Every day, the privacy needs of the average consumer are becoming more and more apparent. And, every day, the world’s largest companies are showing more concern for responding to these needs. At the same time, data remains one of the most crucial aspects of a successful marketing and sales program for any business. The good news is it’s still possible to responsibly gather first-party data as your leads and customers interact with your digital marketing content. The resulting data is critically important for sales success. Used properly, this marketing automation data enhances the sales conversation every time, because it provides the opportunity for personalized and targeted selling.

Using marketing automation data in conjunction with a clean and efficient CRM will help your company better meet the needs of your prospects and customers, and streamline the sales process. Let’s get into detail about marketing automation and CRM integration as a key part of your marketing and sales growth.

What is Marketing Automation Data?

Marketing automation, as you know, is a set of marketing actions that are interconnected, automated, and tracked. Common components of automated marketing programs include:

  • Landing pages
  • Forms (connected to both automation platform and CRM)
  • Emails & SMS messages
  • Social media posts
  • Advertising
  • Gated content

By observing and tracking interactions with these and other marketing elements, we build a better understanding of the people we’re trying to sell to. In a B2B environment, we can get a clearer vision into buyer intentions, and even aggregate details at the company level, when several people are involved in the search for a product or service for the same business. The types of information that are important to track in marketing automation include:

  • Behaviours on the website
    • Content the user interacted with
    • Forms they filled out
    • How long they viewed certain important pages
    • Downloaded assets
    • Event registrations
    • Even (aggregate) heat maps to show page interaction
  • Purchases
  • Email behaviours (opens, click-throughs, responses)
  • Social media behaviours
  • Ad interactions
  • App activity

Marketing automation data can be accessed, displayed, and shared in different ways, depending on your MarTech stack. The key to success is making sure sales and marketing are aligned in purpose and process, that your tools are the right fit for your needs, and that they are configured properly. Your marketing is not really automated if you must manually pull and share crucial data that helps your sales team stay on point.

Read the full blog written by our partner, Act-On Software, here.

Need help integrating your marketing automation data? Contact us today to learn more about how we can help.