A marketer’s tool belt can span various categories and differ across industries and disciplines. From analytics and marketing automation to content creation and project management, your team probably already uses many different systems to keep everything on track. Could adding one more to the mix really make a difference? The short answer is yes: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can be a significant benefit to marketing teams. 

Defining the Role of CRM in an Organization

At its core, a CRM system is a centralized hub for managing interactions with customers and prospects across various touchpoints. Within an organization, a CRM plays multiple roles:

Centralized Data Management: CRM systems serve as the central repository for all customer-related data, providing marketing teams with a single source of truth for the business. This consolidated database ensures that everyone within the organization (including your marketing team) can access accurate, up-to-date information about customers, prospects, and leads. 

For marketing teams specifically, accessing CRM gives them valuable insights into customer preferences, purchase history, and interactions across various touchpoints. Having a single source of truth eliminates data silos, reduces the risk of errors, and promotes consistency in customer interactions, which ultimately fosters better decision-making and alignment across departments.

Relationship Building: CRM systems facilitate nurturing relationships with prospects and existing customers by tracking interactions and preferences. As we all know, building strong relationships with existing customers is just as important as building relationships when acquiring new customers. Relationship building is essential because it drives engagement, conversions, retention, advocacy, and competitive advantage in the marketplace. CRM systems enable teams to stay connected with customers post-purchase, offering personalized support, recommendations, and exclusive offers. This can foster loyalty and encourage repeat purchases, contributing to long-term customer retention and lifetime value.

Marketing teams can leverage relationship data to deliver targeted campaigns, personalized messages, and tailored content, which helps foster stronger connections and increase brand loyalty.

Process Automation: Process automation is a game-changer for modern marketing teams, empowering them to optimize their workflows, save valuable time, and enhance productivity. CRM platforms, such as Insightly, offer robust automation capabilities that revolutionize marketing tasks, from lead capture to campaign management.

Workflow automation enables marketing teams to handle increased volume and complexity without sacrificing quality. By automating repetitive tasks like lead capture, email marketing, and campaign management, CRM platforms enable marketing teams to streamline their workflows and focus on high-impact activities. 

Moreover, workflow automation ensures consistency and reliability in team efforts by enforcing standardized processes and reducing the risk of human error. Whether scheduling automated email campaigns, assigning tasks to team members, or triggering follow-up actions based on predefined criteria, automated workflows ensure that tasks are executed promptly and accurately, maintaining high consistency across marketing initiatives.

Integration Ability: Integrations break down silos between departments and foster collaboration by enabling shared access to customer data and insights. When your CRM integrates with marketing automation, sales, and customer service systems, teams can collaborate more effectively to coordinate activities, align strategies, and deliver a cohesive customer experience. This collaboration leads to better coordination, improved communication, and a more holistic approach to customer relationship management.

CRM systems offering seamless integrations with email marketing platforms and automation tools enable marketing teams to orchestrate cohesive, multi-channel campaigns. By integrating with email platforms, CRM systems facilitate automated email workflows, personalized messaging, and lead nurturing campaigns. These kinds of integrations streamline processes, eliminate manual data entry, and ensure customer interactions are tracked and synchronized across platforms. 

Benefits of Insightly CRM for Marketing Teams

The benefits of CRM extend far beyond just sales and customer service functions. Like sales, CRM systems should serve as the backbone for marketing operations. Insightly CRM empowers marketing teams to work more efficiently, strategically, and collaboratively to drive business growth and success. Marketing teams can leverage Insightly CRM to work more efficiently and innovatively in their marketing strategies.

By leveraging Insightly’s robust features and capabilities, marketing teams can unlock enhanced lead management, improved collaboration and communication, robust reporting, and analytics, all housed in a customizable and mobile-friendly system. 

Enhanced Lead Management

Insightly’s lead management tools enable marketing teams to capture, track, and prioritize leads effectively. By assigning lead scores based on a combination of behavioral data and demographic information, Insightly helps marketing teams identify and prioritize leads with the highest potential for conversion. 

For example, leads with strong engagement with marketing content or who fit the ideal customer profile may receive higher lead scores, indicating their readiness to move further along the sales funnel.

Automated lead capture mechanisms simplify the lead management process by seamlessly capturing leads from various sources, including website forms, social media campaigns, and events. Whether a prospect fills out a contact form on the website or provides their information at a trade show booth, Insightly ensures every lead is noticed, capturing valuable data and initiating the lead nurturing process automatically.

Once leads are captured, Insightly provides marketers with powerful tools to segment, categorize, and prioritize leads effectively. By analyzing lead scores and other relevant data points, marketing teams can tailor their follow-up actions to suit the needs and preferences of each prospect, increasing the likelihood of conversion and revenue generation.

Improved Collaboration and Communication

A shared customer information and communication platform like Insightly serves as a unifying force within an organization, bringing together disparate teams and departments to work towards a common goal. By providing a centralized hub for customer data and interactions, Insightly facilitates collaboration between marketing, sales, and customer service teams, breaking down silos and fostering cross-functional alignment. Getting your marketing automation platform and CRM from the same vendor allows for shared data among the marketing and sales teams. 

The benefit of integrated communication further enhances collaboration by enabling real-time communication and project management between teams. Whether it’s sharing updates on leads, discussing customer feedback, or coordinating follow-up actions, these tools streamline internal workflows, ensuring seamless coordination and alignment across departments. Implementing Insightly CRM as a shared platform allows organizations to break down barriers, leverage collective expertise, and work together more effectively to achieve their goals.

Reporting for Data-Driven Decision Making

CRM systems should have robust reporting and analytics capabilities, offering insights into campaign effectiveness, lead generation, and customer engagement metrics. These insights empower teams to measure ROI, identify trends, and optimize strategies for better results. Insightly’s robust reporting and analytics empower marketing teams to make data-driven decisions. By analyzing metrics such as conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and customer lifetime value, teams can optimize marketing strategies for maximum effectiveness and ROI.

Unlike traditional reporting systems, which require custom development and specialized expertise, Insightly CRM offers out-of-the-box reporting and analytics and fully customizable dashboards that you can tailor to your unique needs. With drag-and-drop interfaces and intuitive visualization tools, marketing teams can create and customize reports without the need for expensive developers or IT support. This self-service approach empowers teams to analyze data, track progress, and make data-driven decisions independently, saving time and resources.

Scalability and Customization

Insightly offers scalability and customization options to accommodate marketing teams’ evolving needs. Whether scaling campaigns to reach new markets or tailoring CRM workflows to specific business processes, Insightly provides flexibility and agility for growing teams.

A CRM system that offers extensive customization options allows marketing teams to tailor the system to their specific needs and preferences. Custom fields, layouts, and dashboards enable marketers to capture and visualize the information they need to inform their strategies and decision-making. Whether tracking campaign performance metrics, segmenting audiences based on demographics, or analyzing lead quality, a customizable CRM empowers marketers to focus on the data that matters most to them. This flexibility enhances usability, efficiency, and productivity, ensuring that marketing teams can extract maximum value from your CRM investment.

CRM Mobile Access

Modern CRM systems offer mobile applications that enable marketers to access critical information and stay connected on the go, whether at trade shows, events, or on the road. Mobile access allows marketers to view customer profiles, track interactions, and update records in real-time, ensuring continuity and responsiveness in customer engagement. 

Whether capturing leads at events, following up on inquiries, or accessing campaign metrics remotely, Insighty’s mobile access benefits marketing teams to stay productive and proactive, regardless of their location. This flexibility enhances agility, responsiveness, and customer satisfaction, driving business growth and success.

Marketing Teams Love Insightly CRM

A CRM is an integral tool with many benefits for marketing teams. It provides a centralized platform for managing customer relationships, tracking interactions, and, ultimately, informing marketing strategies. Whether harnessing the insights from Insightly CRM’s robust features or integrating it with other tools in your organization’s tech stack, CRM remains an indispensable tool for marketing teams looking to stay ahead in today’s dynamic and competitive landscape.

Supercharge your marketing efforts by combining the power of Insightly Marketing with Insightly CRM or by integrating with other tools in your tech stack using Insightly AppConnect to enhance marketing effectiveness, drive team efficiency, and enable data-driven decision-making. Set your marketing team up for success by watching a demo on demand or scheduling a personalized Insightly demo.

Even though the marketing career path isn’t a straight one, there are a few steps you can take to advance your career.

1. Decide if you are ready for your next position

It’s not always easy to know when you are ‘finished’ with a current role. Marketing jobs are dynamic, and you may never feel like you’ve completed everything on your long ‘to-do’ list. It’s rare to feel like you’ve done all that you can do in your current position, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not time to move on.

An easy way to tell if you’re ready for a new position is to pay attention to how you feel about your current work. Do you feel challenged or do you feel bored? Are you excited about or dreading upcoming projects? If your work is not energizing you like it used to, you’ve likely outgrown it.

Another way to know if you’re ready to advance in your career path is by reading your original job description. Are you still working on the same primary tasks and projects? Or, have you moved on to more advanced work? If your role has already moved beyond what it was, you are likely due for a new position.

2. Set intentional career goals

It’s tempting to obsess over advancing to a new title—a little signifier of success that you can show off on LinkedIn. Stop to consider what exactly this advancement would mean. Have you mastered everything in your current role? Would a new title provide new opportunities? How would you use those opportunities to grow?

Make a list of your career goals outside of a certain job title or salary bracket. These goals shouldn’t be beholden to marketing career path titles, salaries and structures. Often, these are arbitrary and differ from company to company.

Here are questions to ask when thinking about your next marketing career goals.

Do I want to:

• Pursue a marketing specialty? (more on this below)
• Work in a certain industry?
• Be part of a large or a small team?
• Be on a founding team?
• Manage a large or small budget?
• Work with people I can learn from? If so, in what areas?
• Work remotely?

Not every position will meet all your goals. But it’s still helpful to have this list when you’re considering opportunities and planning career moves.

3. Determine an internal or external move

Oftentimes, this decision is made for you. Is there an open position at your company, or does your company have a dedicated career advancement path? In that case, pursuing your next move at your current company is often your best option. You get the benefit of learning and growing without the learning curve of a new industry, new co-workers, and a new office (or Zoom meeting code).

But, you may decide that you’re ready to move to another company. Or, as is often the case, your company may not have a clear next step for you. This is typical at startup companies or companies with small marketing teams. So you may have only one choice: spend more time in your current position or leave to pursue something new.

How do you know if you’re ready to move to a new company?

Learn a new skill

If you enter a team as a content writer, you may want to branch out into more of an SEO management role. You’ll explore SEO tools and strategies in this type of position. Or, if you start as an email marketing specialist, perhaps marketing operations will have some appeal to you. You’ll operate a marketing automation platform and likely work with the sales ops team running the company’s CRM. If your current team doesn’t have these types of roles, or does not support this type of growth, it may be time to move on.

Try a new industry

One reason why marketing is a great career is because you not only learn a lot about the marketing world, but you also learn so much about every industry that your business is in. If you’ve spent a few years marketing to healthcare, for example, you might want to try your hand at marketing to software developers. If you’ve spent your career in B2B, you may also want to try B2C, or vice versa.

Different industries prioritize different types of marketing, so you may be on a team that runs a go-to-market motion that is partner-led and therefore has a channel marketing function, while  another company may have an event-led go-to-market strategy where a full events team is employed.

Meet new people

We learn so much from every co-worker and manager. Advancing your career can sometimes mean shaking up your work environment. When you move to a new company, you can guarantee that you’ll grow by learning how to work with new and different people. This is especially true if you go to a larger marketing team that may have specialized sub teams for digital marketing, events, marketing operations, content, social media, and more. 

4. Understand your next step

Especially in the startup world, hiring for marketing can be fragmented. Some companies have a CMO or a VP of Marketing as one of their first five hires. Some companies wait until they have an entire sales division before they hire a marketer.

