A look at whether marketing automation systems should be integrated into many facets of an organization, and what that would look like.
Marketing automation platforms (MAPs) are enjoying a period of rapid adoption and are evolving into enterprise-class systems capable of driving a myriad of mission-critical business processes. From a trends perspective, sales and marketing alignment is all the rage, with companies beginning to implement cross-departmental workflows that marry the technology of CRM and marketing automation with business process management. This is highly evident in the growing use of lead management processes that originate in MAPs and continue through CRM. These processes include lead scoring, nurture marketing, and lead-to-revenue management analytics. As companies mature in their use of MAPs and continue to explore and succeed at sales and marketing alignment, the question is: Should it stop there? How deep can marketing automation penetrate an organization? Should it continue straight through to the service and support departments? I firmly believe it will.
When you look at some of the key process automation opportunities between sales, marketing, and client services, you realize the basic rules that apply to nurture marketing also apply to client service, support, and client expansion initiatives.
Consider one of the most common workflows that MAPs and CRM share: lead nurturing.
