s about to smash some myths, but who are we kidding? It’s just a great image. 

Trouble in Paradise: marketing automation is growing quickly but users are dissatisfied. Maybe that’s not as bad as being attacked by a giant crab, but it’s still problematic. Image from Mysterious Island (1961).

Myth: All systems are the same.  This is an easy mistake because systems all look and sound alike during the buying process. But in fact they differ greatly. The myth leads buyers to think it doesn’t matter which system they purchase, and therefore that they can buy without first defining their requirements. In fact, our research shows that unsatisfied marketers often have purchased a system that didn’t meet their needs. Conversely, the most satisfied users did select based on specific features. The image here is Cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958). He has vision problems; it’s hard to see the differences between marketing automation systems. Get it?

Myth: Integration is easy. This echoes the first: all marketing automation products integrate with CRM, so people assume they don’t have to look into the details. But products differ hugely in which systems they connect with, what data they import and export, and how much control uses have over the details. Integration is the single most commonly cited obstacle to success and is linked to the most dissatisfied users. So people really need to ensure that the system they’re buying meets their integration needs. Kali from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974) coordinates fighting with six arms, so she is the goddess of successful integration.

Myth: Failure is the user's fault, not the system's. This myth follows from the first two: if all systems are the same, then failure must be fault of the user. But, as we’ve seen, systems aren’t the same and many failures result from a system that doesn’t meet the user’s needs. Other research shows that users generally overcome obstacles they can control, like organization, training, and staffing levels. Of course, system selection is itself done by users, so they do have some responsibility for any problems. Talos, an animated statue from Jason and the Argonauts, ultimately fails to protect the tomb he is built to guard, so he represents a system that doesn’t work.

Myth: New users should crawl, walk, run.  Many experts – myself included – have suggested that new marketing automation users can safely start without planning by just duplicating their existing programs like email blasts, and then add more sophisticated uses over time.  But our research found that marketers who used more features from the start were happier. My interpretation is that successful marketers took the time to plan and train before deployment, while marketers who didn’t prepare in advance never found the time to learn what they needed. It’s possible to overstate this position – even successful users will add some new features over time. But the point about preparation is important. Kraken, from Clash of the Titans (1981), is a sea monster with no legs, so he never had a chance to move beyond crawling.

Myth: Bigger companies do better.  You might expect that bigger companies would do a better job with marketing automation because they have larger and more sophisticated staffs. They do in fact select more wisely, paying more attention to features and integration than marketers from smaller companies, and less to cost and apparent ease of learning. But they also face more non-technical obstacles such as training, staffing, and organizational barriers. So their over-all satisfaction level is no higher than smaller firms. I chose the giant octopus from It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) because it’s big – no deeper meaning is intended.

Myth: Marketing automation creates prospects and saves money.  Marketers who expect their system to generate more prospects with less effort are usually disappointed. Marketing automation is basically about nurturing existing leads, not finding new ones, and most companies add staff and budget. Medusa, from Clash of the Titans, is the boss you don’t want to give bad news about system results: her dirty look will turn you to stone.

Myth: Marketing automation has stopped evolving.  Commoditization and consolidation may make marketing automation look like a mature industry.   But there's still plenty of change: new vendors entering the space, existing vendors being bought and repositioning themselves, and expanding scope to include consumer marketing, display ads, external data, better databases, identity resolution across channels, mobile apps and formats, advanced attribution, social promotions and new types of content.  The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) is a dinosaur who hasn’t evolved one bit.

So what? That’s the end of the myths, but we need to leave on a positive note.  So I end the presentation with some sound, if predictable, advice to prepare carefully, define and select against actual requirements, test integration in advance, deploy quickly, and expect the unexpected. The puzzled look on Troglodyte’s face, from Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), represents the confusion marketers feel when wondering what to do next..

Marketers who want help selecting a system could try blowing on a ram's horn like Calibos from Clash of the Titans. Or they can just send me an email at draab@raabassociates.com.

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Speaking of art that's amusing if irrelevant, here's a link to a Twilight Zone-themed introduction to a football recruiting show produced by my son Brian.  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

What Really Creates Marketing Automation Success: Data from Gleanster

Research firm Gleanster released its free “Gleansight” report on marketing automation late last month. I was principal author for much of the document and drafted the survey questions, although I didn’t write the individual vendor profiles or administer the survey. (I’ll also share in the revenues, which come when vendors pay for the names of people who download the report.) Although I’m obviously biased, I do think it’s an excellent product and highly recommend it.

Many readers of the report will be most interested in the vendor profiles and survey-based rankings. But I have my own data on those, so I’m more interested in the answers to the general survey questions. These asked why people implement marketing automation, what challenges they face, and what contributes to success. The survey compared answers from top-performing marketing automation users with answers from everyone else. This gives especially interesting insights (or should I say...GLEANSIGHTS) into the differences between sophisticated users and their less experienced brethren.

Here are some highlights – please look in the report itself for details.

Reasons to Implement: top performing companies listed higher revenue, better leads, and more leads as the most important reasons to use marketing automation. All other companies also listed revenue and more leads in their top three, but their most common answer was decreased marketing costs. By contrast, marketing efficiency ranked fourth among top performers and much lower among all others.

My interpretation is that top performers have learned that marketing automation might make you more efficient but won’t actually reduce your total marketing budget.  Other, less experienced companies that expect cost savings will probably be disappointed.  If anything, marketing automation will probably increase their marketing spend – hopefully with an even larger improvement in the revenues and leads to compensate.

Value Drivers: Both groups agreed that the two most important predictors of marketing automation success are cooperation with sales and ability to measure return on investment. But the top performers' third item was easy-to-use system while the others chose adequate staff training. This is a really interesting divergence.

The Gleanster people tell me that many of the top performers are now using their second marketing automation system because their first was too hard to use.  In other words, this is the voice of experience, and that voice is saying that training by itself can’t overcome a difficult system. Less-experienced companies who are relying so heavily on training may find it's not enough. But let’s not overstate this point: training is certainly necessary for success even if it’s not sufficient. Perhaps the top performers discounted training in part because they already had a lot of it.

Back to the data.  Both groups rated having an analytical culture as the fourth-most important value driver, while listing outside help, change management, and organizational resources as the least important.

These answers shed important light on the on-going debates about how marketers should approach their automation deployments. The message is clear: success depends on a marketing department’s own skill level, not on outside resources. A marketing department that pays attention to sales needs, carefully measures ROI, and makes fact-based decisions will succeed with marketing automation just as it probably succeeded without it.. A group that hasn’t mastered those basics won’t succeed at marketing automation no matter how much training, change management, and external assistance it brings to bear.

Challenges: Gleanster didn’t send me responses to this question broken out by top performers vs. all others. For the combined group, the top two challenges cited were data quality and creating content; the next three were poor marketing processes, lack of staff, and selecting metrics. These are all factors controlled by the marketing group. The lowest ranking factors were all the external ones: organizational culture, senior management mindset, lack of IT support, and lack of funding.

This is consistent with the previous answer: marketers create their own success. Marketing automation is just a tool.  It will help a well-run department work better but can’t save a poorly-run department from itself. Massive re-engineering isn't necessarily required to deploy marketing automation, but departments that lack a solid foundation need to build one before automation can do them any good.