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Mar­ket­ing automa­tion is a pow­er­ful weapon in the mod­ern marketer’s armoury. It offers the abil­ity to tai­lor your approach far more accu­rately than ever before. It can deliver mod­els for suc­cess that can be repli­cated and applied to new and exist­ing cus­tomers. And it can make you more respon­sive to cus­tomer needs.

But how can you get more from your mar­ket­ing automa­tion efforts?

Here are five areas to take a look at:

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Per­sonas – the fic­tional char­ac­ters cre­ated to help bring tar­get cus­tomers to life – are now pretty much ubiq­ui­tous in mar­ket­ing depart­ments and their agen­cies. They are used to more accu­rately depict var­i­ous cus­tomer seg­ments, giv­ing a firmer foun­da­tion on which to address customers.

You can see why. Where at one time our tar­get might be described as:

• IT direc­tor in an enterprise-sized business
• Located in EMEA with mul­ti­ple offices
• Cur­rently using tra­di­tional tele­phony across all sites
• Their cur­rent con­tract is due to expire in the next 12 months
• Etc

Now we have:

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I came across this quote from George Lois and it got me think­ing…”Cre­ativ­ity can solve almost any prob­lem. The cre­ative act, the defeat of habit by orig­i­nal­ity, over­comes every­thing.”

I’ve got a nag­ging feel­ing that mar­ket­ing automa­tion is giv­ing today’s mar­keters a num­ber of bad habits. Don’t get me wrong, I’m truly bought into the tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits of auto­mated plat­forms — com­mu­ni­cat­ing at the right time based on expressed and behav­ioural data, iden­ti­fy­ing qual­ity leads and rout­ing them appro­pri­ately to sales. And once the mar­keters have got to grips with the plat­form, they deliver greater effi­cien­cies, speed­ier exe­cu­tion, more con­trol and in-depth mea­sure­ment.

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We’re really excited about an upcom­ing event we’re co-hosting with a bunch of like-minded part­ners. On Novem­ber 4th we’re launch­ing the Euro­pean Demand Gen­er­a­tion Sum­mit in part­ner­ship with Google, Elo­qua, BrightTALK and Mar­ke­tOne. It’s going to be held in Lon­don at Alti­tude, which is on the very top floor of Mill­bank tower with views across Lon­don. Speak­ers include Amanda Job­bins, Omniture’s Neil Mor­gan, Jeremy Bevan from Nov­ell and Justin Gale, a senior online mar­keter from HP.

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