Permission marketing is the foundation of all marketing automation. Without permission from interested members of your audience, you are effectively blocked from direct marketing on the internet. Marketing automation systems cannot send out email content without permission from your leads.

[A version of this post first appeared on HubSpot’s blog in April 2015, revised September 4, 2015]

Just what is Permission Marketing?

Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing helped give birth to the communication rules marketers now must follow around the world. But Seth Godin was not trying to write anti-spam legislation, he was pointing out a fundamental shift in how people and companies communicate with each other. The shift is from interruption marketing to permission marketing: advertising vs. requested; outbound vs. inbound.

The second point Seth Godin made is that asking permission is the right thing to do. Why trick people into filling out warranty cards only to bombard them with junk mail they never wanted? Why pepper thousands of people with sales literature when only 1% will ever be interested?

A permission marketer asks, “Why not invite our audience to opt-in for further communication on the topic?”

Finally, permission marketing leads to better results because your communications are:

• Anticipated – the lead is waiting for your email.
• Relevant – the content is something the lead is interested in
• Personal – the content is relevant to the lead.

Building Permission Marketing into Marketing Automation

Now that initial marketing is done entirely online, marketers need a way to collect permission, manage permission, and use permission effectively. Marketing automation tools enable these three activities.

• Collect permission – need a form and content offer on your site.
• Manage permission – so that communications are Anticipated.
• Use permission: ensure the content is Relevant and Personal.

Marketing automation platforms (MAP) are designed with these three marketing actions in mind. What your vendor may not tell you, however, is that you will need to build out the workflows and rules for your business and location to use Permission Marketing correctly.

Collecting Permission

Your audience provides permission for you to send them deeper information on the topics you discuss. Your MAP does this with tools for you to create opt in forms for use on your blog and website. Remember “opt-in”? That’s because opted in leads are the most engaged group. Even if CANSPAM permits “opt out” in the United States, (meaning you can email people until they tell you to stop), this is not a good way to make friends fast. Use opt in permission for the best results. It’s easy with marketing automation.

To collect permission with opt in, always ensure your Forms have an opt-in check box or statement like, “Providing your email address means you are opting in to future communications.” Or this example from the HubSpot Blog. It is clear that entering your email is providing permission to subscribe.

Managing Permission

There are three components your MAP uses to help you manage permission: subscription management; filtering; and preventing blunders.

Subscription Management is the ability to have multiple subscription options. Let people opt in to your blog, your webinars, event invitations, and product communications. Your MAP can handle it all automatically once you set it up. To setup a system usually means going beyond the Unsubscribe checkbox. You will need to add new checkboxes for each subscription type, and then determine rules for when those checkboxes are changed.

• User action – did they Unsubscribe All, or just one box?
• Emailed Request for Removal – is someone manning the “unsubscribe@yourcompany.com” box? Is Sales able to pass along requests to the right person?
• Automated action – if the email hard bounces, should we remove the lead from future communications?

Filtering lets you see a list of opted-in leads with a particular set of behavior. Your MAP will have this built in. It is often called a “smart list,” that looks for the leads you request. Using smart lists to be ready with opted-in leads that are interested in Product X is vital to using permission.

Preventing blunders is about people processes and built in safeguards your MAP has. One example is preventing an email send to over 10,000 leads unless a senior manager approves. Another process is to always have two people look at a campaign. It is all too easy to blast out 8 emails or 8 million–just ask the New York Times. In Marketo, you can set rules to prevent leads from receiving more than a few emails per day or per week; you can also block non Admins from running campaigns larger than say, 50,000 at a time without further oversight.

These marketing automation features work together to make sure the lead anticipates your next communication.

Using Permission

Seth Godin explains that as a lead progresses through your funnel, she is giving you increasing permission to communication and to build a relationship. This permission can be revoked any time, thus using permission must be done carefully by making content that is Relevant and Personal to the lead.

Your MAP helps you do just that. Each day, new features are added in the world of automated personalization, which sounds like an oxymoron, is in reality a low cost way of managing a giant mail merge system in near real time. Tools like HubSpot and Marketo can personalize emails and even web pages based on the information your audience has provided you, with permission!

Focused messages will encourage the lead to download more of your remarkable content via pages and forms you create with your MAP. Each time a lead fills out a new form, they provide more detail on who they are and how you can help them all while providing additional permission for you to send more information. A lead may even be ready to ask you to call them.

And if you setup your workflows with permission marketing and your customers in mind, all of this permission is collected, managed, and used automatically.

Does Permission Marketing Really Work?

