Psychologists say a little self-talk is normal and healthy. For your marketing automation platform, though, it’s essential. With so many moving parts, how does your MARKETING AI® keep itself together? Your centralized marketing database is its nerve center and communications hub, and it ensures that your sales and marketing efforts are part of an integrated whole.
Specialized but Integrated
Specialization used to be the watchword for business technology, and that made sense at the time with less powerful tools. By specializing, marketers and sellers could have dedicated platforms that supplied detailed information. Technology has moved on since then, and there’s no longer a need to separate data to allow greater depth. That means older sales, marketing, and customer service records often wind up on isolated platforms, fracturing what should be a single comprehensive customer care database.
Marketing database services migrate data from these walled gardens to your marketing automation platform when you upgrade to it, putting knowledge at every department’s fingertips.
Communicating Your Core Message
When every part of your MARKETING AI is able to communicate with its corresponding sub-systems, you’re able to provide holistic customer care. To see how consistent care looks from a buyer’s perspective, think about how many people interact with a new lead from the time that prospect first visits your site. Content creators, list managers, email marketing managers, sellers, customer care representatives – that’s a long pipeline for buyers to navigate to reach the point of a sale. Now, imagine how much more complex that path becomes when contact people don’t know what their counterparts in other departments have shared.
With a marketing database that’s able to talk to itself, you don’t need to put forth the effort to get departments moving in the same direction. Most of the process is automated, including collection of behavioral data and upkeep of contact information. The marketing side of your integrated platform gets feedback from sales histories, enhancing lead scoring and lead nurture programs. The sales side receives a complete and detailed look at individual leads. At every step of the way, your personnel are able to guide leads through their buying journey and beyond.
Continuing the Conversation
Your database talks to itself, but it also needs to make sense to the people who access it. To keep the flow of data from overwhelming users with too much information, marketing automation systems also include customizable front ends and dashboards for each department. You get to keep the detail of specialization with the power of centralization.
If your marketing and sales solutions aren’t able to talk to each other and themselves, it’s time to find a platform that can. Your MARKETING AI can learn a lot from talking to itself.
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