As one of our onboarding specialists, James sees a lot of marketers getting started in the world of automation. Whether they’ve upgraded from just an email marketing platform or are trying to align all their marketing in one place, James is there to help them. So we thought we would sit down with him to get a better perspective of what B2B marketers should know when they start using a marketing automation suite. Hopefully, some of what he says will resonate with you!
Hey James, tell us what key challenges most marketers face when they start using a marketing automation suite.
I’d say the key challenge is learning all the integrations of the product. With Gator Suite especially, you now have email marketing, IP tracking, social media automation and event management all built into one. Sometimes marketers are so overwhelmed with choice, they don’t use the whole platform to its full potential.
I’d say the second key challenge is turning automation ideas into reality. Some marketers have a great strategy, but no idea how to put it in place. That’s why we created the onboarding specialist role at CommuniGator. To give B2B marketers the support to start putting their ideas into action.
What do you find the most useful part of the CommuniGator suite when onboarding a client?
It has to be the fact that everything is in one place. When we sit down together and plan which campaigns they want to do, we can generate and monitor all of them from within CommuniGator. It’s a good way to see which campaigns, and which channels, are performing best for them.
So what would you say is the most overlooked tool?
GatorLeads, definitely. A lot of marketers don’t see the full value in it, they think it’s just a lead generation tool for their sales team. But the reporting and insights functionality tells you a lot about your website traffic, which is where most (if not all) campaigns are influencing.
I think the Workflow tool is often overlooked too. Some marketers tend to look at workflow as this big massive beast of a tool and overcomplicate their procedures. Really, GatorWorkflow is there to make marketing campaigns simpler and easier to manage.
Ok James, as our onboarding specialist how long did it take for you to get used to the platform?
Truthfully? It was a year before I truly understood how to implement strategy and methodology with the tools at my disposal. And I’m still learning now. Marketing technology is such a fast paced industry, everything develops at a million miles a minute. But the more you use the platform, the more you get used to pre-empting ideas and putting them into practice until your automation suite is a well-oiled machine.
What advice do you give to those marketers who are just starting out with marketing automation?
Take your time to learn the platform. It’s no good having a training session and then going about your day – you’ll forget all the little things the software can do. Have a play with the different products, experiment. The more you use the platform, the more effective your marketing will be.
Thanks for your time James. If you’re interested in learning more about how to take full advantage of all the marketing automation tools at your disposal, read Equinix’s case study. They give you an all-inclusive look at how they use all the Gator tools to make sure their marketing is as effective as possible.