Surprisingly, there are still marketers out there who believe opt-out is good enough and that there’s no evidence batch and blast unpermissioned lists is harming their efforts. Fortunately, marketing automation data can prove otherwise for your audience as your list degrades rapidly. And you can also look at a third party study (often conducted by email service provides): In a 2011 study by Clickz, Open and CTR were compared to opt-in lists and opt-out lists.

• Opens in the opt-in lists were twice as high as the opt-out lists
• Click Through Rates on opt in lists were also twice as high on average: 1.5% vs. 3.0+%.

In 2014, I audited several companies’ databases. Every time, without fail, the real marketable database was roughly 20% of the total number of records. (I define “marketable” as permissioned and active in the past six months). If you could increase this marketable database size by just 50%, what would that mean for your pipeline?

Way back before marketing automation, I used to send email just to the US and Canada (before CASL). I would send maybe 500-3000 messages per run, and send once a week until my event registrations were at my target. Each time, I would lose 2 to 5% of my send list to opt-out. I knew each time this was not good, but there were very few alternatives other than to run a better list selection. So when I had the chance to build out full subscription management, I asked people if they wanted Event Invitations, Webinar Invitations, etc…and this reduce unsubscribes to under 1% very quickly.

Permission marketing is not just about following government regulations. It is about treating your customers as you would want them to treat you in the same situation. Remember to focus on the audience, what they want, and asking their permission to give them what they want. Marketing automation just makes managing all that easier.

Image Credit: flickr slopjob

In 2015, an interesting article from Chiefmartec described a report that 9% of firms are fully using their marketing tech stack. This trend has continued to evolve, but the martech stack and its options keep expanding. As companies scale up their efforts, so must their stack.

While all this keeps changing, one thing remains constant, The Martech Maturity Model™.

Yes, the survey from the article discusses “marketing technology,” so this could be the entire range of tools. But most marketers think of their email platform and MAP (marketing automation platform) as their primary tool or the center of their martech stack. If 91% of marketers are not using the entire system, then it stands to reason that roughly that number are not even making the most of their MAP’s capabilities.

The question those marketers have is probably not, “How can I use more of my stack?” the question is, “How can I generate more revenue? Or more SQLs?” In fact, anotehr stat says that 52% of marketers want more sales revenue and 50% want more leads. Surprisingly, less than half are interested in personalization, targeting, or efficiency, which are strongly correlated with increased responses. And the big vision “Predictability” is dead last at 13%. To me, that should be a concern for companies like Marketo and Lattice Engines because the big vision goal of predictable revenue and predictive scoring is likely not high on most firms’ lists – except that 9% leading edge group.

What is on most marketers’ minds is getting the most out of their marketing automation tool with things like nurturing and funnel visibility. If they cannot reach those goals, those marketers are going to be increasingly dissatisfied with their stack.

This data continues to confirm what I often tell people: Marketing Automation is a journey and it will take two to three years to fully realize the vision. Most marketers are not ready at all to even track the Lead Lifecycle in their first year with a MAP, let alone have the data, experience, and sales alignment to successfully use predictive scoring or other match tools.

As a consultant, I often came across situations where the MAP had been purchased, implemented, but never fully used. The company knew this and was willing to restart the process because they still believed it was possible to reap efficiency gains or even achieve the Vision of revenue performance management in the future. Rarely does a consultant get called in to help a high performing marketing organization, of course! But with 57% of marketers rating their martech program “Somewhat Successful” and 27% less happy than that, there are a lot of opportunities for both vendors and agencies to help companies achieve so much more with relatively little investment.

The good news is most marketers seem to believe that technology can change marketing performance positively, with the survey saying this is at 87%. However, I often heard the CMO or Director of Marketing say that a MAP was only helping marginally, or not at all. According to the Survey, at least 55% of marketers are in that camp today. To me, marketers who say this are likely using their MAP as a glorified email tool. They did not take the time to go through the evolution of marketing or the training needed to fully use the MAP to achieve the Vision. Naturally, their view of performance is that not much changed.

According to the survey, 50% of firms find the complexity challenging and 39% find the lack of budget slowing down their implementation. I would say that the critical piece is the budget or resources to achieve success. If you cannot find the budget and/or right people to help you implement a martech project, then that alone will stop your plans regardless of “complexity” or “inefficient processes.” A new tool will be complex to the uninitiated and inefficiency will abound until someone helps you create the right plan and sets up the tools correctly for your business. Thus, this again supports my advice to CMOs: understand your marketing strategy and firm first, then hire the right team (or agency) to help implement the technical side well. Is it better to spend $50,000 this year to set up success for the next three years, or to spend $15,000 today for a poor implementation that means $70,000 in software fees are flushed away? Going for a cheap option now usually means more expense later when the new consultants have to spend twice as long ripping out what the last agency tried.

Now, let’s discuss how a firm can implement a marketing technology plan successfully and a firm can implement a turnaround to move into that 9% over the next 12 to 24 months.

Getting to the 9% of “martech nirvana” as Scott Brinker puts it does not inherently require a lot of martech vendor solutions. In fact, you may only need a MAP, CRM, Website, and Social Media tool. What you do need is a clear plan for your marketing strategy, tactical mix, matched against available martech vendors. By plan, we also mean what you plan to do over time.

Here is a framework I have been developing to help guide your marketing technology plans. The MarTech Maturity Model is not quite like Marketo’s Maturity Model. The model here is focused on the use and implementation of marketing technology and when each piece should begin.

Each Stage has a set of pain points that emerge as you make the marketing automation journey. Each Stage has a corresponding Solution involving people and technology that is used to help create leverage for ROI. And each Stage takes time.

The single biggest impediment I see in achieving the Vision is thinking that the change will happen in one year or less, “because the vendor told me so.” And when that naturally does not happen? The vendor is fired and you have to start all over again. Far too many CMOs have said as much to me during evaluations. This is surprisingly short-term thinking from strategic executives. If you are a CMO, set better expectations with your team and with the C-suite colleagues. If you are a demand gen or marketing operations manager, explain this model to your CMO to avoid the uncomfortable calls to cancel your MAP contract, or to “go with a cheaper solution.”

Stage 0: Marketing Transformation

• Pain Points: batch and blast emails not bringing in sales; marketing ideas are stagnant; list purchases and rentals are primary lead source; lack of content strategy; website is brochure-ware; Roadshow events are product and sales based. Yes, these firms still do exist. If this describes your firm, don’t worry, you are not alone.
• Solution: New inbound marketing strategy. Website improvements to facilitate inbound content and lead collection. Begin sales-marketing alignment discussions for lead ranking and improved routing.
• Marketing Ops/Tech Considerations: Do not feel the need to invest beyond the website or CRM. Stay on plan, as doing too much now will create the perception of failure very quickly.
• ROI Potential: strategy change invigorates team and sales sees action is happening. Increase in leads and lead quality, decrease in CPL.
• Timeframe: 6 to 24 months.

Stage 1: Begin Automation

• Pain Points: lead volume is too much to rank easily; not all leads are ready to speak with Sales; content plan needs more coordination; demand generation requires more structure around the buying process. Marketing needs a faster turnaround on landing pages and website control.
• Solution: CRM+MAP implementation with intense Sales-Marketing Alignment framework.
• Marketing Ops/Tech Considerations: larger firms may want to go with a robust MAP for future work. Smaller firms can consider a 1 year smaller MAP tool to get started and plan to switch once everyone is comfortable with Marketing Tech.
• ROI Potential: marketing saves time for investment in demand gen and content planning. Data quality costs decrease, sales cycle is faster.
• Timeframe: 6 to 12 months with MAP implementation.

Stage 2: Lead Quality Management

• Pain Points: sales is complaining that you send too many leads over the wall, so you need to hold more back, but content and nurturing aren’t quite ready.
• Solution: additional sales-marketing alignment and workflow adjustments. Time is now to start building drip nurturing if possible or hire more campaign managers.
• Marketing Ops/Tech Considerations: growing firms may need to prepare to switch MAPs to handle the lake of leads and to nurture them in Stage 3. Workflows will need adjustment and new campaigns developed.
• ROI Potential: marketing saves time for investment in demand gen and content planning. Data quality improves.
• Timeframe: about 3-6 months in most organizations.

Stage 3: Nurturing and Sales Context

• Pain Points: Sales is asking for more context of why a lead is MQL; requesting more “sales-ready leads”; batch and blast still not working and campaigns require more coordination.
• Solution: install behavioral data tools in CRM to give Sales visibility into scoring and lead actions; train Sales on using the tools; content shifts to storytelling framework which is then operationalized as “lead nurturing.”
• Marketing Ops/Tech Considerations: sales context tools may already be in the CRM at this point, so careful training and improved timing of alerts may be what you need here. Use the Nurturing Operations framework to take your content into a serialized novel format to keep leads engaged; automate this in your MAP. If you need to upgrade your MAP, do so. Most firms struggle to achieve this on a consistent basis.
• ROI Potential: lead quality improves, sales cycle reduction, time saved for Marketing after initial investment.
• Timeframe: about 6 months if it is a focus.

Stage 4: Funnel Visibility

• Pain Points: difficult to answer questions about impact of marketing programs and sales efforts on funnel metrics like conversion percent and days to next stage.
• Solution: Build and improve the lead funnel and lead lifecycle systems.
• Marketing Ops/Tech Considerations: this requires a serious plan with the CRM and MAP teams working closely to ensure the right data collection and the right workflows are set up to achieve the desired Reporting.
• ROI Potential: you will be able to confidently discuss the impact of programs on moving leads through the funnel. Reduce funnel conversion times to reach revenue faster.
• Timeframe: 3-12 months depending on the size of firm and database complexity. Some reports may take longer to show data.

Stage 5: Attribution and Allocation Visibility

• Pain Points: All those ROI questions have built up and the dam is going to explode unless you can show the data: How do we know marketing’s efforts are paying off? How do we know which sources and offers are working for us? Is marketing even contributing to revenue?
• Solution: Proper data collection across all channels, tied together by the MAP and special reporting technology.
• Marketing Ops/Tech Considerations: Ideally you should have already set First Touch and Last Touch Attribution from Stage 1 or 2. Now you have to ensure Multitouch record keeping is collecting data on every touch and can report on it in relation to the Funnel you set up in Stage 5.
• ROI Potential: your promotion comes through. Everyone now sees just how much that massive Tradeshow costs and how little it brings in; you now see how Whitepaper Series 1 tanked, but Whitepaper Series 2 resonated with Audience 3 and you re-allocate resources there. Legendary Marketing Ops Manager status; full ROI visibility.
• Timeframe: depends on how much groundwork occurred previously. Could be 3 to 12 months.

Stage 6: Reliable, Automated Predictability

• Pain Points: can you help us predict pipeline and revenue based on marketing spend?
• Solution: add in predictive scoring and modeling tools with Finance and Sales help. (The Prediction Vendors won’t like me putting this last!).
• Marketing Ops/Tech Considerations: in theory, you may be able to add Predictive Scoring in during Stages 2 and 3. Be sure you are comfortable with the collection of data (behaviors, opportunities, and revenue) to support such a model and that Sales and Marketing are trained properly. Most firms are not ready for this until Stage 5 or 6.
• ROI Potential: instead of making up lead scoring (don’t worry, everyone is doing this), and using Pipeline waterfall reports, now you can rely on a real data model, which will do a much better job of statistical analysis. This becomes a real Revenue Table discussion that helps you allocate marketing spend for impacts 9-12 months out. If these are accurate, you keep your job!
• Timeframe: vendors say this is doable within days. I would expect about 3 months to be comfortable with the tools.

This maturity model is a bit linear the way I wrote it out here today. In reality, each of the Solutions in each Stage could happen concurrently with enough resources and people. Stages 0 and 1, however, should never be done concurrently for the plan to be truly successful. Marketing strategy transformation and sales alignment could impact your technology choices, so take the time to communicate these plans and work them into your team’s culture.

The way to use this Model is to focus on Stage 0, then 1. Your plan should then have sprints where Stages 2, 3, 4, and 5 have a focus at different times. For instance, do not promise full attribution reports during Stage 1, but you could build in parts of the data collection during the implementation, even if you could not use them fully yet.

First time marketing automation implementers should focus on one Stage at a time and not expect the Visionary reports and predictions the vendors sell us. More experienced marketing ops managers and consultants can use the Model to build in components of later Stages earlier in the process, but this requires careful client expectations management.

Marketing automation is a catalyst for a marketing strategy change and a way to force Sales-Marketing Alignment to occur faster. Unless this is managed well alongside the Marketing Tech plan, there is a high likelihood of adding in the wrong workflows and even the wrong martech vendors.

Marketing Technology Maturity Model™ and Martech Maturity Model™ are Trademarks of Marketing Rockstar Guides.

Today I had the privilege to speak with Alex Polamero, Director of Marketing Automation at The Lewis Group of Companies. Alex is a Marketo Certified Expert as well as a demand generation expert. Currently, Alex leverages marketing automation, social media, and digital advertising to generate new sales leads, recycle leads, and acquire top talent for a large real estate developer in the U.S.

Alex brought marketing automation to the real estate industry and is one of leading marketing ops people outside of Technology and Publishing.

JH: How did you get involved with marketing automation?

Alex: I had about 10 years experience in traditional marketing. I took an opportunity to develop enterprise social media for a real estate developer, which turned into a project improving email marketing. Ultimately, I was looking to improve lead generation and sales nurture processes. In researching a software solution that would help me bolster our ROI for both social marketing and email campaigns I came across marketing automation and Marketo.