The typical marketing job titles hierarchy at a tech or software startup might look something like this:

Senior Team (VP or Senior VP)
Titles: Chief Marketing Officer/Vice President of Marketing
Depending on company size, they may have VPs of specific channels (demand generation, product marketing, creative), and they set the marketing strategies while keeping abreast of trends in the marketing industry.

Mid-Senior Level Team (Director or Senior Director)
Titles: Director of Marketing, Director of Marketing Operations, Product Marketing Director, Social Media Director, Digital Marketing Director
Directors typically report to VPs, and often manage entire divisions or teams. They are responsible for the day-to-day operations including project management. 

Mid-Senior Team (Manager or Senior Manger)
Titles: Marketing Manager, Social Media Manager, Digital Marketing Manager, Events Manager
Managers typically specialize and are the day-to-day executors of what need to get done. Sometimes they will manage one person or have a small team.

Junior Team (Analysts, Coordinators, Specialists, Assistants, Associates)
Events Coordinator, Marketing Research Analyst, Marketing Analyst, Marketing Assistant, Marketing Associate, Marketing Coordinator, Public Relations Associate
There are entry-level marketers who play a support role in achieving the greater marketing goals.

Though it may seem like the hierarchy is well-established, it can vary. Each company is on its own marketing journey and a company’s priorities will match it. For example, if your company sells via affiliates or channels, there may be an entire marketing team to support the affiliate/channel motion. They will make different hires at different times. Responsibilities and seniority can fluctuate from one company to another.

Because of this, your next title may be lateral, or sometimes a step back. In this case, it’s important to return to your career path intentions. If the position allows you to grow, it is a step forward regardless of the title.

Salary grade is often tied to job title. This also varies depending on exact job responsibilities, industry and geographic location.

Based on US national averages data from May 2024, GlassDoor reports that average marketing salaries can range from around $80,000 to $149,000 with an estimated total pay of $106,262 per year. Salary ranges vary based on industry, location, experience level, education, and other factors.

According to Indeed.com, the average raise for performance-based promotion is between 3-5 percent. So, if you’re a junior-level marketer making $56,999 and get promoted to a marketing manager role, it’s unlikely you’ll make that big jump to six figures. This is a crucial decision when deciding whether to take a promotion at your current company, or fill a role at a new company.

5. Consider generalized and specific marketing paths

To start, most marketers will have a degree in marketing or related field and will start with entry-level marketing roles. Marketers love to say that they wear many hats. One day they might be a designer, one day a journalist, and one day an analyst. When companies smaller and they are beginning to invest in marketing, they are often looking for the type of marketer that can do it all, or a generalist.

Yet, at some point, too many generalists feels like too many cooks. When they start to grow, companies see the value of having a dedicated graphic designer, a content marketer or content manager, a marketing analyst, a campaign manager, and/or social media manager, to name a few.

A full-stack marketing team might consist of 10+ specialists with concentrated experience. Marketing specialties include digital marketing, content, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click management, graphic design, public relations, brand management, product marketing, analytics, campaign management, email marketing, marketing operations/marketing automation, events, customer engagement programs, and sales enablement. In some industries, there may be even more.

Most marketers spend some time as a generalist, and some time as a specialist. For instance, they can specialize in social media marketing or search engine marketing. You’ll also typically have content marketers. Often, generalist skills apply if you’re managing a team or heading up a department. Otherwise, special skills can take marketers far into a successful career in any marketing field.

If you’ve spent some time as a generalist, consider a role that will allow you to focus on a specialty. If you’ve been in a specialty for a long time, consider expanding your skill set by spending some time as a generalist. This will provide you with an opportunity to grow and become a more well-rounded marketer.

6. Decide on whether you want to work at an agency or in-house

Marketers typically work in one of two environments. Agency marketers are contracted consultants who work with different clients to achieve specific goals. In-house marketers are hired by a company to run marketing programs full-time.

Agency marketers and in-house marketers often call upon the same marketing management knowledge. Yet, each environment requires different soft skills to succeed.

If you work in an agency, you’ll find yourself interfacing with clients. You’ll become a pro at communicating your process and results. Oftentimes, these jobs are less flexible because you’re working on your client’s schedule. Ensuring client happiness is just as important as marketing your product.

You’ll also need the ability to switch gears often as you’ll likely work on more than one account at a time. You can often feel like you have a different job every day of the week – a quality that some love and others do not.

If you’re a marketer working in-house, you have more flexibility. You have the ability to work on your own schedule to make sure your goals are met. You have the luxury of long-term thinking and making investments for the company’s future. Yet, in-house marketing also requires interfacing with your company’s senior leadership. It’s important to effectively communicate how your programs impact the bottom line.

One strategy is to try working for an agency so you can sample a few industries and expand your network; then, move in-house with the industry that appealed to you the most in your agency life. Most marketers have a personality for either agency or in-house. It’s worth it to try both and see which is a better fit for you.

7. Identify your gaps in knowledge or experience

How do you know if you’re a good fit for a new job? Review listed job descriptions on Indeed.com and LinkedIn. If you notice a certain skill or experience that you lack, note it.

Some missing skills are deal-breakers. If you’ve never run a marketing campaign, you may not get a job as a marketing campaign manager.

But, many listed skills are nice-to-have. Depending on the company, they may be willing to teach and train you on some of the less-crucial items. This is especially true for junior-level positions.

To learn more about which skills are deal-breakers and which skills are nice-to-have, consider interviewing some people who are in similar roles. You can learn a lot from speaking to other people about their journey and the skills that they have found most crucial to do their jobs well.

Regardless of the role you are applying to, an understanding of the data that drives team decisions is essential. Marketing is responsible for meeting their numbers and each sub-team has their contributions. You should be able to articulate the impact your work has on the bottom line in your current role, and what results you’ll be responsible for in your new role.

Skill gaps are typical; no marketer can do it all, but every marketer should understand the numbers.

8. Consider options for filling a skills gap

If you’ve noticed that one of your skill gaps is something that you want to fill, you have a few options.

Do a project

Let’s say your company has never had an event marketing presence, but you’re looking at jobs that require at least two years of event marketing management. How can you simulate the lessons that other marketers would have learned over two years?

Consider an independent project that allows you to test this skill. Design an event plan that you can execute from beginning to end. Take on all responsibilities that an events manager would. This includes planning, budgeting, travel, copywriting, design, scheduling, engagement, and measurement.

Doing an independent project has a slew of benefits. You’ll learn the ins and outs of the skill you’re trying to master. You’ll show a level of initiative and an ability to learn on your feet, which are great skills for marketers to have. Additionally, you may be able to show your passion for something you’re interested in outside of work. This can give the company a little insight into your personality and passions.

Take a class

For some skills, you may need more of a broad understanding rather than a specific experience. Let’s say you’re applying for a product marketing job that works with a product management team. The job may require some experience working with a product management team. This would be challenging to simulate with a project.

Consider taking a course in product management. Sites like Coursera, edX, LinkedIn Learning, and a number of universities offer free courses at varying levels. These courses will give you exposure to the basics of product management. They may give you the opportunity to test some basic product management skills. Though this does not represent a replacement of the work experience, it will give you a foundational knowledge. It also shows an initiative for learning another part of the business.

Earning course completion certificates and updating your LinkedIn profile with them is a great way to show potential employers that you are willing to learn.

9. Use your network and build a new one

The marketing career path isn’t always a straight line, and neither is the marketing job application process. It’s rare to get a job going through the typical pipeline of sending a resume, getting an interview, and then getting a yes-or-no to the job. Because marketers are usually so embedded in their industry, there is an element of ‘who you know.’

Focus on connecting with other marketers. With the advent of remote work, we are lucky that many marketing networking groups have moved online to Slack, LinkedIn, or even the niche communities listed below. This makes the process of networking a little less time-consuming and a lot less awkward.

Here are a few networking groups to meet others in the industry:

BigSEO – for search engine optimization

MKTG WMN – for women in marketing

Online Geniuses – for tech marketing

Product Marketing Alliance – for product marketing

Vidico – for video marketing

Content Marketing Institute – for content writers and managers

Marketing Profs< – B2B marketing education community

Join your college/university alumni networks and regional groups. Find mentors you can learn from, who can also help you make career decisions and introduce you to people in their networks.

10. Gather as much info as you can

You can be the greatest marketer in the world, but if you don’t know anything about the product that you are marketing, you’re in big trouble. It’s even worse if you don’t know the industry or how your product fits into the market. Marketers need to invest time into learning about industries, products, and customers.

Before pursuing a job at a certain company, reach out to some people that already work there. They can be part of marketing management, but you can learn a lot by talking to sales, engineering, or product teams as well. These conversations are easier than ever with the wide adoption of Zoom. Your contact can give you insight into how the company operates. They can also give insider information before you enter a formal interview process.

Watch their marketing webinars on-demand to see what content is being disseminated. Follow the company on social media – both the corporate account and those of the leadership team. Check out their latest press releases to see what’s top of mind for the organization. This information will prepare you to have productive talks during the interview cycle.

11. Continue contributing to your current position

There’s the old adage that  “it’s easier to find a job when you have a job.”

Finding a new full-time marketing job can feel like a full-time job of its own. Having networking conversations, doing research, scheduling interviews and doing sample projects are challenging and exhausting. Doing all this while you’re still committed to another job will make this a challenging time.

Do your best to continue to be a responsible contributor to your team. You’ll spend evenings and weekends making up time and/or job hunting. Expect to feel a bit burned out during the process – that’s normal. You’ll feel a rush of excitement when it’s time to start at your new gig.

12. Try something outside of the traditional career path

Some marketers will inevitably go from a coordinator to manager to director, and ultimately to a VP or CMO role. The linear career path always seems like the best way to advance through an organization and career. You learn a little more each year, keep getting promoted, and grow confidence in your work.

Some careers take twists and turns. This can lead you to learn more about yourself, your interests, and what you want your journey to look like. As you meet more and more marketers, you’ll learn that the straight-and-narrow progression isn’t for everyone.

Some of the strongest marketers have spent time outside of marketing. They come from a finance or creative writing background. They’ve taken hiatuses to work in sales, product, customer success, or even outside of corporate business altogether. By incorporating these experiences into their work, they were able to develop more nuanced perspectives on marketing. As sales and marketing continue to align, we are certain to see more overlap between the sales and marketing career paths.

If you’re feeling like your career has stagnated, it may be worth taking a leap into a different kind of role. It doesn’t mean the end of your career as a marketer. Instead, it might make you a better marketer and provide you with more diverse experiences and opportunities to meet people and discover new interests

13. Make the move when it feels right

There’s no need to keep to a certain schedule of promotions, advancements, and raises. For one person, a single position could be dynamic and challenging enough to keep them interested for many years. For others, a few months in a position may be enough to know it is not the right fit.

Don’t succumb to an invisible competition with your peers in marketing for the ‘best’ title or the most money. In the face of this pressure, it is crucial to remember everyone is on their own journey. All companies are different and all jobs are different. The best way to be sure that I’m growing is by returning and reflecting on my own career goals.

Conclusion

Pursuing a marketing career is a rewarding and challenging journey. As you chart your marketing adventure, consider both following the established trails and finding a way to forge your own path.

Marketing operations jobs encompass a diverse range of roles within the marketing field. These positions involve the behind-the-scenes coordination and execution of marketing strategies and campaigns. You will most often find a marketing operations team member as a marketing team begins to grow and segment. For example, a team of 10 marketers might have content marketers, digital marketers, product marketers, creatives, and marketing operations staff.

At a high level, the job descriptions for marketing operations roles may vary depending on the company, but typically involve tasks such as managing data and analytics, optimizing marketing processes, and ensuring smooth communication between marketing teams. 

Marketing operations FAQs

There is some confusion about this role, so let’s look at some common terms that can cause it.

What’s the difference between marketing operations and marketing automation?

Marketing operations and marketing automation are erroneously used interchangeably; they are not the same thing. Marketing operations refers to the broader discipline of managing marketing processes, while marketing automation specifically refers to the use of software and technology to automate repetitive marketing tasks. Marketing automation is an application or platform used within marketing operations to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in campaign execution. Often, the marketing operations team will be the main owner of the marketing automation platform.

What’s the difference between marketing operations and marketing?

To better understand the difference between marketing operations and marketing, suppose a company is planning a new product launch. The marketing team as a whole would be responsible for developing the campaign strategy, identifying target audiences, creating promotional materials, and executing the campaign across various channels. The marketing operations team, as a subset of the marketing team, would be responsible for managing the project timeline, allocating resources, sending assets via the marketing automation platform, tracking campaign performance, and ensuring smooth coordination among different teams involved in the campaign.

What’s the difference between marketing operations and digital marketing?

Marketing operations and digital marketing are typically two distinct teams in a marketing department. Digital marketing refers specifically to marketing efforts that are carried out on digital channels such as websites and social media platforms. This is commonly associated with paid ads on search engines and on social media channels, and setting up funnels for those journeys that start with ads. Digital marketers are also often involved in search engine optimization. Digital marketers are using strategies and tactics to reach and engage target audiences solely online. Marketing operations, on the other hand, encompasses the broader management and optimization of marketing processes, including in both non-digital and digital channels. 

How to learn marketing operations

Marketing operations education is difficult to find in a traditional sense, e.g. at a brick and mortar college or school. It is common for someone with a general degree in marketing to specialize in marketing operations once they start a marketing career based on their skills. For instance, an entry level marketer on a larger marketing team who shows prowess in application management, data handling, and project management may be encouraged to move into a marketing operations speciality. 

Once individuals embark on a marketing operations career path, companies often invest in marketing operations certification or marketing operations courses to ensure those people have the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively execute on the campaigns and responsibilities of the role. These types of courses are offered by marketing associations and marketing software providers. 

A marketing operations course is a valuable opportunity for individuals looking to enhance their skills and knowledge in the field of marketing operations. The courses are designed to provide comprehensive training and education on topics such as marketing strategy, data analysis, project management, and marketing technology platforms. By completing this type of course, participants will gain the necessary expertise to become a certified marketing operations professional (CMOP) and will be equipped to handle the various challenges and responsibilities of a marketing manager role.  Marketing operations courses are typically offered online, allowing participants to learn at their own pace and convenience. 

In addition to courses, it can be beneficial for a marketing operations professional to join a marketing operations group online to continue to hone their skills. 

Marketing operations salary

Marketing operations management jobs can be found in a variety of industries, including advertising, manufacturing, and e-commerce. Companies of all sizes, from startups to large corporations, recognize the importance of optimizing their marketing processes and often hire professionals with expertise in this area.

When it comes to salary, marketing operations professionals can expect to be compensated based on factors such as experience, industry, and location. According to PayScale, the average salary for marketing operations managers is around $72,000 per year in the United States with a range from $60,000 to $120,000 per year. As an added bonus, many marketing operations jobs offer the flexibility of remote work, allowing professionals to work from anywhere. 

Marketing operations team structure and roles

The team structure of marketing operations can vary depending on the organization. In some cases, marketing operations may be a centralized function with a team dedicated solely to managing marketing processes and operations. In other cases, marketing operations may be integrated into various marketing departments, with individuals responsible for specific operational tasks within their respective teams. The team structure should align with the organization’s goals and objectives, ensuring efficient collaboration and communication across the marketing function.

Typical roles and titles are  marketing operations specialist/coordinator, marketing operations manager, and senior marketing operations manager or director are common. Let’s take a look at some details on each. 

Marketing Operations Specialist or Marketing Operations Coordinator job description

If you are a marketer with a keen eye for analytics, a marketing operations job might be a great fit. Entry-level marketing operations jobs are available for those just starting their careers, providing an opportunity to gain experience and learn the ropes. This person will be a heavy user of all marketing applications the team uses, but especially the marketing automation platform. This role is involved daily with building and testing emails, creating, maintaining and segmenting lists, building landing pages and forms, sending mass emails, updating the project management tool and tracking expenses.

Marketing Operations Manager job description

A marketing operations manager’s responsibilities may include managing tasks, analyzing data to optimize marketing performance, coordinating cross-functional teams, and implementing marketing technology solutions. Building emails, creating lists, building landing pages, testing and sending mass emails, and managing a budget may be involved. Also, overseeing a project management tool for the full marketing team and the project management function can be a part of this role. A marketing operations manager should possess a strong understanding of cross-functional marketing practices and possess skills in project management, data analysis, and communication. Job seekers interested in marketing operations manager roles should tailor their resumes to highlight their experience, skills, and achievements in marketing operations.                                           

Marketing Operations Director job description

Just like the marketing operations manager’s responsibilities, the director of marketing ops will oversee tasks, analyze data and direct the implementation of marketing technology solutions. At this higher level along the marketing operations career path, however, the director will serve as a leader on the marketing team, producing reports, seeking areas to gain efficiency, and managing the relationships among the marketing functional leads (e.g. product marketing, content marketing, etc.). This person will likely report directly to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and could be called upon to present data and findings at the company leadership level.                                       

The next step up on the marketing operations career path from a senior manager or director of marketing operations might be a role in revenue operations or RevOps, where you have responsibility for sales operations as well as marketing operations. Read more about the revenue operations role. 

Marketing operations qualifications

What makes a good candidate for a marketing operations role? Who should get on a marketing operations career path? Ideally, this person has a background in marketing and therefore understands the basic concepts and terminology that is common in the industry. Once that standard of knowledge is reached, the next set of qualifications involves having an analytical mind. A lot of marketing operations is the practice of data analysis. For example, you will be asked, “How did this email campaign perform?” and “Was this landing page successful?” Being tuned in to data and being able to report on it are vital skills. Lastly, a strong attention to detail is required. The click of a button in marketing operations can send an email to a thousand people or a million people. And those emails can go to the right list or the wrong list. As such, it is vital that this person understands the weight of their function.

Start on your marketing operations career path

At Insightly, we understand the importance of supporting the marketing operations function. That’s why our Insightly CRM and Insightly Marketing are on the same platform with a shared data set. With Insightly’s modern, scalable CRM, and feature-rich marketing automation platform, it’s a marketing operations manager’s dream. 

Want to learn more? Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, watch a demo on demand at your convenience (of both marketing automation and CRM), or request a personalized demo of both applications today.

As your organization evolves, you might consider trying to grow using some marketing tactics. Your goal is to feed your sales team by driving more leads, nurturing those leads and optimizing your marketing spend. Perhaps you are doing some informal marketing or advertising. You may be posting on social media. However, starting a true marketing function will catapult your results to a new level. This could take many forms. It could mean that you add a marketing resource to your team, engage with a marketing agency, and/or add some marketing applications to your tech stack.

Well, this is a great time to look at a marketing automation platform like Insightly Marketing. Let’s start with what a marketing automation platform is.

What is a marketing automation platform?

A marketing automation platform is a comprehensive digital tool that streamlines and automates various marketing tasks, allowing businesses to execute targeted and personalized campaigns at scale. It allows marketers to automate repetitive processes such as email, list building and maintenance, landing page building, and forms. A core function of marketing automation is the ability to nurture leads throughout the sales funnel by delivering timely and relevant content based on user behavior and engagement. 

You can have a marketing automation platform without a CRM. You can have a CRM without a marketing automation platform. However, the effectiveness of these two applications are compounded when you use both together. Let’s learn more!

How do marketing automation and CRM work together? 

CRM and marketing automation are two distinct yet interconnected systems that, when integrated, can enhance overall business efficiency and effectiveness while also aligning your sales and marketing teams. 

Integrating CRM and marketing automation ensures seamless data flow between the two systems. Here are some examples:

• Customer data captured in CRM is automatically updated in the marketing automation platform, and vice versa. This shared data ensures that both sales and marketing teams have access to a comprehensive view of the customer. 
• When leads are scored (based on intent) and graded (based on demographics) in your marketing automation platform, they can be passed into the CRM with that data and prioritized for the sales team.
• When leads meet certain criteria in the marketing automation platform, triggers can be set up to launch automated workflows in your CRM to notify the sales team, send targeted content, or perform other predefined actions.

Integration vs. the same platform – what’s the difference?

You may decide to purchase a CRM from one vendor and your marketing automation platform from another. Here are some reasons why this is not the best idea:

1. You’ll need to integrate the two. It’s clear from the points above that these two applications must work together well. You’ll need a powerful integration. If you use a no-code/low-code drag and drop integration tool, this can be fairly simple. But if you need to build an integration using IT folks or developers, this can get pricey quickly. Plus, if either application makes an upgrade that affects the fields you’ve integrated, your integrations can break. This causes havoc while you wait for the integration to be fixed.
2. Two-way sync can be trouble. You’ll want records that are updated in your marketing automation platform to be also updated in the CRM. For instance, if a contact’s phone number changes. Setting up a two-way sync can be complex, so in most cases, firms will have one platform supersede the other in terms of which is the ‘most correct.’ This often becomes confusing.
3. You’ll need login credentials for both platforms for your team. If you want your marketers to know what’s going on with sales and vice versa, you’ll want to give them logins to both your marketing automation platform and your CRM. Since you often pay by seat, this gets costly very quickly. 
4. Shared logins. When paying for logins for each person becomes cost prohibitive, some firms will have team members share logins. This is not a good idea in general. First, it can violate the terms of service with the vendor. Second, the platform assigns actions performed by anyone using that login to one user, so if any error is made, you’ll be unable to see who on the team made the mistake and may need additional training. 
5. Terminology blues. There is often a point where leads get passed from marketing to sales and therefore from the marketing automation platform to the CRM. It helps when both platforms assign the same meaning to words like lead, contact, prospect, opportunity, etc. This can vary widely across marketing automation platforms and between your chosen platform and your CRM. It creates confusion among your teams as well.
6. Finance doesn’t like multiple vendors. It can help out your accounting team to reduce the number of vendors you are using. Fewer invoices means less work for them and gives them more power to negotiate if needed. 

When your marketing automation platform and your CRM are from the same vendor, you can skip all of the above issues. Why? Here’s how Insightly CRM and Insightly Marketing solve for this:

1. There’s no ‘integration.’ The apps use the same data set.
2. There’s no sync. Again, same data set.
3. Logins are not a worry. Insightly Marketing has unlimited users so all marketing team members and all sales team members can have a login to the marketing automation platform at no additional cost.
4. Terminology (e.g. contact, lead, etc.) used in Insightly Marketing are the same as those used in CRM. 
5. One invoice per year…easy peasy.

Why would you not choose to use the same vendor for CRM and marketing automation?

Here are some reasons why people may not choose to use the CRM and marketing automation platform from the same vendor.

1. We bought one…then the other. It’s possible that when you purchased your CRM that there was no marketing automation platform available from the vendor. (Psst…Insightly Marketing came along years after Insightly CRM.) So perhaps it’s time to ask a bit during your next QBR or renewal meeting.
2. The CRM and marketing automation platform can’t possibly both be ‘best in class.’ This was probably true years ago, but advancements in SaaS in general have helped all martech apps be better, faster, and more feature rich. It’s worth a demo to see what features are offered today. Also, be sure to zero in on the features you use everyday vs. added bells and whistles that are cool, but not super useful.
3. We’re in a contract. For a while. Leaving your CRM or marketing automation platform can take some time, so don’t wait until renewal time is here. Start researching what your vendors offer so you’ll be prepared to make a change and you won’t be rushed.
4. Migrating our data will be a pain. It’s not as bad as you think! The professional services teams in today’s SaaS companies have done every kind of migration out there, so it’s always an option to see how they can help mitigate this work. 
5. We like what we have – integrations and all. This is a great spot to be in, but it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t look for other options and challenge the status quo.

