- Title
- How should a marketing automation tool be embedded in a B2B company to yield improvements in the prospecting of valuable leads
- Creator
- Kolodziej, Jessica
- Subject
- Marketing automation, B2B marketing, Sales-marketing collaboration, Sales funnel, Prospecting, High quality dissertation
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Thesis
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10004/98013, http://hdl.handle.net.brad.idm.oclc.org/10004/98013, vital:4265, valet-20180112-130733
- Description
- The purpose of this research is to investigate how a marketing automation tool should be embedded in a business-to-business company to improve the prospecting of valuable leads. Currently, three main obstacles impede the prospecting activities: Commonly the marketing-sales collaboration is unsatisfactory, no joint understanding of valuable leads exists, and it is generally difficult to obtain the required information about prospective clients (Jävinen & Taiminen, 2016). However, marketing automation tools are believed to support overcoming these obstacles (Burka & Kelly, 2017). This research identifies success factors and inhibitors that influence the impact of marketing automation tools. Based on a qualitative research approach though semistructured in-depth interviews one company is investigated, while looking at employees of various positions to obtain multilateral insights on the company’s processes. The results clearly indicate that the marketing automation tool at the case company yields high potential to accelerate the prospecting activities. It was found to support a faster and more personalized customer approach, for example, through the automated lead routing or its connection to the customer relationship management system. Moreover, it provides a great foundation for cross-functional collaboration. However, the findings also support the notion that the implementation within a company’s processes highly influence its impact and that additional information sources also affect the prospecting activities, which has not yet been stated in the current body of literature. For example, marketing and sales employees need to agree on rules and minimum requirements of leads, but also maximum follow-up times should be determined and monitored. Thereby, this research provides succinctly an overview of the factors influencing the embedding of the marketing automation tool. Even though the external validity of this research may be limited, it provides a good foundation of practical research results and recommended implications for a future research agenda.
- Publisher
- Faculty of Management and Law, Marketing
- Language
- EN
- Relation
- Yes
- Rights
- © 2018 University of Bradford. All rights reserved
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Selected high quality dissertations
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | KOLODZIEJ 16023717 - MKT_Klausurlösung (1).pdf | 373 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | KOLODZIEJ 16023717.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |