Marketing automation platforms unite customer data, loyalty programs, omnichannel communication, and more to manage and create the entire customer experience. All-in-one platforms or ecosystems should reduce marketing routines and MarTech costs. However, choosing the best platform could be tricky. Our team frequently read RFP briefs, and we have noticed that the content of these documents often falls short of expectations.
In this article, we will share exclusive recommendations on how to choose a marketing automation platform. Usually, we reserve that for our clients, but today we’d like to share it with all of Medium. The article will be useful to top management, marketing, and IT professionals of medium and large retail companies who are looking for an optimal set of marketing automation technologies to enhance their business. Let’s begin!
It’s difficult to surprise those who have gone through the marketing automation process — they have already seen everything.
That being said, at least half of the time we encounter one of the three “distortions”:
- The document is written by the IT department, which usually focuses on various technical details such as minute integration and configuration nuances while paying much less attention to business scenarios.
- When a marketing department is in charge of the document, they usually focus on modern features such as predictive segmentation, AI using data from social networks, and some other uber-futuristic (not necessarily connected to real-life) scenarios like predicting demand and pricing changes for tomatoes based on the weather forecast. Real-life operational scenarios, convenience, ROI, and important details like the quality of data integration are often overlooked.
- The third option is the worst one: RFP is prepared by the procurement department after just a few consultations with business users. Such documents are reduced to choosing the cheapest solution by a superficial evaluation of completely different products. For example, we saw with our own eyes the agony of choosing between SAP Emarsys and SendGrid — just because both have email marketing functionality.
As a result, saving, let’s say, $800 a month leads to the fact that the company’s marketing is essentially automated by internal IT, and an email marketer creates each message manually. In monetary terms, this false economy can cost the company thousands of dollars in direct expenses each month and lead to a shortfall in revenue due to the low effectiveness of targeted marketing.
Unfortunately, all stakeholders involved suffer the consequences of such a poor choice.
To address this issue, we have created a comprehensive document on how to prepare a brief that considers all the necessary details in terms of functionality and commercial conditions. This document is vendor-neutral and has been developed in collaboration with teams from multiple CRM agencies to ensure its practicality and effectiveness.
How to use the document:
- Make a personal copy of the file.
- Review the document. In the left column, there is a brief description of the functionality. On the right — comments or a transcript explaining the importance of the function and what needs to be evaluated separately.
- Go through the document from top to bottom. Keep the parts that’ll be of use to you and your company. Delete the rest.
- If there are other relevant details for your business, add them. Save this version — it’s for you.
- Delete the entire right column (if necessary). After minimal editorial edits, you will have a brief ready to be sent!
Send it to the list of vendors you are planning to choose from and ask them to describe their functionality in a free-form manner according to the resulting table. Do not forget that everything stated by the vendor must be backed up by something: links to screenshots of the interface, a mention on a platform demonstration or, ideally, during a reference call with a client who uses this feature.
Please let us know if it was helpful to your team.