Amplified results from CRM + marketing automation

We’ve talked about some of the benefits of having your marketing and sales teams on the same platform. Now let’s hear from real businesses with real results. 

Example 1: Sullivan & Stanley

Sullivan & Stanley is a UK-based consulting firm that chose Insightly CRM and Insightly Marketing. Kevin Corne, COO, says his  team was on a mission to select a platform that could provide a single version of the truth across sales and marketing and grow with the firm as well. The team selected Insightly and he says it “drives the frictionless model that we wanted.”

The marketing team agrees.  “Now that we have a platform where we can have both worlds [marketing and sales] in one, it’s a real game changer,” said Callum Chambers, Head of Marketing & Brand. “It is much easier with the simplicity of accessing the data at the tip of your fingers.”

Insightly has helped marketing and sales become more cross-functional informing the teams, whether your in marketing, sales or delivery, as to what’s going on,” Corne says.

Learn more in this short video:

Example 2: Sport Court Las Vegas

Sport Court is an industry-leading modular sports flooring designer and builder serving both residential and commercial customers across the U.S. and in more than 170 countries.

Sport Court’s Las Vegas location wanted to grow and scale, but was lacking in the proper tech stack to get them there. They needed a CRM and marketing a marketing automation platform that was customizable and would scale with them. After implementing Insightly, the business grew its revenue by 242% through lean systems and new processes, and also saw improved customer service outcomes.

“Customers, in general, are busy and have a life outside of their relationship with us and our product,” says Mike Reynolds, owner of Sport Court Las Vegas. “That’s why we’ve set up a constant email drip campaign with previous customers in Insightly Marketing – because sometimes customers will call me after six months, a year, or even five years down the road when they’re ready to build a new custom home. We need to be sure we’re not forgotten about in that time.”

Learn more in this short video:

Explore the benefits of marketing automation and CRM in one

Peanut butter and jelly. Peas and carrots. Burt and Ernie. 

Some things just go together. CRM and marketing automation belong on this list. If you’re not using the same platform for both, it’s a great time to check out Insightly. With a best in class, modern CRM and a powerful marketing automation platform, your teams will be aligned and you’ll see amplified results. 1 + 1 = 3. Watch a demo of each today, or ask for a personalized walk through of both!

I love underdog stories, and one of my favorites is now on FX and Hulu. The series, Welcome to Wrexham, is a documentary of sorts set around the small town in the north of Wales, Wrexham and their local soccer (English Football) club. The town has a history of economic set-backs, a coal mining disaster, but also many glory years of football. The storied past successes on the football pitch helped buoy spirits in this town, which like much of the UK, reveres football as even more than just a beloved sport, often having an outsized impact on the psyche of a community. In Wrexham, unfortunately, that psyche was significantly damaged 15 years back when the town’s football team fell out of the professional league, and hasn’t been able to put together a team good enough to make it back ever since. 

That is until Hollywood stars Ryan Renolds and Rob McElhenny bought the soccer team in 2020. They had a lofty goal to buy the team in Wrexham to see if they could improve the team enough to win back a spot in the English football league. In season 1 of the series, we saw them take second place, failing their goal despite significant new investment in the team. However, in season 2 they achieved their goal of being promoted back in the professional league – much to the joy of the entire community, and even much of Wales. It was an emotional and very satisfying triumph to watch, though it took lots of the stars’ money, a new coach, a pro manager, many new players, hard decisions, and a lot of creativity…but they did it.

Now, however, they have 72 stronger foes to face as part of the five divisions of the English Football league. They will now have to get even more creative to stand out in this more competitive crowd of talented teams.

The challenge

And so it is for us at Insightly in the CRM space, as it also is for many companies in competitive industries. 

Here’s why: It’s hard to find a more crowded field than CRM. According to IBISWorld, there are 1,787 CRM providers globally as of 2023. So, come on this journey with me as we talk about 5 key strategies that I’ve used to try to stand out in a competitive market.

Here’s the G2 data, of just the pure-play CRM platform providers…and you can see there are still a lot of brands vying for attention. It’s a pretty crowded screen, and you can just make out Insightly there. Well, at least we’re in the upper quadrant as a leader!

The world of SaaS has gotten a lot more crowded and complex in the last 23 years, and Scott Brinker from Chiefmartec.com has been tracking the expansion of SaaS for over a decade. He shows that in 2011 there were only 150 vendors in Martech, which as of 2020 had grown to over 8,000. 

So how do you stand out in a crowded space? 

Our challenge in CRM is to find the white space, or underserved portion of the market where we can carve out a unique spot, leveraging a combination of messaging and platform capabilities to grow. 

That white space may not be where you think it is. 

We all recall how Netflix aimed  to unseat top, $9 billion rival Blockbuster back in the early 2000s. Netflix’s early success in adding subscribers hinged on luring away Blockbuster customers who were tired of being charged a dollar a day for late returns. Yet, despite a tough initial battle, Blockbuster decided they couldn’t part ways with the $800 million they made each year from late fees. Netflix, now one of the biggest content creators in the world, had done it…the white space wasn’t about video at all, it was about late fees!

5 strategies to stand out

So, the problem isn’t just mine, it is likely many of you reading this are struggling with the same competitive challenge, and are trying to figure out how to topple one or several competitors that may have a bigger market share, a better known brand, or significantly more money and resources than you have. 

Not to fear, I’ve summarized my top 5 (scrappy) ways to stand out among the competition without breaking the bank:

1. Your customer experience is your unique value proposition
2. Try humor in your advertising 
3. Create ‘Remarkable’ content that stands out from competitors 
4. Borrow some clout by working with influencers in your field 
5. Keep a ‘sandbox’ budget, so you can test new marketing initiatives each quarter

While there are several other potential strategies we take beyond these, I think these are the top ones to consider putting into action first.

1. Customer Experience (CX) as your unique value proposition

Here’s one thing many smaller industry underdogs forget: If you’re small, you can leverage that size as a differentiator. One of your unique value propositions should be that you can provide a better, and more personalized customer experience than your larger competitors can. Your smaller size should translate into the ability to better know and understand your customers, allowing you to provide a significantly better, higher-touch, customer experience than your competitors.

Many organizations struggle with providing a strong customer experience. We conducted a study in 2022 where we surveyed >500 sales, marketing, ops and CS leaders and we asked them about the quality of their customer experience, and we also asked them about their company’s growth. 

The results were fascinating. 59% report to provide good or exceptional customer service. However, 6% say they need improvement and 35% say they just “meet expectations” – so not really a differentiated experience provided.

But here’s what’s really interesting from this research: Those with the best customer experiences were 2.5X more likely to report significant growth than all others. So, in other words, the data heavily backs the approach to differentiate on CX, as it is aligned with growth and better outcomes, such as higher recurring revenue, upsells, and repeat purchases.

2. Try humor in your advertising 

This is hiding in plain sight, yet rarely gets discovered by most brands, especially those in B2B. The research heavily supports that being approachable, and funny. This is a great potential differentiator to attract people to your brand and away from competitors.

As Marketing Dive reported, “Ninety-one percent of people globally prefer brands to be funny, yet 95% of business leaders fear using humor in consumer interactions, according to a June ‘22 report from Oracle and author-podcaster Gretchin Rubin. The report found that 45% of people globally had not felt true happiness for more than two years.”

The “Happiness Report” found that 90% of people are more likely to remember ads that are funny and 72% of people would choose a humorous brand over the competition. Again, as a smaller org, you can be more nimble and take more risks that larger orgs won’t. Digital is all 1’s and 0’s anyway so you can pivot at any time back to boring & predictable B2B marketing. 

Using humor also likely improves response rates in B2B too. From the study, 69% percent of respondents said they would open an email from a brand if the subject line was funnier, yet only 24% of business leaders report using humor in email marketing campaigns.

Here’s why humor works: People are people. So, of course this works in B2B, not just when marketing to consumers.

It worked for Insightly. We engaged an agency for a series of campy-funny video ads, and they worked well with our target audience, achieving over 1.2% click through on YouTube pre-roll ads, and also on LinkedIn. We utilized a weather theme pointing at the forecast being rainy for your legacy (big blue cloud) CRM, vs. sunny for Insightly. Speaking of the big blue cloud, I wonder who that could be? 

3. Create ‘Remarkable’ content

In Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow he compares good marketing to seeing a purple cow in a sea of brown cows. Nobody stops to gaze at a brown cow, but if you saw a purple one you’d stop the car, get out and photograph it, then tell all of your friends. I think the corollary to this is what I heard Rand Fishkin say, “If you want to create really great content you’re going to have to be comfortable with pissing some people off…but appealing to others…those are your customers.”

So how do you put the recommendations of Purple Cow into action?

It starts by thinking about what is differentiated. In doing so, you might have brainstorms that you discard as silly or too aggressive. What we have found is that It’s okay to be edgy. Yes, also in B2B. 

Going against a competitor? Find and exploit a competitiveness weakness. In our case, legacy CRMs, such as Salesforce, often have a much higher total cost of ownership than modern competitors like Insightly. Also, the customer data from G2 shows that legacy CRMs are notoriously slow to implement and incorporate into a business.

So, we used a “Snails-force” ad to highlight the slowness, featuring a snail whose ‘favorite speed is slow.’ Also, we did an ad showing how the heavy blue cloud is weighing down a business due to the high cost. Similarly, we did a successful video ad with the key call-to-action being…”lose the blue cloud and save some green” – with money growing on trees.

All were targeted to current salesforce users and achieved >1.0% click-through rates, more than twice the 0.4% average on LinkedIn.

4. Borrow some clout

I personally have a little over 4,000 followers on LinkedIn. So, I’m doing okay, but I’m not a social media powerhouse. But some other folks are. Insightly has a podcast/YouTube show called Closing Time. It’s unique in that the episodes are about 15-20 minutes meant for bite-sized consumption. Through the show, we’ve been able to associate our brand with heavy hitters who have 100K+ followers. 

Overall our content initiative with category “influencers” is to deliver content that appeals, and influences our ICP audience based on their current pain points and challenges. The goal is to “create demand” and awareness (some would call this ‘branding’) even though many of these companies aren’t currently in the market for CRM. 

The research now supports the value of branding in B2B. Harvard Business Review’s study  “What B2Bs Need to Know About Their Buyers” shows that “80% of B2B buyers have a set of vendors
in mind before they do ANY research.”  80% of the time, the buy will already have a “day-one” consideration set before they begin ANY research. This will be based on brands they are already familiar with.

Most of these will be 2-3 of the brands within the top-5 market share leaders plus possibly 1-2 smaller “challenger brands” that are already known to the buying group.

That means that only 20% of brands that are discovered after the buyer begins to research the category will eventually be added to the consideration set!

So 90% of buyers who purchase (i.e. do not fall into a “no decision”) will choose one of the brands they already knew about BEFORE beginning their research of the category!

• ~40% Result in No Decision
• ~55% Chosen from the Day-One Consideration Set (90% of the 60% who buy)
• ~5% Chosen from brands discovered AFTER the buyer begins to research the category

This shows the value of branding as a way to be in the consideration set from the beginning.

5. Keep a Sandbox Budget

The two most important words in marketing are “What if…” Marketers are creative, so give your team space to think of the next big idea. And put some budget behind it. Here at Insightly, our marketing team holds a creative ideation meeting twice a month where we dedicate time to collaborating and coming up with new ideas. 

Here’s why this works: As a marketer, you want to always be trying 1-2 new things. What’s working now may not work in 1 or 2 quarters so you have to have innovative ideas that you are incubating. 