JH: That’s really interesting, I was led to Marketo because I had to improve email marketing and lead routing, so you took a different route. What else made you think Marketo was the right system?

Alex: One of our needs was to manage dynamic content and segmentation. We also needed better tracking to understand how a lead would engage with us on email, social, pay per click advertising, and on various owned web domains. We wanted to track behaviors to a specific sale.

We also wanted to nurture leads over time, especially once they leased. We saw an opportunity to influence apartment renewals, cross sell other products, and improve our overall brand recognition.

JH: Real Estate is a new industry for marketing automation, so we should explore that. What does the sales funnel look like to you in the MAP?

Alex: First, we drive people to our website or landing pages using hundreds of organic and paid sources. Our goal is to have a prospect call us directly or fill out a form so that the prospect can be segmented based on behavioral and demographic scoring criteria and either added to a nurture process or sent to the appropriate sales team member.

We track prospects part of the way using URL parameters, so that when a lead does fill out a form, we have a sense of the last click attribution. While Google Analytics helps, Marketo can store behavioral data longer, enabling our term to see trends and the impact of campaigns on revenue. We realize that last click attribution can be limited, so we are developing other attribution models to better suit our business needs.

Yes, we do lead scoring: we look at behavioral and demographic criteria to determine when a prospect is warm enough for the Leasing Team to pursue. Once we have their name and email, we begin the automated nurture process. Nurturing includes content on leasing vs. buying, localized offers, and information about communities they are interested in.

JH: Since you track all of this data, did you discover anything that helped you sell better?

Alex: Absolutely! Using Marketo, we were able to identify that over 30% of prospects became qualified leads outside of our standard sales cycle. We found that prospects were doing research longer and making decisions further from the initial point of contact. The data challenged long held assumptions by property managers, and proved extremely useful in redesigning our sales processes. Now we do not give up on leads so quickly, adapting nurture times by segment and product type as well as capitalizing on cross sell opportunities over time.

JH: Leasing sounds more complex than a typical SaaS software sell or business service. How do you manage the details with the other teams?

Alex: Marketo helped me create synergy between departments to drive more sales. I see my role as an internal consultant to every division of our company and can apply my understanding of marketing automation, digital lead generation, social marketing, and traditional marketing to each division. I identified unique challenges facing a variety of business units; then applied the software tools, industry best practices, and our own new strategies to improve lead generation and sales using marketing automation. Marketo has also helped us track the flow of prospects and customers across company products. For example, I can see that people are interested in apartments, retail specials, and often-new homes over the lifetime of the customer. This data has encouraged departmental teams to consider how to better communicate with one another and leverage leads that move between products.

JH: In our conversations, we discussed how Marketing Automation is now making the leap to new verticals. What other functions and verticals do you see gaining from taking on a demand gen approach to marketing and then automating it?

Alex: I see huge opportunity and rapid growth for marketing automation in verticals like education, ecommerce, financial services, and healthcare. I also see functional areas like human resources using MAPs for their talent funnels and retention. I spoke about this at the 2014 Marketo Summit.

JH: Does a rules engine like Marketo require special enhancements for real estate? Or can a marketplace like Launchpoint make the necessary extensions for verticals?

Alex: I see how Marketo and a CRM could be used as the core of any sales funnel workflow. Certainly some verticals can benefit from a platform app, but I’ve been able to do what I need through the basic system and my CRM. The key is to ensure the MAP you choose has an open API and budget for additional resources whether software partners or training to achieve your desired growth targets Another question during any implementation is, “How much time do I have and do I have the team necessary to reach our goals in the right time frame?” If not, you will have to adjust the team, time, or tools.

JH: What is the big gap right now in Real Estate marketing?

Alex: There are always areas for opportunity for any company to grow and improve. For example, we are considering how to better engage prospects that do not sign an apartment lease. We are thinking about how to communicate with apartment residents that move out but continue to live in our general geographic area. So I see the gap as more about what information can we provide to these people to help them make a good decision about their property and living options. Can we build enough trust where they seek us out first for their apartment, retail, new home, office, or industrial needs?

JH: Do you have any Marketo Launchpoint partners you think have been helpful?

Alex: Yes, in particular, consultants have been helpful in adding skills and teaching us best practices we would have struggled to discover on our own. For example, consultants like Grazitti Interactive and Perkuto have helped us with workflow concepts as well as API programming.

JH: What is one thing you wish you knew about MAPs three years ago?

