In the building and construction industry, developments are typically classified as either greenfield (fresh, new or lightly used land) or brownfield (previously heavily used or dirty land).

Greenfield projects start with a clean slate and can proceed at a rapid pace. Brownfield projects, on the other hand, often have to contend with varying degrees of contamination that need to be cleaned up or contained as the first step in the process.

The same goes for marketing automation platform implementations.

Industry reports peg marketing automation use at about 51% of companies, or 58% of B2B companies — 11 times more than there were in early 2011. But (and it’s a big BUT), only 26% report using their software extensively. And 19% indicated they switched MAP providers recently or were currently doing so.

So while we at Goose Digital spend a lot of time helping clients strategize, assess needs and select a platform for their greenfield MAP implementation, we come across our fair share of brownfield situations as well.

In these cases, the client has a marketing automation solution in place, but either do not feel confident in using it, or have encountered significant problems somewhere along the line. These issues range from simple installation and integration hiccups, right up to dirty lists, ruined sender reputations and the dreading ISP blacklisting of email domains.

As a result, there are varying degrees of contamination that need to be cleaned up or contained as the first step in the process. And just as it is not the fault of the land that it has become contaminated by humans, it is rarely, if ever, the fault of the marketing automation software itself when we encounter these problems. They are the result of human misuse — intentional or unintentional.

We don’t have to change the platform. We have to change the way the platform is used.

That’s why we’ve developed a systematic process called Marketing Automation Revive to help clients address these brownfield issues and start getting increased return on their investment.

Step 1: Platform Audit

You can’t fix something until you know what’s broken. This step includes a 35-point checklist to guide our marketing automation experts through a deep and thorough audit process.

We assess each of these points, flag any issues and make recommendations. Want to know all 35 checkpoints? Book your audit now.

Step 2: Platform Remediation and Optimization

After the audit is complete and the recommendations prioritized, we roll up our sleeves and get into the clean-up phase, often working in tandem with our clients’ internal teams.

This is the real nitty-gritty of the exercise. Some issues can be fixed with a few clicks, others are more serious and require more time and effort to resolve. For example, a ruined sender reputation and accompanying IP blacklisting will not be fixed over night.

These MAP-life-threatening “contaminations” may require completely new domains, new contact lists, new templates and new content plans. They cannot be solved by simply switching marketing automation software providers.

As an aside, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure so learn more about protecting your sender reputation here.
– Goose Digital blog

Throughout this step, our goal is to work with your team to uncover how to best leverage the platform on a go-forward basis, renewing your confidence in the technology investment.

Step 3: Baseline Reporting

As part of a Marketing Automation Revive, we baseline your entire marketing automation platform so you can measure improvements.

We look at key performance indicators such as open rate, click-through rate, behaviour scores, and web traffic, in addition to email deliverability health such as bounce rate, spam complaints, and suppressed messages.

Step 4: Tailored Action Plan

Once the technical issues are solved, it’s time for strategic thinking. Our Marketing Accelerators are designed to help your organization rapidly adopt marketing automation best practices, helping you gain more immediate value from your platform and increase marketing momentum.

Through ongoing conversations with you and your team, we implement and create any marketing automation changes.

Don’t Throw the Marketing Automation Baby Out with the Bathwater!

It’s important to note that we did not once in this blog article discuss moving to a new, preferred-by-the-agency platform. There are two reasons.

First, we at Goose Digital are largely platform-agnostic, in that we support all of the ‘Big Four’ platforms: Act-On, Hubspot, Marketo and Pardot.

Second, we feel that you probably chose whatever platform you’re using because it best suited your needs and budget, and in 99.99% of the cases, that original rationale will hold true throughout the revive process.

Are you unsure of the health of your marketing automation program? Talk to us about a check-up.