Here are just a few options:

1. Try a new demand gen channel or more aggressive web site A/B testing.
2. Develop some new creative or video test 
3. Enhance your go-to-market with some new tools for targeting, personalization, etc.
4. Maybe direct mail will help you reach your audience in a new, differentiated way?
5. In-person events are back. What about in-market events, and dinners with customers and potential customers?

The point is to always be testing.

As the underdog, you have lots of things your larger competitors don’t have. You have the chance to provide better service, provide new benefits they won’t, create funny and differentiated content, and aggressively test. Don’t get discouraged!

Understanding the customer’s journey is paramount to keeping and growing that level of service. CRM systems, like Insightly, highlight and map the intricate and sometimes messy path of each customer experience. This gives businesses the edge they need to foster relationships and drive growth.

For organizations to scale in a way that supports the customer journey, many are turning to automated systems that help them strike a better balance between growth and personalization. Marketing automation tools, such as Insightly Marketing, can be especially useful when implemented thoughtfully and strategically.

CRM Customer Journey

The CRM customer journey, at its core, is an automated system meticulously designed to track every interaction a customer has with a brand. Be it a new lead receiving their initial email or a high-value customer making repeated purchases, this journey encapsulates it all. With CRM platforms like Insightly, businesses can optimize each step, ensuring no touchpoint goes unnoticed.

Today, in the world of CRM, we’re seeing the rise of the automated customer journey. Automation in CRM systems allows businesses to design, execute, and monitor the customer experience with greater efficiency. By integrating technology into this journey, businesses can anticipate customer needs, personalize interactions, and ensure no opportunity for engagement is missed.

There are many advantages of an automated customer journey. For starters, automation brings with it the promise of consistency. When a process is automated, businesses can be confident that each customer receives the same high-quality experience, regardless of when or how they interact with the brand. It also allows for scalability. As a company grows, so too does its customer base. Automation ensures that a business can handle increasing numbers of customers without compromising the quality of their journey.

What Are The 7 Steps To Map The Customer Journey?

Mapping the customer journey is a strategic approach businesses can use to better understand the experiences and emotions of their customers at different touch points. So, what are the 7 steps to map a comprehensive customer journey? Let’s go ahead and dig in.

1. Define Objectives: The first step is to understand why you are creating a customer journey map in the first place. For example, it could improve user experience, identify pain points, or optimize conversion paths. Having a clearly defined objective will give a solid start for your customer journey mapping.
2. Create Buyer Personas: Next, you’ll want to identify (or create) your ideal customer profile (ICP). When crafting your buyer profile, you’ll need to understand their behaviors, preferences, and pain points. The more in-depth the buyer persona, the better the customer journey can be. 
3. List Touch points: Identify every potential customer interaction with your brand, from website visits, social media views, customer service interactions, etc. The list doesn’t need to be exhaustive, but it’s essential to consider how customers can interact with your brand. Leaving out touchpoints could lead to a gap in your journey mapping.
4. Identify Stages: You’ll break down the customer’s experience into distinctive stages next. More commonly, the stages might include awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase. Keep in mind that no one knows your business better than you. If you have unique stages that are a part of your potential customer’s experience, this identification stage may look different than what might surface after a quick Google search. Take the time to think through what these might be.
5. Gather Data: The fifth step in mapping the customer journey is data gathering. Utilize analytics, customer feedback, competitive insights, and other data sources to fill in details about each above stage and touchpoint. 
6. Visualize the Journey: Using all the information you have gathered, it’s time to create a visual representation, often referred to as the user journey map. This visualization makes it much easier to understand the customer’s experience and emotions at each stage. Mapping this out gives you a cheat sheet predicting where and when things could go wrong.
7. Iterate and Refine: A customer journey map is not static. It’s crucial to iterate and refine what you’ve built constantly. As you gather more insights, as your customer base grows, revisit and refine your map to ensure it remains accurate and actionable.

With this comprehensive mapping of the customer journey, you can more effectively cater to the needs and emotions of your audience, ensuring a smoother, more enjoyable experience.

Customer Journey Touch Points

Touch points in the customer journey represent every interaction a customer has with a brand, whether digital, like visiting a website, or physical, like entering a store. They play a crucial role in shaping the customer experience and the overall success of a business in the market.

Digital Touch Points: Online interactions a customer has with a brand. Examples include website visits, social media engagement, email, and mobile app usage. Today, these touchpoints often serve as a customer’s first introduction to a brand.

Physical Touch Points: In-person interactions, such as visiting a store, attending an event, or face-to-face customer service encounters.

Whether physical or digital, every touchpoint offers a chance to impress or disappoint a customer. The importance of customer touch points lies in ensuring a positive and consistent experience to drive customer loyalty and increase sales.

Five examples of customer touch points for a D2C or retail brand include:

1. Social media advertisement (Digital)
2. Website browsing and purchase (Digital)
3. Store visit or trial (Physical)
4. Customer support call (Digital/Physical)
5. Feedback or review submission (Digital)

Understanding and optimizing each of these touch points through a customer journey map ensures businesses can offer a seamless and satisfying experience, strengthening the relationship between brand and customer.

Customer Journey Marketing

Customer journey marketing is not just a trendy buzzword. McKinsey defines it as a series of touch points that customers experience as they move from awareness to loyalty. Effective customer journey marketing ensures every message is tailored and campaigns resonate throughout the customer’s path.

The framework for customer journey marketing involves segmenting the customer’s journey into 5 stages—awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. Once segmented, delivering the right message at the right time becomes much more manageable. 

Designing targeted campaigns for each segment of the journey ensures that customers receive information relevant to their current stage. This can enhance conversion rates and build brand loyalty.

Customer Journey Marketing Examples

• Awareness: Running an advertisement introducing a new product to your prospective customer.
• Consideration: Sending educational content or reviews from other purchasers about the product once the customer has engaged with the previous content.
• Purchase: To incentivize buying, offer a limited-time discount or promotion on that product.
• Retention: Once the customer has purchased, you can share additional content like tips on product usage, user-generated content, etc.
• Advocacy: Encouraging happy customers to leave positive reviews, refer friends, or join a loyalty program for repeat purchases.

Customer journey marketing is about recognizing and meeting customers’ unique needs at every phase of their interaction with a brand, ensuring a strategic marketing approach.

How To Create A Customer Journey Map

Creating a customer journey map might seem daunting, but it’s more straightforward than it sounds. Begin by understanding the customer’s perspective and the stages of their journey. This map is more than just a visual representation; it reflects the user’s journey, filled with insights and business opportunities.

Using the 7 steps outlined above, you can easily create to visualize and understand a customer’s experience with your brand.

As a reminder: 

1. Step 1: Define Objectives
2. Step 2: Create Buyer Personas
3. Step 3: List Touch Points
4. Step 4: Identify Stages
5. Step 5: Gather Data
6. Step 6: Visualize the Journey
7. Step 7: Iterate and Refine

By creating a customer journey map, businesses can gain invaluable insights into their customers’ experiences and emotions, leading to more informed decision-making and enhanced customer satisfaction.

User Journey Mapping

User journey mapping is a design thinking tool that charts users’ paths while interacting with a product or service. It encapsulates their emotions, experiences, and challenges at each step.

While often confused with user flow, user journey mapping focuses on the emotional experience. Both user flow and user journey capture user interactions; however, user flow strictly maps out the sequence of steps a user takes.

A user journey map is a powerful tool for businesses and designers, offering deep insights into the user’s experience. It can help you accomplish:

• Empathy Development: By visualizing the user’s emotions, challenges, and needs at each touchpoint through a user journey map, teams can better empathize with their audience, understanding their perspective.
• Pain Point Identification: A user journey map highlights areas where users face challenges, frustrations, or bottlenecks, providing a clear roadmap for where improvements are needed.
• Streamline User Experience: User journey maps give a better understanding of the flow and progression of a user’s interaction. This can also help teams create more intuitive user experiences.
• Inform Design Decisions: Similarly, the insights from the map guide designers in creating interfaces, products, or services that align with users’ expectations and needs.
• Cross-Departmental Alignment: A user journey map serves as a unified visual reference that can align various departments (like marketing, design, sales, and customer service) in understanding how to serve the end-user better.
• Measure Effectiveness: Businesses can gauge the effectiveness of their design or process modifications by comparing user journey maps before and after changes.
• Facilitate Stakeholder Communication: It provides a visual, easy-to-understand representation that can communicate user needs and experiences to stakeholders or team members who might not be directly involved in design or user research.

For businesses eager to excel, understanding the CRM customer journey is not just beneficial; it’s essential. Whether you’re just starting or looking for ways to optimize, the customer’s journey is your roadmap to success.

Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, watch a demo-on-demand of all the Insightly apps at your convenience, or request a personalized demo to see how Insightly can help support your customer’s journey.

One particular avenue that has stood the test of time is email marketing. Just when many thought it was fading away, email marketing is a stronger channel than ever. It’s projected that by 2026, there will be a staggering 4.73 billion email users worldwide.

Email marketing will continue to be a part of marketing strategy for a long time because the ROI on it is extremely high. A 2020 study from Litmus indicates that email marketing drives whopping $36 for every $1 spent.

One of the best ways to reach consumers by email is through a drip campaign. An email drip campaign is a direct line to potential customers who are already interested in what you offer. With modern email techniques, you can personalize and automate messages, ensuring you connect at the right moments. This can be a game-changer in keeping your audience engaged, well-informed, and ready to take action. 

So, if you aim for your business to meet customers where they are, convert more first-time sales, and increase customer lifetime value, exploring email drip campaigns is a strategic move worth considering.

What is a drip campaign?

A drip campaign is a form of digital marketing where relevant information is “dripped” to sales leads over a period of time using a marketing automation platform. These messages typically take the form of email, SMS, or push notifications and are based on either a user action or a predefined time interval.

For any given action, a marketer can choose the number of emails, type, and rate at which to send them. These emails can also be personalized with data, such as a prospect’s name or specific references to actions they took or products they’ve shown interest in.

A drip campaign is automation mixed with prewritten messages. Important engagement points are mapped in the marketing automation system, and information is generally sent on a preset schedule in response to a specific action or strategic plan.

Drip actions

Some examples of important actions a consumer might take to trigger a drip campaign include:

• Purchasing a product or placing an order
• Subscribing to a newsletter
• Shopping cart abandonment
• Not placing an order for a period of time
• Engaging with customer service
• Attending a store event
• Registering for a webinar
• Downloading a report or white paper
• Requesting a demo

Anything you can think of where automation easily gets the message across should be suitable for another drip message. There is a ton of opportunity to get creative with your drip campaigns — you don’t need to stick to just the flows you see listed here. Tailor them to your specific product offering, content, and audience.

How are drip campaigns used?

Drip campaigns help you better connect with the right person at the right moment. They are designed for hyper-targeted messaging without manual labor. They accompany every prospect through the sales pipeline and assist them when any snags or challenges occur. The best email drip campaign software will allow you to add in all of these types of flows.

Important dates

Date-based automations help a brand communicate with an audience on days that matter to them. This goes beyond just a birthday. You can also initiate a drip campaign for things like:

• Subscription renewal
• Reordering prompts
• Anniversary of first purchase
• Major holidays

Anything that can further brand value for the consumer can be added to a timely drip campaign.

User behavior

Some of the most effective drip campaigns are those triggered by a user’s behavior. This includes actions they do or do not take. Here are some examples of the best email drip campaigns based on user behavior:

Welcome email

When a new person joins the audience, use a welcome drip to push them toward a first purchase, share important brand and product information, and provide tips for first-time users. Give new subscribers a solid introduction to your brand and products, while keeping them posted on upcoming events, sales, and other relevant activities.

First order

After someone makes an initial purchase, thank them for their business and confirm order details. Reinforce they made a good decision, and provide some content in case they want more information on product care/features. After a period of time, depending on your product cycle, suggest complementary products for future purchases.