Alex: I wish I knew to allocate more resources for training and third party support, especially for ongoing training of new software updates, consultant support, and integration of new tools. Also, I’ve found that building relationships within the Marketo community has been hugely beneficial for trouble shooting and brainstorming new ideas to grow revenue.

Perhaps three years ago I did not see MAPs as a competitive advantage. Now I do. If you are in business and do not have a MAP, you are already behind a competitor who does. My advice is that MAPs are being adopted by every business and you need to have one. Firms are investing more to add new technology, and marketing teams will be able to leverage MAP systems to improve marketing campaign effectiveness, reporting, and become more efficient with how they spend advertising dollars.

[updated Aug 17, 2015 for grammar]

Did you just experience a data snafu? Did you just use a few other choice words for what happened?

You aren’t alone.

Every day, marketers, marketing operations staff, and business analysts hose their databases accidentally.

Since you are reading this post, your initial panic has subsided and you are preparing to figure out how to roll back the change that occurred. Great!

Here is my recommended process for analyzing and resolving a database snafu.

First, stop panicking.

Take a deep breath and understand that in almost every case, the data can be fixed if you act quickly, calmly, and clearly.

Panicking will lead you to think: “The entire system is broken, they will blame me, and I will lose my job.” This thinking leads you to consider poor options like, “If I do nothing, they won’t notice,” or “I can fix it before they notice,” or even “Let me try x, y, z and then blame it on someone else.” This slippery slope will lead you to justify terrible ways to fix the problem or even make it worse. Eventually, someone else will find out and you will be held responsible.

Take that deep breath and remember you can resolve the problem, keep your job, and even look good at the same time.

Second, admit the mistake.

Did you make it? Admit it to yourself. Then admit it to your boss with an explanation and possible resolutions.

This is hard for people to do. No one likes to admit mistakes. I don’t, and neither do you. Admitting you did something or failed to stop something bad from happening is very difficult for the ego. But hiding the mistake or blaming others unnecessarily is not productive either. I’ve done this both ways and I can tell you from experience that admitting the mistake quickly and owning the resolution is far better than trying to cover up mistakes. Just ask Nixon.

Even if this error was not personally caused by you, admit a mistake was made. Work to find the cause and then the resolution regardless of who may be responsible. Retraining is only possible in a resentment free atmosphere.

Admitting the mistake and offering solutions makes it clear that you are a mature adult who owns problems and comes forward with solutions. Whenever I have done this properly, the only reproach I received was from myself.

Third, analyze the situation.

Solutions designed without understanding the source of the data error are useless. There are various frameworks for analyzing errors. Use one or more to drill down.

As you walk through the analysis process, take copious notes.

Questions you should ask to understand marketing automation mistakes:

1. What is the error?
   1. What is the Current State?
   2. What is the Desired State?
2. Is the error still occurring?
3. Can you turn off the workflow that is causing the error?
   1. If you can do so without compounding the error with more errors, shut it down.
   2. If you cannot safely turn it off because it may impact other processes, can you potentially slow it down or remove the action that causes the error?
4. What Caused the Error?
   1. Human input
   2. Workflow (Process)
   3. Form
   4. Script?
   5. Bots?
   6. Something else?

Be very careful to remain judgment free of anyone at this stage. Human error happens (maybe it was you!), and the goal is to solve the error or roll it back, not to point fingers. For example, if a salesperson is uploading unverified, personal lists constantly, thus ruining data, the answer is to design the system to prevent this, not to call up the offender and yell at them.

At this point you may need to go into the Marketing Automation Platform (MAP), as well as the CRM to track down potential causes. If you are having trouble understanding the root cause, pull in additional people to help.

Five Whys Framework [for complex systems]

Popularized by Toyota, the Five Whys is to ask why a process did not produce the desired result at least five times until you understand the root cause. Keep in mind there could be multiple root causes. If your marketing infrastructure has multiple systems (CRM, MAP, other databases), you should bring in the administrators of those databases as well.

I find this method is ideal for very complex situations and is often a bit more than most people need. Here are a few ways to map out the Five Whys for such a situation.

Walk Through the Process

As part of your investigation, walk through the workflows and steps you expect the system to do. When you reach a point of error, note where, when, and how it happened.

Look closely at example leads that seem to be affected. Open their Activity Log to walk through changes to their data and which processes changed that data.

Some MAPs are better than others in providing detailed change logs. For the Marketing Automation Admin or Marketing Ops person, these are vital to fixing any snafu or even testing.

Call in Support: Vendor, Internal, and Other Admins

Your support network includes colleagues inside and outside the firm. Some errors you encounter may be identifiable, but not fixable by you. The error could be a vendor bug, or in a system you cannot act on alone.

