Whether your marketing automation instance is brand new, or you’ve had it for years, many marketers find themselves looking to improve their ability to leverage their systems to the fullest. Data architecture complexities, resource constraints, and internal politics create even more obstacles than you envisioned when you set out to create a tech stack that helps you understand and drive ROI.

So how do you overcome those obstacles and create an ecosystem that aligns your teams (especially your sales team and marketing team), improves efficiency, reduces repetitive tasks, and frees up time from your brightest employees to do what they do best? Here are our tips on how to get the most out of your marketing automation platform.

Turn your marketing automation tool into an analytics engine

One of the best ways to maximize the return on your MarTech investment is to create an analytics strategy that is enforced through your marketing automation technology stack. To ensure your metrics are trusted throughout the organization, first create alignment with stakeholders across departments on KPIs and a defined measurement strategy. Although your hub may be categorized as a marketing platform, you may have the ability to thoroughly analyze both marketing and sales performance with attribution and lifecycle analytics. This will help you enhance your marketing automation strategy and help your organization scale to new heights.

Integrate your platform with your CRM and place it in your data architecture

A key prerequisite to gathering trusted metrics around marketing and sales is first determining your approach to data and systems architecture. If your business is B2B or involves a considered purchase, the most critical integration will be with your CRM. Without integrated sales and marketing data, your ability to understand your target demographic, carry out proper segmentation, and ultimately provide your prospects and customers with an exceptional customer experience will be nearly impossible. CRM integration will help you in lead generation, lead nurturing, lead scoring, and lead management. Your marketing automation software needs to be able to integrate with other powerful tools. If your systems aren’t integrated or are poorly integrated today, take this opportunity to build alliances across other departments. In addition to the advantage of unified data, these alliances will allow you to create holistic marketing campaigns and effective messaging strategies that will address diverse perspectives.

Use it as a compliance management hub

Compliance regulations are ever-changing, and the recent election ushered in the latest changes for the state of California, which will prevent businesses from sharing and selling personal information about their customers. Looking 5,500 miles to the east, the European Union is far ahead of the United States when it comes to creating regulations that protect consumer data and privacy. Fines in the EU can reach 10M Euros or 2% of global turnover and with so much customer data stored and activated in your marketing automation system, you may already be taking advantage of the compliance capabilities.

If your compliance management strategy doesn’t yet include your marketing automation platform, you may consider revisiting the data available throughout your various systems. Marketing automation systems at a bare minimum should support processes around country-specific opt-in standards and the right to be forgotten. At best, they activate and facilitate compliance across the rest of your stack as it relates to your ability to communicate with and share or store personal information.

There are hundreds of strategies and tactics for getting the most out of your platform investment. Your ability to execute may be determined by your maturity stage. Interested in learning where you stand when it comes to marketing technology maturity? Take our assessment to get your free maturity evaluation!