Any marketer’s ultimate goal is for their individual customer is to have unparalleled experiences. Those occur when marketing strategy, business operations, and marketing automation technologies converge into meaningful and well-orchestrated points of interaction. Marketing automation is about improving and streamlining the holistic customer journey and experience — beginning with an individual’s initial brand awareness and continuing on as they transform into a brand advocate.
Facilitate ideal interactions for customers
Marketing departments, regardless of vertical, have historically focused on providing relevant and personalized communications to their prospective and existing customers. As Salesforce products continue to expand and evolve, our clients have more opportunities than ever before to engage in bi-directional conversations with their target audience.
Understanding and providing a well-orchestrated point of interaction for an individual customer is often the first challenge when developing a marketing automation journey. Solutions vary across verticals, and in such industries as Financial Services or Healthcare and Life Sciences, a personal and professional touch goes a long way. Gone are the days where marketing solutions can be considered an add-on point solution. A well-developed and fully integrated marketing journey leverages customer insights and engagement data across the organization, including sales, service, and marketing.
Our own marketing automation consultants have the distinct privilege of partnering with some of the most respected and innovative Financial Services and Health and Life Sciences organizations. As a result, we are able to leverage our industry experience and deep Salesforce subject matter expertise to solve for many of the business challenges that are unique and specific to these verticals.
A typical Silverline implementation engagement includes a comprehensive approach to evaluate a client’s current situation and desired outcomes. First, we work with teams to identify and prioritize marketing goals and objectives. Asking what marketing initiatives will drive the most value for your business and your customers is critical. Perhaps the answer is to generate new leads, engage existing customers with service-oriented communications, or introduce new products or services that may be of interest. Once goals are aligned, we can develop a roadmap of specific marketing automation journey concepts that best support identified priorities.
Develop a tailored journey map
To develop journeys, we commonly facilitate a journey mapping workshop. The workshop generally includes cross-functional team members from an organization in order to collaborate on the current and desired experience across the customer lifecycle. We then take the inputs from the workshop and incorporate insights from our experiences with the technologies and industry to develop a detailed journey map for review, approval, and implementation.
We find that this methodical approach to journey development not only results in more effective journey outcomes, but also enables our clients to develop new journeys and maintain existing journeys in the future.
Marketing automation journeys are highly dependent on integrated systems, data, and business operations. Our implementation approach includes discovery around each of these components. At this point, our team works with key stakeholders to architect a solution that integrates all the dependent technology solutions within an organization’s environment. Our objective is to design a solution that complies with industry standards and best practices, scales as a client’s business grows, and supports the requirements of sales, service, marketing, and IT departments.
Choose the right marketing automation solution for you
Silverline’s marketing automation expertise includes Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Pardot, and other related marketing automation solutions. It can be difficult to know which solution is right for your company, but when armed with an ideal and a journey mapped out to achieve it, the choice becomes less overwhelming.
Marketing automation technologies and trends move very quickly. Our consultants stay ahead of the curve by actively providing thought leadership and collaborating with industry and technology peers in various Salesforce communities and events. Most recently, we were selected by Salesforce Marketing Cloud to help contribute to the development of the Marketing Cloud certification maintenance exam for Trailhead.
Our team’s vast experience with marketing automation informs all of our engagements. With certifications including Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Pardot, and the recently launched Marketing Cloud Developers, we have the credentials to back up our claims. Learn more about how Silverline can help you implement or enhance your marketing automation program.