• Are your marketing automation tools working perfectly?

• Are you utilizing all the tools to their optimum level?

• Are you able to achieve your lead generation or sales conversion goals?

If you have not pondered over these questions, don’t worry. 

Now is the right time to think about them. 

From building a lead generation pipeline to posting social media updates every day and sending personalized emails to your subscribers, marketing automation tools allow you to do many things in just a few clicks. 

Considering that you rely on marketing automation and spend over 10-39% of your marketing budget on the tools, it must deliver the desired ROI. 

The only way to ensure that is by performing regular marketing automation audits. 

What is marketing automation audit, and why is it so important?

A marketing automation audit allows you to perform a comprehensive audit of how your tools perform. It identifies the gaps or loopholes in your system and compels you to find solutions to troubleshoot it. 

Performing a marketing automation audit helps you to:

Get overall visibility of how your stack operates

You may be using multiple automation tools to execute your marketing activities. It could be a full-stack solution from a specific vendor or a customized stack where you choose different solutions for specific functions. Regardless of what approach you take, it is vital to know how each tool works. Are they working well individually, are they in sync with other tools? A marketing automation audit will give answers to these questions. It will give you a clear visualization of how each tool works on an individual level and as a part of the entire marketing automation stack. You can then decide if the tool is adding any value to your current work or if it can be replaced. 

Identify the gaps in the stack

You may have invested a considerable amount in marketing automation tools, but you might not be using every tool to its optimum level, or you might be missing out on a crucial tool that captures leads. There could also be issues such as leaks in the lead generation process due to underutilization or lack of appropriate tools. A thorough marketing automation audit will help you identify these gaps and help you plug them with the right tools or training on using the existing ones. 

Improve or revamp the marketing workflow 

Marketing automation audits will tell you if there are gaps in the workflow. For example, you might find out that your user onboarding strategy is weak, or there is a considerable gap in the lead capturing process. You can then accordingly revamp or make changes to create a perfect workflow that works in an integrated and seamless manner. 

Come up with solutions to create a more robust stack

When you conduct a thorough marketing automation audit, you will get a fresh perspective on the performance of your stack. You can then make an informed decision on what to add or remove from your stack to make it more robust. The idea is to have high-performing tools working in perfect sync with each other so you can achieve your marketing goals.

Now that you know why marketing automation audit is important, let’s dig further to know how to do it.

How to do marketing automation audit?

Here are the three most important steps to do a thorough audit. Remember, you need to invest a considerable amount of time in doing it. So, we recommend you to set aside some time for it. 

Know the purpose of auditing

Before you begin the audit, it’s important to determine why you are doing it?  Write down the challenges you are facing, and the purpose the audit will serve in solving it. For example, your challenge could be generating leads from landing pages. A thorough audit will tell you if there are any issues with your tool or process and will enable you to find solutions to fix it. 

Analyze the data 

Pull out all the reports of your audit to analyze the data. Determine metrics for every tool, so you can benchmark the performance against it. For example, the delivery rate of your email campaign should be above 95%. If the delivery rate is consistently low, consider changing your automation tool.

Fix the gaps, experiment, test and use a new stack

Once you know what’s failing, ask yourself, what’s next? Probably replacing the tool could be one alternative, or you may want to add more steps to the workflow to close the gap between acquiring a customer and engaging them. Prioritize your solutions and plan the next steps to fix it. Do a test run to see if the new strategy is working to your expectations. If the experimentation succeeds, you can launch the new stack. 

What are some of the components to check during the marketing automation audit?

At Fractional CMO, we audit the following components. You may choose to audit additional components that your organization might use.

• Landing pages: Deep dive into all your landing pages to find out what’s hindering its performance. Find solutions such as using custom templates and lead form optimization to generate high-conversion leads.
  
  
• Email campaigns: Audit your drip campaigns, nurture campaigns, and follow-up emails. A/B test them to know what works so you can modify your email campaigns. You can also fix your automation tool to improve the delivery rate.
  
  
• Workflows: Know the good, bad, and ugly of marketing workflows so you can fix them and create a seamless experience for your customers.
  
  
• Analytics and reporting: Get a 360-degree insight on the performance of your campaigns and the tools you use, so you can make informed decisions on repairing your stack. 
  
  
• Integrations: Do an audit on third-party API integration tools and your CRM integration to check if there is a need for improvement. It will enable better sales and marketing alignment. 
  
  
• Lead capturing: Check if your software is capturing the leads and if they are assigned to the sales representatives in real-time. 

What’s next?

A marketing automation audit should not be a one-time affair. Technology and people’s purchasing behavior change constantly. So, review your marketing automation stack and process regularly to cater to the interests of your audience. We would ideally recommend you to perform these audits once in every quarter and before renewing the contract with the vendor. However, please note you need to have time and skilled resources to perform these audits regularly. 

If you do not have enough time or lack enough skilled people in your team, then don’t worry. You can contact us to perform an audit for you. Our experts will not just audit the stack and process, but we will also tell you exactly what you must fix to improve your marketing automation strategy. To know more about our specialized services, visit our website.