According to the agency we asked, time is the most complicated thing to manage in marketing automation. Time to set up, the teams’ available time, etc. Let’s look at it in detail !
Why should you allow time to implement marketing automation?
Marketing automation is used by many agencies and companies; we therefore asked the agency Digital Passengers, which works with different SMBs and mid-sized companies to understand why time is the number one critical point when implementing a marketing automation strategy.
How much time are we talking about?
Not a little… It’s a question that’s impossible to answer given the diversity of the marketing automation strategies deployed. But we’ll still give you a few estimates for the automations we most often implement for our clients.
Setting up an email workflow:
Time: 2 to 3 hours (scenario design + email copywriting + configuration + testing + optimization)
NB : One workflow isn’t enough
Lead scoring configuration :
Time : 3 to 5 hours (thinking + configuration + tests + ongoing optimization)
NB : You’ll need to do this in agreement with the sales and marketing teams
Automated publishing on social media :
Time : 1 hour (setting up + continuously republishing manually)
NB : Plan for manual optimizations on each post to customize at least minimally
Creating automated lead lists in the CRM :
Time : 1 hour (creation + sorting and filters + verification + cleaning)
NB : These lists can quickly become a real mess; therefore plan to review them globally on a regular basis. This should be kept up to date in your documentation that serves as the reference.
Setting up a trigger on the website that displays a pop-up :
Time : 2 to 3 hours excluding design creation (creation + tagging + implementation + tracking)
NB : Triggers on a website—let’s talk about them in the plural as well 🙂
Etc…
Why is time a problem?
For two reasons: the first is obvious—it’s the short-term profitability of the operations you put in place. But the second is harder to imagine at the start; it’s your time as the marketing manager, communications officer, etc.
Often, the marketing team is put under pressure by leadership and/or the sales team, which wants “more leads”, “more quickly”, “fast and inexpensive promo operations”, “don’t damage margins”, etc.—and all of that for yesterday.
However, we know that implementing email workflows, writing automated emails, configuring settings, running tests, optimizing, sequencing, etc. takes time—and above all, they don’t produce large numbers of quality leads in a very short time frame.
So if you choose to implement a marketing automation strategy in your company, let your colleagues know from the beginning that it will take time before optimized results can be achieved.
To reassure leadership and keep the sales team patient, nothing stops you from continuing to generate leads using so-called “outbound” and short-term methods, such as acquisition campaigns (Google Ads, etc.).
Finally, if time is a problem, it’s also because marketing or communications department managers already have a long list of recurring tasks to carry out, such as designing monthly newsletters, writing blog articles, updating dashboards, meetings with different teams, the conference booth to design, etc.
And you’ll have to find additional available time on top of that? Yes—so get ready for it, because the time you invest in your marketing automation will be proportional to the results you can expect. That’s why marketing automation manager roles are starting to emerge in companies, and why you can also delegate the setup and management of campaigns to your agency!
Marc NOEL, one of the founders of the Digital Passengers agency, testifies :
“ If there’s one reason why implementing marketing automation fails, it’s the lack of time of a dedicated person internally at the company. Believing that, because you have an agency supporting your business, you’re freed from this responsibility is an illusion. It’s essential that the agency has an intermediary internally who is responsive, up to speed on everything, a decision-maker, and above all has time ! ”