You can also encourage platform adoption right after purchase by highlighting product features and getting people excited about the service they’ve just purchased.

Recommendations

This is a great automated email to boost sales. Recommendation messages can be sent with an order confirmation or shipping details. This is an especially good flow to include dynamic content, so you can

Customer service

Emails that follow up after a customer service or sales inquiry are a productive way to keep your audience engaged. This creates an opportunity to further educate and onboard prospects.

Lead nurture

Drip campaigns are particularly well suited for nurturing active interest in prospects. If someone registers for a webinar or downloads a white paper, this is a cue to send a lead nurture drip email that keeps the conversation flowing.

Abandoned shopping cart

Anytime a prospect fills a shopping cart and then moves away from the page, you want to send them a targeted series of reminders based on the items in their cart. You can encourage people to reassess the purchase or send them offers on similar items.

There are two types of drip campaigns you can use for this — one if they made it all the way to checkout, and the other if they’ve just added items to the cart but haven’t made it to the checkout step yet.

Abandoned browse

Whenever a prospect browses a specific product on your site, you can also send them a series of reminders to bring the product back to the top of mind and recommend similar products. You can take a drip campaign like this even further by adding on branches if a customer browses a product category or even a content piece like a blog post.

Email Drip Campaign Examples

When it comes to the method and style of drip campaigns, there are several archetypes to choose from. Here are some email drip campaign examples:

Top-of-mind

This type of message keeps leads engaged throughout the sales process.

Educational

This includes any relevant data for prospects to help them make a more informed purchasing decision.

Re-engagement

These are designed to win back the interest of cold leads.

Training

Messages for new clients (or internally) to move readers through a training program.

Competitive

Target a competitor’s customers with a better offer or the benefits of switching to your product.

Promotional

Entice prospects with time-sensitive promotions and special pricing offers.

Integration Based

Make the most of your integrations for rewards, service, and more by creating your own targeted drip campaigns instead of using the generic ones offered in platform. 

List Cleaning

Remove unengaged prospects from your list for better deliverability and to avoid messaging people who may not want to hear from you.

Setting up a drip campaign

Drip campaigns are an automated workhorse that helps a business maintain the marketing, nurturing, and selling that’s essential to success. Setting up drip marketing is not as difficult as one might think. Follow these simple steps:

1. Choose what will trigger the campaign. Is it a specific date or action?
2. Identify your audience. Information must be targeted. Where in the pipeline are they?
3. Tailor your messages. Drip emails don’t need to be long, but they should always be on-brand. Add personalization to increase conversions.
4. Measure your success and adjust based on performance. Choose metrics to measure based on the email type, audience, and other factors. Clickthrough rates and conversion rates can be great metrics to measure the success of your touchpoints, depending on the goal of the campaign.
5. Add touc hpoints as the metrics determine — if the end of a flow like an abandoned cart still has very high engagement rates compared to the standard for your industry, consider adding additional emails to the drip.
6. Save all copy. These messages can be repurposed down the road.

Why are drip campaigns important?

According to the GE shopper research study in 2021, 81% of shoppers conduct research online before making a purchase of a product or service. A drip campaign can provide targeted content to supplement their research before purchase. 

Drip campaigns are important because they support a variety of business pursuits. Benefits from this style of digital marketing include:

• Nurture leads
• Boost sales
• Provide relevant and timely information
• Targeted and custom messaging
• Increase engagement
• Bolster brand trust
• Automate manual actions

Drip campaigns are also one of the easiest forms of digital marketing to track and analyze. All sorts of metrics and user behavior data can be collected to give a brand deeper insight into exactly what people want to see and read.

Best practices for your drip email marketing

When creating a drip campaign, there are a few things to remember.

Design & Content

Follow effective design and content principles to ensure your drip campaign templates have a clear content hierarchy, a single and visible call to action, and eye-catching imagery. When someone opens an email, you only have a few seconds to catch their attention with visual elements and enticing content. Using imagery with people & products in it tends to perform well. Also, make sure not to have too many calls to action in one email — if you have multiple things you want to communicate to your audience, split these into multiple drip touchpoints.

Adjust Preferences

Make it easy for prospects to express their preferences regarding things like the frequency of messages, the type of content, and how they would like to receive it. Never push messages on anyone. That negates the point.

Comply with Local Regulations

Make sure your drip messaging complies with CAN-SPAM in the United States and GDPR in Europe. Research local regulations in your area if you have prospects outside of the US and Europe. Beyond possibly incurring fines, not complying with these regulations can make your drip campaigns much less effective, as the messages could fail to reach the inbox at all. (Psst…learn all about email deliverability by watching this webinar. 

Targeted campaigns

Always tailor your message to a specific audience in mind. The more targeted your marketing, the more relevant the email will seem to the very person reading it. Consider the average age, gender, occupation, and interests of your audience when crafting content and design. For example, if you know your target audience has an older average age, make sure your text in emails is large and clearly readable to make sure your content lands with your audience.

Use Personalization

If you are collecting information like first name & products purchased, using this information in dynamic email content can increase conversion rates and engagement with the brand.

Test everything

Always monitor and analyze every drip campaign you send. This is how you will test the effectiveness and which aspects of the campaign are working, or what needs to be changed. Review key performance indicators (KPIs), campaign goals, and important metrics like open and bounce rates. Adjust your drip campaigns as needed based on these metrics. Pay special attention to the types of content your audience seems to engage with the most — educational content, promotions, sales, and product launches.

Run A/B tests to find out specifics surrounding what types of messaging, call to actions, offers, and message timing will result in the most engagement and conversions.

Use your tools

Marketing automation tools typically integrate with other platforms that will make your life easier. Consider platforms that facilitate drip marketing, like social media management, CRMs, and analytics. Other features to look for in a marketing automation tool include dashboards and reporting, A/B and multivariate testing, and dynamic list segmentation.

What have we learned?

Drip campaigns are a vital part of digital marketing. The most popular medium is email. This type of personalized messaging provides timely and relevant information to people, just when they need it. Not only does it leverage sales, it stimulates brand trust, and brings your customers closer to you. The best drip campaign software is one that allows you to reach your customers at the right time, with targeted content.

Looking for a marketing automation tool? Choose one that shares a platform with your CRM to get the most value from both applications. Check out Insightly Marketing and Insightly CRM today.

Yet, there is a time when idealism can work for us. In fact, I think creating an ideal customer profile (ICP) for your business is a perfect place to start. An ICP is both an exercise as well as a tool in better understanding your target audience and optimizing your marketing efforts.

What is an ideal customer profile?

An ideal customer profile (ICP) is a comprehensive, documented profile of your company’s perfect customer. While an ICP is relevant in both B2C and B2B marketing scenarios, we’re primarily focused on B2B companies in this article. Ideal customer profiles are crucial for account-based marketing (ABM) and targeting enterprise customers, but a strong ICP also helps you hone any type of marketing campaign and optimize its targeting and messaging.

As a business, it is critical to know what types of customers get the most value out of your products and services. An ICP allows marketers and stakeholders to understand the institutional needs of their target market. With an ICP, marketers can tailor programs to better meet these needs. So, developing an ICP is much easier once you have current customers and you can analyze the data.  

Why use an ideal customer profile?

You could argue that knowing who you sell to is the most important thing to know when you’re building a business, or your marketing plan. In fact it is tied directly to the product and services you offer and whom they benefit.

For example, even a girl with a lemonade stand has a good idea of who she is likely to sell to; people that are thirsty that happen to walk by. She built her business on the premise that she could do this, and then validated it when she began to sell lemonade. As time went by, however, she learned that a true qualifier for her ICP is that most of the time only adults had enough money to buy the product. So, she moved her stand to a more visible place from the road, not just the bike path.

So you can see how knowing who you sell to and why is critical, and also why it makes sense to revisit it over time. That’s a great summary of why you need an ICP.

If you ask any marketer in the world who buys their product, they could probably tell you it’s a set of companies within a certain size range, located in a specific area in the world, who have a need for their product. The problem? Some of these companies might be ideal customers, and some are less-than-ideal. Also, there are other factors to consider such as company situation, growth, resources, current technology stack in place, and more. 

So, when you are budgeting for your go-to-market  efforts, you want to focus on the best match for not only who could use your product, but who is most likely to use it as intended and get long-term value from it. Marketers can use an ICP to understand the full customer journey and find a stronger product-customer fit.

What is an ideal customer?

Sometimes, what may seem like an ideal customer, may not in fact serve your business. For example, say you have one extremely high-revenue customer. They are loyal and they pay you the equivalent of 50 smaller customers. Great, right?

But, say this customer takes up 80 percent of your server bandwidth. They have a half-dozen dedicated account managers. They need round-the-clock customer support. Is this your ideal customer? Would you want to replicate this customer 100 times over? No. Your ideal customer needs to be manageable, and one that would allow your company to scale and thrive.

It can be easy to have dollar signs in your eyes when thinking about your ideal customer. In this case, it’s important not to equate the biggest invoice with the best value.

An ideal customer is one that experiences customer satisfaction. That customer is profitable, scalable, and a long-term fit for your business growth.

How do you create an ICP?

There are six steps to create an ideal customer profile. Use this list as an ideal customer profile template:

1. Collect customer data

Start with what you already know. Consult data collected through your customer relationship management system (CRM), customer data platform and other analytics tools. This will begin to illustrate the quantitative trends in your target market.

You may want to use a spreadsheet or business intelligence (BI) solution to layer your customer data. This will allow you to identify trends and note your ‘best’ customers and the ideal buyers within your customer base.

2. Talk to your customer-facing teams

You likely have employees that talk to your customers every day. They might be in sales or customer success, but either way they’ll have a good idea based on their daily interactions who is most likely to buy and get value from your products or services over the long term. What type of customer is happiest? What type of customers achieve ROI the quickest? What types are likely to add on to their subscriptions and renew their business with your organization? 

You can’t develop an effective ICP in a vacuum. Your product team will have a role, but talking to your customer-facing teams is vital. This important, qualitative data will be helpful, in addition to collecting other data from your CRM about potential buyers.

3. Identify ‘ideals’ in your customer data

When combing through your data, note some of the traits of your best, most valuable customers in your current customer base. Those may be tied to revenue, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, and/or sales cycle length. Get a detailed description.

Once you identify the categories, get specific. Is your highest-revenue customer $10,000/year or $100,000/year? Were they expensive to acquire? Did they have the longest or shortest sales cycle?

Answering these questions about customer engagement decisively will paint a picture not of a customer, but of the ideal customer.

4. Document customer traits & demographics

Identify the things that you can see about your ideal customer (also known as your target customer). These might be their:

• Industry
• Location
• Key decision-makers
• Company size: Possibly measure in number of employees or annual revenues
• Corporate structure (corporations, partnerships, etc.)

Some decide to break into broader areas as they are building their ICP. This might be useful to add clarity and specificity to your ICP documentation. These categories include:

Firmographics: 

Whereas demographics describe a group of people, firmographics describe the characteristics of a group of organizations. These characteristics might include:

• Industry (or SIC code)
• Company size (employees and/or revenues)
• Geographic Location (Country, State, City, etc.)
• Key Roles and decision makers (C-level, IT, Operations, Sales, Marketing, CX, etc.)

Technographics: 

Sometimes it is helpful to know what types of technologies are used in your ICP. For example, do they use a certain accounting tool, or do they utilize a certain analytics tool. Having this data is often more important for tech or software companies to identify common “marker” software that might indicate they also have a need for your product.

For example, say your firm sells eCommerce software and about 50% of your current clients come from businesses that also use a specific ERP software. That indicates this technographic item is an important consideration for your ICP, because the ability to know that a firm has this ERP technology becomes important as you choose your target. 

