We get asked this all the time and I found this very interesting infographic that sheds some light on the survival of email marketing. Email is an effective communication channel that is cheap and has the ability to reach a large amount of targets fairly easily.
Top down approach
The first step in becoming a revenue marketer is getting buy in from top level management. If they don’t see the value in aligning sales and marketing with process and technology then it’s going to be a difficult road. Think about how tough it is to manage a sales person within your organization. Now add to it service level agreements and strict process. It won’t make things easier if upper level management isn’t enforcing it. In fact it will probably make your life miserable.
Technology
Without the use of automation software or an organization wide CRM it is going to be impossible to align sales and marketing in today’s dynamic workplace. These tools not only automate processes they help deliver quality leads to sales. With these powerful tools you can weed out leads that don’t fit your demographics or aren’t ready to buy. This helps your marketing team build credibility within your sales organization and build a more efficient sales cycle. It gives you the ability to enforce the “no lead left behind” policy.
Experience
With these new and powerful tools you are going to need someone to drive them. Marketing automation is such a new and fast growing trend that it’s outpacing the increase in automation skills. It’s becoming difficult and even expensive to find talented marketers who have experience with automation software. Trying to implement these tools on your own are possible, but it takes time and patience to learn them. Without expert guidance it can be difficult to get your automation program at peak performance. Consultants can not only ramp up your program faster, but it can put your automation software to full use.
Marketing and sales alignment is on the to do list at most B2B companies, but many struggle to find it or even fail to recognize the value of it. According to IDC it was found that B2B organizations are losing close to 10 percent of revenue per year due to their inability to align sales and marketing around the correct processes and technologies. Marketing automation software companies are reporting growth year over year at an amazing rate, but marketers fail to fully implement their technologies.
To become an efficient revenue marketer it’s apparent that organizations need to bridge the gap between sales and marketing but how do they go about doing it? Organizations spend a substantial amount of money on marketing efforts, but are they getting their targeted ROI or have they even accounted for it? Web technologies are getting more advanced but do they have the talent within their organization get peak performance from it? Are your competitors getting an unfair advantage because they’ve got a head start on their marketing automation program?