Marketing automation is here to stay, whether B2B or B2C. But the technology is not as important as the people manning the controls, who set the marketing automation process. Marketing automation specialists are much in demand, but what makes a good marketing automation manager a great marketing ops leader? Check out our take on this high-profile, in-demand role.
Over the last decade, Marketing Operations (or Marketing Ops) has become an indispensable part of any marketing ecosystem. Marketing ops professionals are expected to bring certain ‘left-brained’ skills to the team that typical ‘marketers’ were hitherto not really known for. Quantitative planning, tracking and performance measurement of marketing activities and a deep working knowledge of technology, for instance.
But with digital evolution, the way marketing strategy is executed has changed dramatically. Marketing Automation Platforms (MAPs) are mainstream and central to executing any enterprise marketing strategy – whether B2B or B2C.
Marketing Automation roles are a subset of the Marketing Ops teams. In smaller organizations, the same person or people may do both, but in larger set-ups, Marketing Automation specialists would work within the larger Marketing Ops team, which in turn would be part of the Marketing team.
In this feature, we define the role and skills of exceptional marketing automation professionals. Like most other technologies, MAPs are constantly evolving to fulfil the requirements of marketers. But **a MAP is only as good as the marketing automation expert responsible for using it**. It is safe to say that without a competent marketing automation team, a modern-day enterprise marketing team – whether B2B or B2C – will be at sea!
No wonder then that in the increasingly complex omni-channel communication world, marketing automation professionals are currently in high demand. In fact, according to Mondo’s 2018 Tech and Digital Marketing Salary Guide, the ten highest-paid martech positions include: CMO, VP of Digital Marketing, VP of MarTech Solutions, Director of Web Analytics, Director of Interactive, VP of eCommerce, UX Specialist/Information Architect and Marketing Automation Architect. **A marketing automation specialist earns anywhere between $70,000 to $130,000, but that can go much higher depending on the size of the organization and complexity of the profile**.
Marketing Automation Managers are primarily responsible for 3 areas.
1. Marketing Automation tools: using the stack of tools optimally to execute complex campaigns.
2. Data: integrating data used by and generated from campaigns back into the central data set.
3. Analytics: tracking performance metrics and ensuring that marketing and business decision -makers get the right insights they need to develop increasingly better-performing campaigns
While the above 3 areas are table stakes, just having a working knowledge of marketing automation tools or analytics dashboards is not enough. At the same time, a recent survey by ChiefMartec shows that only 19% of martech professionals had a degree in computer science, IT, or another engineering or science discipline. The rest came from economics, business studies or liberal arts backgrounds. So, it seems that pure technical or engineering mindset is not a prerequisite either.
So, what makes a truly awesome marketing automation specialist tick? Some of these may not be on the JD, but these 5 skills are indispensable to a marketing automation specialist who wants a stellar digital marketing career.
Here are 5 not-so-obvious skills of an awesome marketing automation manager:
1. An understanding of marketing: marketing automation pros need to take ownership of business outcomes, drive marketing performance and deliver compelling customer/prospect experiences. To do this, they have to understand the context of the industry/ geography as well as bring the ability to visualize and translate marketing campaign conceptual ideas into technical execution. **Marketing leaders depend on their marketing ops teams to bring the strategy and campaigns to life**. Marketing automation experts need to understand marketing goals and context, to help achieve the outcomes. They may be ‘technical’ people but are expected to know and understand ‘marketing’ as well as anyone on the team.
2. Mastery over marketing automation process and workflows: present-day marketing automation is all about workflows. Specialists need to be able to define and document the functional and technical requirements for executing (developing, deploying, managing, tracking and measuring) the automated campaigns. They also need to be able to own the workflows and SLAs for complex processes such as lead qualification, lead scoring, lead routing, lead assignment, drip campaigns and trigger-based workflows. This area of work has a high impact on both- the UX and CX – and **exceptional marketing automation pros see themselves as accountable for a seamless CX at any point of the customer journey**.
3. Project and stakeholder management: **with multiple marketing managers needing multiple omni-channel campaigns running simultaneously – at scale – the marketing automation manager is a busy bee**. They are expected to define the day-to-day operational scheduling, plan and execute complex projects around customer journeys, and prioritize campaign execution. This needs automation – but it also needs rigorous adherence to project management best practices to ensure timely and cost-effective delivery to multiple internal stakeholders – most notably, all the executives on the marketing team.
4. Analytics and insight: tracking automated program performance, mining insights, and recommending data-driven optimization avenues to campaign owners is a given to improve demand-gen. **Marketing automation specialists are expected to manage projects that are powered by data and leverage real-time insights to keep tweaking campaigns**. They need to understand data – how to read it, interpret it and visualize it in order to help marketers with decision making.
5. Emerging skills to stay ahead:
Data integration: Unified customer identity is hot right now- from CDPs to Identity resolution and tag management. The Marketing Automation specialist is the user of the ‘unified’ data coming out of the unified customer view and has to be able to leverage it as a strategic advantage.
Attribution: Tracking and measuring attribution from multiple customer touch points to present a singular picture of what is working helps optimize the ROI on marketing initiatives and sets the best performing marketing automation specialists apart.
Compliance: adherence to data integrity rules (such as GDPR) in the modern age is a must. A good marketing automation specialist would know his customer journeys well-enough to identify every possible opportunity or data breach and the need for appropriate security and get measures in place to safeguard it.
And – here is a 6th bonus skill:
The truly memorable marketing automation specialists will act as a mentor within the business to continuously drive ROI:
– Liaising with stack vendors for awareness of system-related updates, new capabilities and features/ functionalities, workflow processes and innovations to increase the scalability, efficiency, and effectiveness of the marketing organization.
– Empowering others in the team to use the marketing automation to do their jobs more effectively and independently
– Continuous stack upgradation: help make informed choices to invest in the best-in-class tools and new platform integrations to meet evolving needs of the organization
In the study mentioned earlier in this article, Gianna Scorsone, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales Operations for Mondo had said, “In 2018, we saw a huge demand for Digital Marketing professionals with marketing automation skills, such as Marketo, Eloqua, and Pardot. We expect to see a spike in salaries for these positions and for experts with advanced high-end MarTech skills.”
There is no doubt marketing automation experts and specialists are at the top of that list of in-demand roles. Developing the skills mentioned here will ensure you can also command a place at the marketing high-table by going from operational to strategic members of the team.
Interested in more awesome stuff on marketing automation and marketing automation process? We’ve compiled the best of our Marketing Automation Content in this handy guide- get it here with one click!
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