Remember that even if the Vendor or another System causes the error, you must own the problem until it is resolved. No one else is going to take ownership or responsibility.

When do you call Support?

• Immediately: as you panic, you may need someone not directly affected who can guide you and remain calm. This is perfectly good use of Support.
• During the Investigation: vendor Support or other teammates may have more access or understanding than you do. Enlist their help to track down the problem.
• Resolution: your support team can help craft a resolution or even implement it. Again, this depends on what is needed to resolve the error.

How do you Build a Solution Without Causing More Damage?

Once you understand the situation, you need to solve it. The resolution may be to roll back the error and fix the process involved.

The good news is most systems will help you roll back data errors. In this example, let’s imagine we had a process that is supposed to move Leads to various stages:

Initial State: Lead Status	Desired State: Lead Status
Prospect	MQL
Nurturing	MQL
MQL	SQL
SQL	No change

Somehow, this process instead, did this:

Initial State: Lead Status	Current State: Lead Status [ERROR]	Desired State: Lead Status
Prospect	SQL	MQL
Nurturing	SQL	MQL
MQL	SQL	SQL
SQL	SQL	No change

Notice that I used tables to help me organize the data here. Tables make life in Marketing Operations much better and help you understand the data in nearly every situation, including creating processes.

The next step is to understand the total impact. How many leads are affected at each point? Let’s add a column to understand the counts involved.

Initial State: Lead Status		Current State: Lead Status [ERROR]		Desired State: Lead Status
Prospect	500	SQL	500	MQL	500
Nurturing	676	SQL	676	MQL	676
MQL	1000	SQL	1000	SQL	1000
SQL	750	SQL	750	No change	750

How do we get such counts? For sake of this example, the counts all match, but they may not in your situation.

To discover who was in the Initial State and now in the Current (Error) State, we can use a few filters, depending on how this was setup in the first place:

• Static List – if the erroneous process used one, but the lead may have been removed automatically.
• Member of Smart Campaign: If a process caused the error that lead will be a Member of the campaign, so this helps us narrow down the affected group.
• Data Value Was Changed: there are several similar filters available. Most only work up to 90 days in the past. Use the Old Value to New Value so you can create the Smart List that shows you the total people who went from Prospect to SQL that were also a Member of the Smart Campaign.

Alternative methods in this example might include asking your CRM Admin to do something similar. In Salesforce, some fields have their history tracked and it may function better to run the roll back through Salesforce. You should discuss this with your team before attempting the resolution.

Solving the Problem: Rollback Workflow

At this point you should clone your Smart List to match the table above:

• Previously Prospect
• Previously Nurturing
• Previously MQL

Since the SQLs were correct, we do not need to worry about them.

Now that we know which leads were affected, we can roll back the change with a new flow action. However, we should take two more steps to ensure that we do not further compound the error:

• Run each Smart List through a Smart Campaign so we can maintain the Count and Member of Smart Campaign, just in case.
• Add each lead to a separate list during this Smart campaign so we know exactly who was fixed.

Another triple back up is to download the data before making a roll back change. This will help you identify the affected leads later. This may also be necessary if you plan to enact the rollback in another system. Your CRM Admin may need a list of Email Addresses and CRM IDs to do this.

Let’s Go to the Tape, the Backup Tape

Sometimes the data is beyond basic workflow help. Perhaps your MAP and CRM did not retain Last Value data. Or the data flows cleared out everyone’s Addresses and Phone Numbers. In these situations, the most you can do is identify the causes and the affected records.

The next step will be to discuss how to restore the data from the backups.

You do have backups, right?

Most system vendors will have some sort of backup of your data. Usually this is stored in case of their system failure, not yours. Call Support and discuss the options for restoring the data and when the Last Saved State is.

When restoring the backup, you may end up overwriting or losing data that was added since the Last Saved State. You will have to weigh the consequences and impact. If you acted quickly, the additional loss will be minimal compared to the Error State.

Your IT department may also have backups of this data, so be sure to discuss this process with them before starting the rollback.

The Aftermath

The aftermath is not usually that dramatic. If the impact was internal, it is a good idea to discuss the process errors that led to the error. Take the time to put in additional safeguards within the system and on your checklists to reduce the chances of this happening again.

It is possible this error caused an external impact. That’s a fancy way to say you sent a ton of incorrect emails to your CUSTOMERS. In this case, you need to take the lists of affected people and determine how to explain the situation to your audience. This post is not about crisis management, but I can tell you that if your human team is honest and open in helping your human customers resolve your automation errors, it can turn your firm from social media pariah to remarkable.

Remember, most data snafus can be fixed.

Take a deep breath…

 

 

With the recent release of Marketo’s “Abort” button for email campaigns, we are finally taking a step to making Marketing Automation Platforms more robust against human error. But if you reached a point where you need to press abort, then the platform has already failed you.

Marketing Automation is on a Data Tight Rope

In my opinion, many firms with MAPs are walking on a tightrope because there are so few safeguards against data errors in many platforms.

In the past few months, I have committed, seen, and corrected massive data errors in my MAP. All were caused by human error in some way. As I worked to fix these, I reflected on just how delicate these systems are. We rely on our MAP to process huge amounts of data each day. We rely on these systems to make the correct decisions based on a rigid view of previously human processes.

I saw this fragility in my first implementation. The process we established to implement Marketo with Salesforce was very solid, from the human side. We did everything in a sandbox and I heavily researched just how things should work. We checked in with various teams before acting on data. And everything went smoothly.

But as I built out the lead management flows and important autoresponders, I began to think of the tool as a delicately balanced system, akin to erector set with very few bolts. It worked really well, but just one thing off could break the entire flow, collapsing my structure.

Years later, I see lead management flows and data management flows in the same way. Why? Because nothing has changed in the robustness of the tools themselves. From what I can tell, this is true for many major vendors. Where are the safeguards against someone accidentally breaking the carefully built erector set?

And I don’t mean an “abort button,” however useful to prevent external firestorms of criticism and embarrassment. I mean, how do I stop someone, myself included, from turning on a workflow, or changing a name, or moving something that causes massive data errors?

Common Solutions that are not enough

• Security by Role: most systems let you restrict untrained or those who don’t need to know from accessing key areas. What I have seen, however, is that core workflows like Lead Management are still vulnerable to people who have access to run email campaigns.
• Training: yes, that could work, to a point. I’m considered well trained and “experienced”, yet without proper documentation and checks, I can still do a lot of damage without intending to do so. Most marketing automation managers came up through marketing, not technology or system administration. Thus, a lot of data governance training is needed, and it’s not getting done.
• Workspaces and Lead Partitions: these do help. The impact on the system can be contained in many cases if a user is restricted to just their area. Depending on the setup, however, many users can still import data that runs amok across the system. They can also hose their own data!
• Don’t let anyone in: not really feasible for most organizations.
• CRM and Database Safeguards: this is often available to large organizations that can afford to add rules and logic to the system to prevent massive data errors. It can help avoid many errors, but not all.
• Design the system to be less prone to human error: this is more for the vendor to do, as the MAP rules are geared toward moving data round, not letting you prevent errors.

Real Safeguards for Marketing Automation Platforms

So what could real safeguards look like without ending up with an Enterprise System or custom tool?

• Lock Programs and Smart Campaigns after they are set to run.
• Lock Smart List configurations. [Vote]
• Change Logs with more detail that permit more filtering.
• Changed Data History expansion. I know this is expensive.
• “Are you sure?” dialogs with count information. (this usually appears on delete).
• Alert Dialog – “Changing this campaign will affect XYZ”. While “Used by” exists in Marketo, you have to look at it first. Same for other asset changes.
• Refined User Role Access: I’d like to see Role Security down to flow step permission and leads affected. [Vote]
• Schedule Tabs that display: Total Qualified – Total Blocked from Email = Total Estimated Send. [Vote]
• Order of Execution. This can be controlled with Campaign is Requested, however, this seems to be only something an advanced user would be able to setup. [Vote: idea 1 and idea 2].
• Individual record view should not permit editing unless you have permission and press “Edit Mode”.
• Hide Core Lead Management functions from other users. This would reduce the chances of “explorers” finding something and touching it. [Vote]
• Smart Campaign View Only Mode – Let people look at a campaign and then press Edit to modify the rules or workflow. [Vote]

You can vote for the ideas in Marketo. If you are using another tool, consider these as ideas for the integrity and security of your dataset.

Human Safeguards

Of course, the vendor cannot prevent all human error. As a marketing leader, you need to establish rules and processes for the team as well. Here are a few of my tips:

• Document everything and train people to read it first.
• Use diagrams to help understand dependencies.
• Four Eyes – two people check campaigns.
• Campaigns over 50,000 leads must be approved going up the chain.
• CRM Admins must be consulted and approve major changes.
• IT team should review and approve changes that would affect major systems such as websites, email, and other databases.

Do you have other ideas to help increase MAP robustness? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: martintaylor