How do I get my marketing leader on board if automation is key to my strategy?

Similar to another question (see "I am in the first phase..."), in my view the main issue is your marketing leader seeing your proposed path more as your (singular) strategy, than as your (plural) strategy, even if she helped you craft it earlier. As these are process redesigns, more discrete in nature, you should consider a more step-wise implementation sequence, A/B testing or piloting as alternative routes to regain sponsorship.  Also remember that as tricky as data overhauls, process redesig ...Read More

Marketing Operations should fall under the scope of Revenue Operations and that is where a lot of automation decisions are made. If that is not the case at your organization you need to drill into the concerns your marketing leader has for why automation is not their path of choice. Often times this is an issue of control and nerves around where the data sits and how it will be consumed. If you can position the automation as a net positive to their ROMI (return on marketing investment) they will ...Read More

I will tweak my answer to make it more generic “How do get buy-in on automation strategy from a business leader”. It is very important to help stakeholders understand that automation does not mean elimination , automation could also mean augmentation or in many cases, give back time to do higher value work. Ensuring that your business leader understands this is your first win. So how do we do it?  Speak their language: Every business leader in the current market wants results. So, focus on resul ...Read More

Getting any senior leader on board is critical for any change, whether marketing automation or anything else we do in RevOps. Whenever we are dealing with larger initiatives, I like to use a decision-making framework (I prefer RAPID but RACI/DACI and others work as well). In most cases, for the big picture things RevOps teams are going to play the role of the R (and probably the P) whereas the sales or marketing exec will be the D. Within that program, you can be the D on specific implementation ...Read More

Simple as it seems, I think what really matter is that you present what's in it for them first and foremost. The marketing team will have a very specific POV for what really matters to them, generally some form of attribution of up funnel activities to sales outcomes that helps them to measure ROI. Automation, especially lead routing, is a huge benefit to the Marketing team. Around the ownership factor, I find it best to create clear lines around pieces of the data or tooling architecture that e ...Read More

I think it is important to understand the perspective of the marketing leader as to why they feel that they should control the workflow/automation. Is it because of the system that it is being executed in, or is it because of what actions they own in the process? My advice is first to seek to understand why they believe they should own the automation -- making sure to look at the big picture of the entire experience you are working to create, not just the sub-set automation of a point of the pro ...Read More

This is classic in any company and a very common situation any RevOps leader would need to face regularly, not only with marketing but with every other stakeholder in the company. In this particular case, and to ensure that your marketing leader (or any other stakeholder) will support and help advance your automation strategy, with regard to ownership and timing of process changes, an approach that is not only shared but also collaborative should be considered, and I would always start but recog ...Read More