The Short but Complete Guide to Enterprise Marketing Automation

Oftentimes, business and marketing professionals use the terms “marketing automation” and “enterprise marketing automation” interchangeably. 

Both concepts share a lot in common, but are not exactly the same - and the differences are particularly important for those who operate in the enterprise sector.

In this article, we’ll provide you with all the necessary information about enterprise marketing automation, so you can have a clear understanding of the concept, and learn how to approach it from an enterprise marketing perspective.

1. What is enterprise marketing automation?

Enterprise marketing automation refers to the strategies, products, and services employed to fully or partially automate marketing activities, processes, and tasks at the enterprise level.

Generally speaking, it pursues the reduction and replacement of manual inputs in marketing processes while increasing their efficiency. 

At this point, you could say that “marketing automation” and “enterprise marketing automation” are the same, and you’d be mostly right.

What separates both concepts is the context, as enterprises often deal with different requirements at the strategy, process, and product levels. 

2. What’s the difference between marketing automation and enterprise marketing automation?

The main difference between these concepts is marked by the context in which they take place, as enterprises tend to operate with distinct processes, strategies, and product requirements.

Let’s use a simple reference to illustrate the divergence: Email marketing.

Both small businesses and enterprises rely on email marketing campaigns to reach a series of goals ranging from brand awareness to conversions. 

Also, every company (big or small) can automate multiple email marketing processes such as lead qualification, email sequences and retargeting, among others. 

However, email marketing processes and strategies aren’t the same for small businesses than for enterprises, and product requirements vary as well. 

Enterprises usually work with bigger and more diverse audiences, have a larger number of lead generation sources, and deploy longer lead nurturing funnels. 

Processes tend to be more granular, demanding cross-team collaboration, and requiring compliance with requirements that are not always seen in smaller companies.

And just like email marketing is different at the enterprise level, so is the automation of its related processes.

These differences extend to other marketing areas on top of email, such as lead generation, lead qualification, ad campaigns, analytics, social media management, referral management, event management, and more.

As a result, the benchmark for enterprise marketing automation tools becomes more evident in the case of bigger companies - which is the subject of the section below.

3. What do enterprises look for in enterprise marketing automation software?

Enterprises tend to look for platforms capable of addressing a series of specific pain points when searching for the right marketing automation solution, including:

• Alignment of customer data across systems landscape: The company must be able to integrate all customer and third-party data across multiple systems.

• Sales cycle automation: Accelerate customer research, lead assignment, quote creation, creation of legal paperwork.

• Customer engagement: Capture and integrate data from multiple sources to attain greater campaign accuracy and more tailored sales interactions.

• Employee productivity: Enable team members to do more in less time by automating the repetitive - so the focus can be placed on tasks that are more reliant on human intervention, such as creative efforts, or growing customer relationships.

• Pipeline performance: Automate lead qualification and trigger nurturing actions to consistently increase conversions.

• Sales and marketing reporting: Aggregate data from multiple sources into a single view for faster, better insights and decision-making.

Depending on the company profile, there can be more ground to cover with a marketing automation tool on top of the above: Tools that allow for competition monitoring, social media publishing, pitch preparation, customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveying stand in good stead when being evaluated by enterprise customers.

Ultimately, an enterprise marketing automation tool has to play a key role in creating a single source of truth for marketing data, improving employee productivity, and optimizing the available resources, all while enhancing the performance of the entire marketing department.

4. What are examples of enterprise marketing automation platforms?

Over the past couple of decades, many tools have emerged to satisfy the needs of enterprises in relation to their marketing automation efforts. 

Examples include Workato, Boomi, DreamFactory, MuleSoft, and Make. 

While the first four examples are exclusively focused on the enterprise sector, Make is the only one that provides more range and flexibility. 

It is suitable for all kinds of users (technical and non-technical), and capable of providing value to individuals, teams, and enterprises by adjusting to the specific needs of each. 

5. What’s the relationship between enterprise marketing automation and CRM? 

Customer relationship management systems (CRMs) play a central role in many enterprise organizations. Many key processes involve the company’s CRM in a way or another, and automation often pops up as a natural iteration of such processes. 

While some companies rely on native automation features offered by CRMs, these are often limited in nature, and don’t allow for complex integrations that require multiple steps and various apps.

At this point, platforms like Make materialize as the single most important solution to automate marketing processes involving CRMs, as they provide all the capabilities that are in demand at a fraction of the cost it would take to implement through in-house development.

The options Make offers to CRM users are incredibly rich, allowing them to create and deploy their own automated solutions in a matter of hours instead of weeks or months.

Conclusion: Two overlooked aspects to consider when onboarding an enterprise marketing automation platform

Aside from technical prowess, there are two extremely important aspects that enterprises need to consider when choosing a marketing automation solution.

The first one is ease of use. Remember, the best tools are the ones that don’t put extra responsibilities on the shoulders of IT departments. In addition, choosing a technology that demands weeks of training risks good adoption rates across the company.

Second - and most importantly - is advocacy and culture change driven by leadership.

When there isn’t an automation strategy and roadmap driven forward by leadership and management, it doesn’t really matter how good (or bad) the tool is, as the lack of commitment will tamper with any potential it brings along.

In case you want to learn more about how to implement automation at your company, our sales team will be ready to guide you further. 

As long as you’re serious about changing your organization for the better, and addressing every single issue to its very core, you’ll soon find out the vastness of what Make can do for you! Get started free.