I’ve performed dozens of martech stack audits… the wrong way!
I’ve been working for consulting firms for quite some time before launching my own business and used to consider Auditing an account as a project in itself.
Not as it should be: a way to prove yourself trustworthy and efficient.
Don’t get me wrong: at the end of a “classic” audit, you will get a complete vision of what is going on. At every level. From Organization to Data Flows.
So? Why am I saying it is the wrong way?
Because, in 2022, you just can’t afford to spend 3 months, and dozens of interview hours to end up with a 3-years project. Especially when the first 6 months are dedicated to erasing a “Tech Debt”.
In fact, you need a couple of days max to find your lowest-hanging fruits and put value in front of your client’s money.
Here’s my Playbook.
Start like every subscriber… Sign up!
You need to know how they are growing their list. If there is no list, there is no marketing.
Where are the signup forms?
How do they deal with consent?
Remember. Becoming a customer is not enough to consent to being spammed.
Try and subscribe through every possible touchpoint… and thoroughly analyze every:
- Pop-up
- Landing Page
- Subscription confirmation Email
You may find low-hanging fruits just there and immediately point out a way to increase email revenue.
Go on a Journey!
Whatever your industry, there are at least 4-5 mandatory journeys.
Here are examples from 3 industries:
Hospitality
- Loyalty Program
- Welcome
- Pre-Stay Stay
- Post-Stay
E-commerce
- Welcome Series
- Abandoned Cart
- Abandoned Browse
- Abandoned Checkout
Retail Banking
- Customer On-boarding
- Opened Account
- Mortgage
- Personal Loan
You should have a Customer Journey Map for every industry you work with. And enrich it after each new assignment.
If they don’t have the “core” journeys in Journey Builder, you just found more to be done.
If they do, investigate each one of them. Deep dive.
The number of versions of the journey: you will know if they’ve got a Test-and-learn process.
Journey Entry Activity: synchronous or not. Should it be? What is the best practice for this use case?
The Emails: how many? Performance? CTAs? Copy? Send Time? Etc.
Segmentation and personalization: how do they use data within their journey and each email to drive more engagement?
Ad-hoc Campaigns
Marketing is all about relations.
You can’t claim to be Customer-centric and never talk to your customers.
You can’t just react to inbound signals and say you’re doing marketing.
So, look at their communication frequency.
What ad-hoc emails are they sending?
If they are not sending emails apart from their automated journeys, they are missing a huge opportunity to drive revenue. Start here.
If they are, what are the segments they address? Do they have a segmentation?
Pay attention to their lowest-performing emails: less than 20% open rates and 2% CTR.
If you deep dive enough for Ad-hoc Campaigns and Journeys, you should be able to understand Data Flows, Automations, Data extensions, and Queries involved in the process.
I recommend using SFMC Companion Chrome Extension to help you map every component (you will find a description and a link in this issue).
Ask for Reports
Tell me what you are looking for and I will tell you who you are.
Let’s go straight to the point: if a marketer wants to be praised internally, he must show a great impact on revenue.
They have a missing link to revenue if they are using only Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement reports, including Intelligence within SFMC Engagement.
You can’t assess performance with open and clicks only.
Maybe you will need a third-party component here, but anyhow, you will have to figure out a way to track revenue so that your recommendations have the impact they should have.
That’s all for today!
See you next week!
I will let you with my most viewed issues since I launched this newsletter: