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An open letter to all Australian & New Zealand marketers:

After many years selling both Marketing Automation databases and CRM databases, services and solutions in the Australian / New Zealand marketplace, I have decided to clearly explain the difference between a Marketing Automation database and a Customer Relationship Managment or CRM database.

It seems that there is still some confusion in the local market as to how these two databases differ, how they work together and the value of integrating these two databases together.

The objective of this post is to simplify the jargon, clearly explain the key differences and empower you as a marketer to make smart data-driven decisions.

What is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Database:

Simply, this is a database designed to allow an organisation to do three core things:

1.) Sales teams to input, manage and track their leads that are generated by their marketing team
2.) Customer service teams to input, manage and track customer service and support quieries
3.) Marketing teams to segment customer/sales data e.g. which customers bought an iPhone in the last 6 months.

Examples of CRM databases which are stored (on-premise) i.e. database physically stored inside an organisation on their own servers are:  Siebel, Oracle, Microsoft etc.

Example of a CRM database which is stored (off-premise) i.e. database physically stored outside an organisation on the vendors servers is: Salesforce http://www.salesforce.com

In today’s enviorment, most organisations across Australia & New Zealand and globally have or are in the process of moving to (off-premise) CRM databases like Salesforce.com for the costs savings and ease of use.

To access the database all a user needs is a username, password and a web-browser, as the data from the database is delivered within a users web-browser.

These types of CRM databases are referred to as any of the following: Software as a Service, SaaS, On-Demand, Cloud-based and Cloud Computing.

Ok, so as a marketer if you have a CRM database in your organisation, FANTASTIC!

It’s a start, but it only allows you to segment customer/sales data.

Today’s marketers are using multi-channels for both inbound and outbound marketing.

These channels include:

- Email (Inbound, Outbound)
- SMS (Inbound, Outbound)
- Paid Search (Inbound e.g. Google Adwords)
- Paid Display (Inbound e.g. Banner Ads)
- Landing Pages (Inbound e.g. Email, Google Adwords, Banner Ads)
- Telemarketing (Inbound, Outbound)
- Social Media (Inbound, Outbound e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Widgits)

So does your CRM database allow you to set-up, build, manage, track and optimise all of the data that is generated from the above channels?

The answer is NO! Regardless of which CRM database you are using, it does not allow you to do this, nor were they designed to.

Now, the problem that you as a marketer face is simple. When you look to execute any inbound or outbound campaigns, your data is siloed, often stored in multiple databases in multiple locations, often managed by multiple rostered agencies and/or vendors – leaving you as a marketer with little to no visibility of four of the most important things within marketing:

1.) A 360 degree view of how marketing have touched the customer or prospect i.e. which campaigns were they sent
2.) The behaviour of the customer or prospect i.e. how did they or didn’t they respond to those campaigns (conversions)
3.) What variables performed better within those campaigns i.e. creative, call to action etc
4.) Where the customer or prospect is within the customer lifecycle or buying lifecycle

Q. So how does a marketer solve this problem?

A. A Marketing Automation Database

The objective of  implementing a marketing automation database is to get all the information marketing needs to acquire leads in one place. Marketers implement a marketing automation database to see all of marketing’s interactions with each prospect and customer. They also use it to keep data clean by automating the de-duplication of  records within the database.

A marketing automation database is a SEPERATE database, designed to allow an organisation to do 7 core things:

1.) Lead Generation
- Objective: Make sales happy with more qualified leads.
- How: Convert website traffic into leads, automate lead development, identify when prospects are ’sales ready’, automate sales tasks and track follow up.

2.) Lead Nurturing
- Objective: Drive revenue by nurturing raw inquiries into ’sales ready’ leads.
- How: Nurture relationships with qualified prospects, educate leads before passing them to sales, trigger relevant responses to prospect behaviours and automate repetitive marketing tasks.

3.) Lead Scoring
- Objective: Improve sales effectiveness by passing only qualified leads to sales.
- How: Automate lead qualification processes, measure prospect interest and engagement, score leads using demographic data and behavioural data and focus sales resources on the best opportunities.

4.) Website Tracking
- Objective: Know exactly who is visiting your website and where they go.
- How: Track all prospect interactions online, identify which companies are visiting your website, monitor known and anonymous visitors and automatically alert sales reps of new prospect activity on the website

5.) Email Marketing
- Objective: Don’t just email prospects, engage them in a dialogue.
- How: Deepen realationships with triggered, multi-step campaigns, get to the inbox using the latest deliverability technology, raise and open click rates by targeting segments and track and score who opens and clicks on each email.

6.) Landing Page Optimisation
- Objective: Create, publish and test targeted landing pages.
- How: Launch new landing pages in minutes, use your own branding and subdomain, maximise conversion rates through A/B testing and capture leads with smart forms that recognise know customers and prospects.

7.) Marketing Asset Management
- Objective: Store, distribute and track content and other marketing assets.
- How: Upload and manage documents and image files, publish customised URLs for each asset, track which piece gets viewed by prospects and notify sales reps whenever key marketing assets are viewed by a customer or prospect.

Now, to get the true value out of all of the above – organisations should integrate their CRM database (which holds sales data) with their Marketing Automation database (which holds marketing data).

Why? Three simple reasons.

1.) Instead of manually exporting ’sales ready’ leads from a marketing automation database in excel and then having your sales team manually upload the list into their CRM database, this integration automates the transfer of the marketing data from the marketing automation database into the CRM database.

2.) Sales teams are now empowered as they now have all the marketing history of how a prospect or customer has been communicated to by marketing, how they have or havn’t responded and most importantly the prospect or customers behaviour. So what that means is that the sales or telemarketing team have all of this rich actionable insight about what they prospect or customer is interested in before they make an outbound call.

3.) Closed Loop Return on Investment (ROI) reporting – by integrating your marketing automation database (marketing data) with your CRM database (sales data), you can now attribute which campaign(s) drove not only conversions but repeat purchases.

An example of a Marketing Automation database which is stored (off-premise) i.e. database physically stored outside an organisation on the vendors own servers is:  Marketo http://pages2.marketo.com/demoFull.html

In today’s enviorment, most organisations across Australia & New Zealand and globally have or are in the process of moving from basic email engines like Traction, Exact Target, Strategy Mix, eServices, Epsilon, Returnity, Chimp Mail, Dream Mail, Vertical Response, Vision 6, Campaign Monitor, Campaign Master, Constant Contact etc. to (off-premise) Marketing Automation databases like Marketo for the costs savings, ease of use, rich functionality and a far superior time to value.

To access the database all a user needs is a username, password and a web-browser, as the data from the database is delivered within a users web-browser.

These types of Marketing Automation databases are referred to as any of the following: Software as a Service, SaaS, On-Demand, Cloud-based and Cloud Computing.

Hope this post helps to explain to all marketers across Australia & New Zealand the difference between a Marketing Automation database and a CRM database, and the power of integrating the two for full closed loop ROI analysis.

PLUG: At Datarati, we help marketing and sales teams and their digital agencies with Marketing Automation database and CRM database Strategies and Best Practices. We assist and support them in their demand generation activties, lead and contact management, campaign optimisation and actionable data analysis in the pursuit of revenue and customer loyalty.

Through this, we shorten revenue cycles, demonstrate marketing ROI and ignite revenue growth across our customer’s organisations.

www.datarati.com.au