Psychographics:

If businesses can have a certain psychology, it would be demonstrated in how and why they might buy your product. For a B2C example, you might find that your health tracking software primarily appeals to those that have certain health history, or personal goals and track record around using products and services that indicate the desire for a healthy lifestyle. 

Businesses can have similar drivers based on their experiences that lead them to having affinity in a certain segment. In B2B, for example, if a company has always struggled to grow, they are more likely to be open to new growth products and services that can help them drive revenue.

Corporate Structure / Operating Model & Resources: 

Looking at this can be especially helpful in honing detail into your ICP because it is focused on other key elements of your target companies. For example, are you focused on sole proprietors and start-ups or late stage public corporations? Is your product expensive and might only appeal to companies with significant resources? Are you targeting single product line business, or diversified conglomerates? Similarly, is your target market companies that are in a growth mode, or those that are in a cost cutting mode? 

It is important to articulate all of these types of company characteristics in your ICP documentation as all of them impact an organization’s needs for your products and services as well as their willingness and capability to buy them.

1. Research the ‘unknowns’ about your ideal customer

You know how your customer interacts with your company. Yet, that’s one small piece of who they are.

Here are a few questions you can ask of your best customers when building an ideal customer profile:

• What was the pain point that led you to seek out our product?
• What are your company’s other pain points or immediate needs?
• Who at your company benefits most from using our product?
• What other B2B solutions does your company use?
• What is the outlook for your company and industry over the next few years?

6. Detail how your company helps your ideal customer.

So far, you have created a great ideal target account profile. How do you turn it into an ideal customer profile?

Document how your product serves your ideal customer. Your new understanding of their business should make this exercise clear. How does your product solve their pain points, and how will that continue into the future? Are those pain points resolved instantly, or do they resolve over a certain period of time. Does your product or service fulfill an ongoing need for the customer, and how can your offering extend to meet more needs and address more pain points?  

Document your findings in an ICP document

Once you’ve completed your research, combine your findings into your final customer profile. It should paint a picture of the exact company you’d like to have using your product with great detail. This will guide your digital marketing and sales teams on whom to target. It’s a key part of your overall marketing strategy. It will guide your sales pitch, sales strategy, and business goals.

Also, it is very important to do the work to validate this with your team and sales reps and present it to all key departments that either make the products that you sell, or actually market, sell and deliver them. This is likely most of your company, and is most certainly your go-to-market teams.

Once it is ready, put it into a presentation and cover it with all of those teams. Also, revisit this information at least yearly or if there are important changes and updates to your company or to the markets you serve.

Here’s an example of how you could structure a summary of your ICP document:

Ideal customer profile vs. buyer persona

Modern marketing programs rely on buyer personas, or fictionalized versions of potential customers. If you are selling a manufacturing product, your buyer personas may be ‘Project Manager Pam,’ or ‘Budget Owner Bob.’

Buyer personas are useful when using buyer enablement marketing on a personal level. XYZ Manufacturing is not going to click on your LinkedIn ad or read your blog post, but Project Manager Pam might.

Ideal customer profiles zoom out from buyer personas. They are a holistic look at the entire firm, rather than the pain points of the individual decision maker. Ideal customer profiles and buyer personas are best used in concert with one another.

ICP vs. TAM, SAM, SOM

You might be wondering how ICP differs from other popular acronyms used to help size markets. TAM, SAM, and SOM are often used, primarily in financial discussions of market sizing. However, while they are tangentially similar to ICP, they are not the same.

What is TAM (Total Addressable Market)?

This represents the hypothetical total market that your company could serve. It is often bigger in theory, rather than reality, which is why you need the other descriptors.

What is SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market)?

This is the portion of the TAM that a business can realistically hope to service, based on their location, size, resources, and capabilities. Often this is not time-bound, so also somewhat hypothetical.

What is SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market)?

This represents the portion of the SAM that you can expect to realistically obtain via go-to-market activities in a short period of time.

ICP is different from TAM, SAM and SOM in that ICP focuses on defining the companies that are the best fit for your business and are most likely to derive ongoing value from your product and services.

How can you use an ICP?

The modern B2B marketing and sales process relies on a true understanding of the target market. An ideal customer profile can influence these revenue programs in several ways:

Improving your account-based marketing

An ideal customer profile serves as a template for an account-based marketing (ABM) target account list. Your account-based marketers can use an ICP as a template for finding potential customers. These can form the target account list for an ABM campaign. 

Improve MQLs & SQLs

Use your ideal customer profile to qualify leads into Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Your MQL and SQL criteria should align with your ICP and personas. If a lead is less than 50 percent similar to your ideal customer, you can confidently take them out of your funnel. You can also use a rubric to compare leads against your ICP. By doing this, you focus on moving along leads that have the potential to be your best customers.

Improve your product-market fit

Your ICP may have revealed that your ideal customer has needs that you are not meeting. This profile can identify gaps in your product-market fit. These gaps are opportunities to innovate your product and/or offer additional, companion products. This is the beginning of your upsell/cross-sell motion which makes your company stronger This can lead to better, longer-term customer relationships.

Develop your ideal customer profile today

An ICP is an essential part of your go-to-market motions and will serve as a guide post for your go-to-market teams. The time you invest in developing it may seem daunting, but you’ll gain so much clarity by having it that you won’t regret the investment. 

Already have an ICP? Revisiting an ideal customer profile can refresh your digital marketing and sales focus. By completing this exercise, you can renew your focus on bringing in the best customers for your company’s growth.

Once you have an ICP established, you’ll have your marketing automation platform full of prospects that will quickly become opportunities in your CRM. In the market? Choose a platform that’s modern, affordable and easy to use – Insightly. You can start a free trial, watch a demo-on-demand, or set a time for a personalized demo with the Insightly team.  

Reports from your marketing automation platform help team and company leaders see how the team and the platform are performing. By providing insights into core marketing automation functions and their results, these reports can fine-tune decision-making, increase profitability and optimize spending for  the best outcomes. 

What is a marketing automation report?

Marketing automation reports are documents that provide business insights based on marketing data generated over a given period. These reports let you know how the marketing teams is performing — including areas of excellence and areas that require improvement.

When used optimally, marketing automation systems let you automate processes, such as email delivery, dynamic list creation and list segmentation. The software helps you build pipeline and revenue, optimize the customer journey and create lifelong customers. 

Reports from your marketing automation platform teach you what’s happening with your prospects and how they are moving through your funnel. 

Marketing automation reports in Insightly

Below are details about some report examples from Insightly’s CRM platform. 

Email Reports 

Email marketing is one of the standout digital marketing tactics and its a core function of a marketing automation platform. When done correctly, you gently remind customers of your presence and provide them with a little value for free. But email campaigns can only be successful if you accurately segment customers and track their effectiveness. 

An Email Performance Report lets decision-makers analyze statistics to measure how well emails perform. In a few clicks, you can view the following information about your sent emails:

• Email Name
• Date Sent
• Emails Sent
• Emails Delivered
• Percentage Delivered
• Hard Bounces
• Soft Bounces
• Total Opens
• Unique Clicks
• Total Clicks
• Total Opt Outs
• Open Percentage
• Total Click-Through Rate
• Unique Click-Through Rate
• Click to Open Ratio
• Opt Out Rate

Some platforms, including Insightly, also have the power to detect clicks from bots and filters them from your email report to provide an accurate picture. 

Use Cases

The use cases for email reporting are practically endless, but let’s look at a couple in detail:

1. You can view the number of opens and unique clicks for every sent email from a single employee. This provides you with information, such as the time of year emails are most effective at your company and whose emails get the most clicks.
2. There are ways to drill down even deeper, such as filtering the report to display all emails with an open rate higher than 90% over the past 120 days. This lets team members review subject lines to see what resonates with your target audience, so they can refine future campaigns.   

File Reports

Your marketing department uses your website to teach web users about your product or service, and you can track their effectiveness with Insightly. The File Activity Overview gives you an outline of the files you’ve uploaded for your platform to track, including information, such as:

• File Name
• Total Number of Views
• Total Number of Unique Views

Use Cases

Here are some use cases for file reporting:

1. You can review every file each team member has created and see how many times each file has been viewed. With a marketing team that’s briefed to upload files in their own names on the system, you can see who creates the most compelling content, and train the rest of the team based on what customers respond to.
2. By comparing the number of total views and unique views a file has over a given period, you learn how frequently people return to read your web pages. If something keeps drawing consumers to your site, it’s worth exploring and replicating.   

Form Reports

The forms on your website are gateways to customers’ contact details and other useful data. It’s crucial that your marketing team has the ability to track metrics associated with the submission forms, so you can place them in the right positions and use buttons and calls to action that convert.

Use Cases

Analyzing the performance of your site’s submission forms lets you refine the website to increase conversions. Let’s look at a couple of specific use cases:

1. Google reCAPTCHA filters the humans from the bots to minimize spam and provide you with accurate statistics regarding how visitors interact with your content. You can review a list of all forms with and without reCAPTCHA to get an instant view of how many real vs. fake submissions you’ve received in a set period.
2. You can view all forms with a submission rate over 50 to get an idea of what makes prospects hand over their details. Web forms are a crucial part of a consumer’s online experience — and your sales process — so optimizing them is critical. 

List Reports

Within a marketing automation platform, you can create three types of lists, known as static, dynamic and email test lists. These records of your prospects, which can be added automatically or manually, can help you effectively manage your database. Your marketing team can create separate lists for each customer segment, campaign and touchpoint on the customer journey. 

List reports let you view the following:

• List Name
• Folder
• Prospect Count
• List Type
• Public 
• Date Created

Use Cases

Below are use cases for list reporting:

1. It’s possible to sort lists by owner, so you can see the size, status and state of each salesperson’s lists. This shows the effectiveness of the methods each rep is using to source and nurture leads. 
2. View lists with more than 50 prospects to see which customer segments are showing the most interest in your company and which points in the customer journey generate the most leads.  

Prospect Reports

Being able to turn prospects into customers is every company’s goal. Guiding website visitors to interact with your business requires that you have a deep understanding of your target audience. These prospect reports teach you about how leads go from prospect to customer, so you can refine the journey based on real-world, ultra-relevant data.    

Prospect Report

The prospect report provides a wealth of data about the people in your marketing automation plaform. It shows the following by default:

• Prospect ID
• Prospect Name
• Organization Name
• State/Province
• Country
• Date of Last Activity
• Linked Lead (if applicable)
• Linked Contact (if applicable)

Use Cases

“Know thy audience” is the first rule of marketing, and one of the best things about using a CRM is the data you glean about your target market. The prospect report can tell you who’s visiting your site, where they’re located, who they work for and when they last interacted with you. Let’s look at three use cases in more detail:

1. Organize prospects based on which organization they work for and how recently they interacted with your business. Your team can use this information to set their priorities and focus the best employees on the highest-value accounts. 
2. You can group prospects based on their location to see where your company makes an impact and where you find less success. Increasing marketing spend on people in locations where you’re popular and decreasing it where you’re less popular is a cost-effective way of managing your budget. 
3. It’s important to give potential customers the option to opt out of marketing communications. You can measure how many prospects are marked “Do Not Email” using the prospect report function.   

Prospect Growth Report

With a marketing automation platform, your team can measure how prospects progress through the sales funnel. You can group the report by a range of filters. For example, a growth report can show you how many prospects are in each stage of the journey, how many times they’ve been contacted and how many new prospects you’ve gained over a certain period. 

Use Cases

Prospect growth reports let you view prospects and add filters to gain insights. For example:

1. You can view how many prospects have been added to your marketing automation platform over a set period. This can help with forecasting for the future or measuring the success of the sales process across different periods.
2. Viewing all prospects from one organization helps ensure you’re allocating resources efficiently.   

Lead Conversion Report

When your marketing automation platform and CRM work together, you add potential customers to a predefined list of prospects and convert them to leads once they’re qualified. Once your team qualifies a lead, it moves through to the new opportunity page. From here, your salespeople can work their magic and nurture the qualified lead through the sales process. 

Use Cases

Here are some use cases for the lead conversion report:

1. You can view how many prospects converted over any given period, helping you measure your team’s performance and keep track of your sales processes‘ health.
2. It’s possible to view all new prospects from a specific organization that have converted, which means your sales managers can optimally allocate labor and responsibilities. 

Redirect Link Reports

There are a lot of complicated elements relating to search engine optimization and your website, including redirect link strategies. These let you maintain link authority from discontinued URLs, so customers effortlessly reach the most relevant backup option when a requested page leads to a dead end. You can review and analyze the performance of each redirect link created in your Insightly Marketing account. 

Redirect Link Performance Report 

The redirect link performance report displays the following information:

• Link Name 
• Destination URL
• Total Clicks
• Unique Clicks
• Date Created

Use Cases

Through a redirect link report, users can:

• View a list of every redirect link on a website and all related statistics to analyze whether their current strategy is keeping visitors on the site.
• View a list of how many redirect links have a unique click count higher than 25  

Visitor Reports

Visitor reports are exceptionally useful for your sales process and prospecting, but they also provide unparalleled insights into your website visitors and content. Let’s look at some visitor reports decision-makers can take advantage of:

• Visitor Webpages Viewed Report: Track how many web pages each visitor views, how long they stay on each page and what makes them leave. 
• Visitor Webpage Activity Report: View the activity of every site visitor.
• Paid Social Media Traffic Report: Measure the effectiveness of your paid social media campaigns. 
• Organic Social Media Traffic Report: Compare organic social media traffic to paid traffic.
• Visitor Integration Activities Report: Learn which third-party integrations your site visitors interact with. 
• Tracked Custom Event Report: Discover how website visitors interact with custom events, such as behavioral tracking examples that don’t already exist within Insightly Marketing. 

Marketing automation report actions 

Marketing automation reports are easy to generate and manage, but there are some important actions that help you get the most out of custom reports:

• Edit a report: To edit a custom report, locate the report you want to edit, open it in the Report Editor and either save changes to the current copy or create a new one. 
• Copy a report: Open your chosen report in the Report Editor and select Save As. Choose a destination folder and new name for the file in the Report Properties popup, then click Save.
• Export a report: Extract raw data and create graphs using reporting software by finding the report you want to export and clicking the Actions dropdown menu. You can choose to export to an Excel or .CSV file.  
• Schedule a report: You can schedule reports to run at specific intervals by selecting the one you want to automate and clicking Run Report. Hit the Schedule button, open the Schedule Report screen, assign the schedule and click Save Schedule. 
• Set a smart alert for a report: Smart alerts only trigger automated reports if specified criteria are met. That could be only running an email report if it gets more than 300 opens or running a form report once 40 submissions are made. Use the Report Alert screen to define the schedule and set parameters.
• Create a grouping and add a chart to a report: Charts provide a quick overview of your data to speed up decision-making. Use the Report Editor to create a grouping and design charts. 
• Add a summary field to a report: Summary rows provide snapshot views of your company’s numerical data. Add a summary field to a report that uses numeric fields in the Report Filter and Parameters section, then add a new field label and click Add.  
• Report folder actions: You can create folders via the Reports page or Report Editor, organize them into folders, delete them and choose sharing permissions for each. Keep in mind that you can’t edit or delete default Insightly report folders.  
  • Creating a folder via the reports page
  • Creating a folder via the report editor
  • Editing or deleting a folder

Report Filters and Filter Logic

You can use quick filters and add basic filters to drill down into the details of your report data. For adding more than one filter using “and”/”or” boolean operators, you should also know how filter logic works:

• Quick Filters: Quick filters add an overall filter to your report and apply alongside any other filters you’ve added.
• Basic Filters: Add up to eight basic filters to a report and set parameters for each. When adding more than one filter, you’ll use “and”/”or” operators, depending on how you want to filter the information. 
• Filter Logic: Use a process called nesting for reports with two or more filters that use “and” and “or” operators.   

Why do you need marketing automation reporting?

Reporting is essential for all companies. It helps decision-makers use data to identify areas of improvement and locate areas of excellence, so they can focus on doing more of what works best.

But what makes marketing automation reporting specifically so important for your business? Marketing is often the largest operational expense for a company. Moreover, early-stage, high-growth companies will be spending a significant portion of their budget in marketing. Reporting lets you track and analyze your spend and your ROI, and helps you make sense of trends and patterns in your data. The broad scope of marketing automation reports helps you refine marketing processes, identify more opportunities, fine-tune team priorities and customize future campaigns.  

For those who are new to the game – or anyone that needs a refresher – let’s start with definitions. 

Demand generation definition

First up, what is ‘demand?’

Harken back to your Economics 101 and recall that demand represents a person’s desire and ability to purchase something. But it doesn’t mean that just because someone seems interested in buying he or she has financial means to do so.

What is ‘demand generation?’

Demand generation encompasses all activities that help attract, engage, and convert likely customers. It’s about creating awareness and bringing these people into your marketing funnel based on their consumer need for the product you’re offering. It is not explicitly about selling at this phase, nor is it about gathering trackable leads (also known as lead generation). These efforts are, however, designed to translate to promising leads and eventually sales.

While lead generation is most often a short term strategy, demand generation is in it for the long haul. To decipher between these two, here is a real life scenario:

An example of a lead generation strategy would be a gated eBook where you would require an email address for the download, follow up on that download and attempt to create a meeting. Conversely, with demand generation, that same eBook would be ungated and readily available with the goal of measuring the impressions. 

Depending on your industry, ideal customer profile (ICP), and personas, demand generation may include a combination of:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Content marketing 
• Paid ads (social, search)
• Social media marketing (organic)
• Trade shows and virtual events
• Video/audio marketing (e.g. podcasts)
• Forums/communities (e.g. G2)
• Affiliate and referral programs/influencer marketing
• Review sites
• Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
• Upselling or cross-selling campaigns

If you are a smaller business or have a small team, you may only be able to accomplish 3-5 tactics on this list. As your business grows and your team grows with it, you will likely add more tactics. The tactics to add on should be driven by your average deal size and complexity of the sale. For example, ABM may make sense for a larger deal size, but smaller deals may be driven faster via influencer marketing. 

Again, keep in mind that unlike traditional lead generation programs, which tend to focus on net-new emails or contacts, demand generation is focused on creating an environment to deliver net-new customers. Marketers should pay special attention to this reality. Filling your CRM with 1,000 new email addresses that never convert is a waste of time and money.

So, what’s the best approach for implementing a scalable demand gen program that delivers results? Let’s take a closer look.

How to improve demand gen in 2024 & beyond

If demand generation is a multi-faceted endeavor that involves numerous disciplines, departments, and stakeholders, what can you do to maximize its impact for your company? Here are four steps to take today that will set you up for the future.

1. Work backwards

Whether you realize it or not, you already have programs in place that generate demand. (Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in business!) To measure the impact of your existing demand gen efforts, jump into your CRM and pull a report of closed opportunities over the past year. You may be doing this on a month-to-month basis as you review large deals with the sales team, but stepping back and looking over a longer period is wise for demand gen planning.

Customize the report to include the originating source, such as outbound sales, existing customer upgrades, paid ads, social media, etc. Now analyze the data to understand where revenue is coming from. Visualizing your data as a pie chart can be a simple, yet effective way to understand what’s working—and what’s not. 

What can be frustrating for marketers is that all deals don’t necessarily show up under the correct channel. for example, we may have engaged a lead on LinkedIn, on our podcast and retargeted them with an ad. Then, when they are ready to engage, they look us up on Google and boom – organic search is credited with the win. Even if the sales reps are asking “how did you hear about us?” people’s recollection may be fuzzy at best. 

Takeaway – sometimes demand gen shows up in the wrong channel.

2. Develop a plan for collecting better data

As you analyze historical data, you’ll likely identify gaps that make it difficult to answer all of your demand gen questions. After all, customer data is not limited to basic contact information, such as job title, revenue size, and related opportunities. To truly understand demand gen’s impact on the customer journey, you may need to go deeper and begin collecting the following data.

Interaction data

Trade shows are great for generating lots of business cards but not for closing deals. One lead from a trade show may require dozens of sales and marketing interactions before he or she has the desire and ability to buy. Collecting web and email interaction data in your CRM provides in-depth insight for understanding which demand gen channels, campaigns, messages, and content influence a customer’s buying decision.

Behavioral data

Behavioral data is particularly useful for understanding the impact of your cross-sell and up-sell demand gen activities. For example, if you’re a software company, you might collect clickstream data from your app to measure interest in gated features. Simple adjustments to your product interface could have a major impact on awareness for and, as a result, demand for premium plans.

Attitudinal data

Customers can be an excellent source of new ideas, and demand generation is no exception. Why not ask your customers for demand-generating ideas? Survey your customers and ask them to share feedback on:

• Which industry websites, journals, and publications do you read?
• What type of content would you like to receive from us?
• What would make you more likely to tell a friend about our company’s solution?
• If you were the marketing manager for our company, where would you advertise?
• What trade shows or virtual events do you regularly attend?

3. Align your sales & marketing teams

Sales and marketing teams are by far the largest generators of demand for companies. 

Incurring they are in alignment with one another is vital and can lead to big gains. When teams are on disparate systems, or even on the same system without visibility to each other’s data, negative outcomes can arise. Inconsistent terminology, misaligned objectives, and lack of visibility into the customer journey are just a few of the reasons why organizations consistently struggle to align these two groups.

If you’ve struggled to align your sales and marketing teams in the past, fear not. A well-structured demand generation initiative can be the perfect opportunity to foster cross-departmental alignment and simultaneously drive enhanced top-line performance. Alignment usually starts at the top, so your first step should involve gaining buy-in from sales and marketing leaders on a shared set of objectives, methods, and metrics.

Marketing should have a goal associated with pipeline – not leads. This creates more shared responsibility among teams and more accountability for lead quality on the part of the marketing team.

One tactic gaining popularity is Account Based Marketing, or ABM. Note that this tends to be most effective when sales and marketing teams use the same technology and when average contract value (ACV) is high enough to justify the time (subjective, but $10K+ is probably a good gauge.) 

With ABM, marketing and sales collaborate on specific organizations that would be a good fit for their product or service, and then target those organizations via multiple contacts on multiple channels. The idea is to create demand within the organization.

Whether using ABM or not, leadership must reinforce sales-marketing alignment as a priority. Once aligned on the big picture, leadership must continuously work together to operationalize the vision. 

4. Unify your demand gen systems into one platform

As you’ve probably noticed, there’s a blurred line between sales, marketing, and other demand generating functions. Allowing sales to work in one siloed system and marketing to work in another is not a viable solution in today’s competitive landscape. In short, you need the right technology to help you collect the right data, align your people, and understand what’s working.

Revenue generating teams want fewer, better systems. Ideally, they want one system that empowers them to visualize the buyer journey, create segmented lists of likely customers, and automatically engage buyers in a personalized way.

Unifying your demand generating efforts into one platform is a smart first step toward enabling this reality. Your revenue teams will spend less time on time-consuming data integrations and imports. They won’t need multiple logins to see what other teams are doing. They will have more time to spend on what matters most: developing highly targeted campaigns, programs, and initiatives that increase demand for your products or services. 

They’ll also have access to better data—and more of it—presented in a visually appealing way that simplifies decision-making and team alignment.

Maximize the impact of your future demand gen efforts

Customer behavior continues to change at a rapid pace. To compete, companies must view demand generation as a strategic initiative that requires buy-in from leadership, a commitment to cross-departmental alignment, and technology that supports data-driven demand generation.

Ready to see how a unified CRM for sales and marketing can help you take demand generation to the next level? Request a free demo with an Insightly representative. No commitment required.