Marketing automation is the process of using software to automate customer contact. It can save organizations a ton of time while keeping your brand top of mind even when there are a dozen other competing companies clamoring for the client’s attention.
Automating your company’s marketing efforts is a necessary process for organizational growth. It helps sales reps focus on what is important – selling, not sending a client a follow-up email. It can free up a recruiter’s time, too. Generally, automating a company’s marketing efforts can streamline workflows and extend your reach.
Skills All Marketing Automation Managers Need
The role of a Marketing Automation Manager is to manage software that streamlines processes, automates manual workflows, and sets up measurement tools that generate actionable insight. Ultimately, the Marketing Automation Manager’s goal is to use automation to improve operational efficiencies and grow the bottom line. They combine strategy, creativity, and technical skills to build a brand and increase leads.
Skills Breakdown
Strategy
The Marketing Automation Manager must be able to envision how automating a workflow could help a business. They must have the clear insight to be able to see a goal, and then use technology to help achieve it faster and more efficiently than ever before. They must develop and implement global strategies to increase leads, improve campaigns, and build databases. These strategies must be innovative enough to set your company apart from everyone else in your market sector.
Creativity
Marketing Automation Managers figure out what tools to use to reach potential leads. They often collaborate closely with designers and copywriters to help determine how automation could help a campaign. Key to this process is the creativity necessary to carve out an eye-catching message to a target audience. Sending very specific and personalized messages via sophisticated automated campaigns is an important part of the role of a Marketing Automation Manager. To do this, this expert must have a “think outside the box” creative attitude with careful attention to testing and analytics.
Technical Skills
In mid-market and enterprise-level organizations, a Marketing Automation Manager may supervise the design and IT team necessary for the automation to occur. That could consist of web, UX, and graphic designers, email specialists, analysts, CRM-certified technology experts, or others that make automation happen. Understanding their processes, both front-end and back-end, will be a necessity for a Marketing Automation Manager to keep things moving forward. If the organization has a marketing automation software tool, the Marketing Automation Manager will be responsible for it. Finally, the role requires this manager to review and analyze data to spot trends and develop lead scoring mechanisms that help guide campaign effectiveness.
Marketing automation helps companies nurture relationships over the long term by staying in front of customers so that when they’re ready to buy, they think of you first. The Marketing Automation Manager develops the strategy, then reverse-engineers the processes that help organizations reach their goals. They drive both inbound and outbound marketing efforts by leveraging technology to help marketing and sales teams work a lot smarter and a lot faster.
Additional Role Responsibilities and Skills Needed
The role also helps organizations develop a more sophisticated view of what potential clients are actually doing, what they’re thinking, how they’re behaving, and, generally, what content interests them – or doesn’t.
Some of the additional characteristics of a good Marketing Automation Manager include:
- Business acumen in order to develop market strategies.
- An understanding of consumer psychology and behavior.
- Strong collaboration skills to work with interdepartmental disciplines.
- Project management skills that develop and follow a roadmap to better client engagement.
- A digital expert in web, email, social media, smartphones – and more.
- Outstanding written and verbal communication skills.
- Savvy technologists, but also organized enough to not need technology to move projects forward.
- Flexibility to adapt to fickle consumer behavior.
- Analytical and driven by data metrics.
The Marketing Automation Manager must have equal skills in technology and people. The role has high visibility; it potentially touches multiple departments, so this executive must be a team player as well as being keenly aware of the latest software tools to drive marketing.
Suggested Software Proficiency
There are dozens of marketing automation platforms on the market today. Some of the best ones combine customer engagement, email, budgeting, marketing calendars, and project management. The Marketing Automation Manager must know their way around tools like Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua, HubSpot, or others. They should also understand customer relationship management like Salesforce, Infusionsoft, or Zoho.
Having a strong understanding of analytics by using engagement-tracking tools like Google Analytics, or A/B-testing software like Optimizely, is also important. Social media engagement tools like Buzzsumo or Hootsuite also help track how content is doing on the web. While the Marketing Automation Manager doesn’t need to know all of these tools, picking out a few favorites, and having the flexibility to keep learning more, will be important.
Find Your Next Marketing Automation Manager
Artisan Talent specializes in helping you find the perfect match. Contact us to discuss how Artisan’s creative employment agency can help you find the perfect expert to automate your customer engagement (click here to find talent).
If you’re a Marketing Automation Manager, have we got a job for you! View our creative employment agency’s list of available opportunities or submit your resume (click here to find jobs).
