Ever notice how major bridges are usually “under construction?” Building and maintaining a bridge is a continuous process that requires different skill sets and resources. After bridge completion, painting, paving, and other projects start at one side of the bridge until they are finished at the other end—then the projects start again.
THE RIGHT TEAM
Building a team with the right expertise to support initial and ongoing nurture initiatives is very similar to the bridge analogy. Companies need a team of professionals to ensure the journey is developed, managed, and maintained properly. When developing your team, consider the following roles which can be held by one or multiple team members. Depending on your expertise levels, you may want to outsource some of these roles to scale faster.
Alignment is Key. Make sure all these roles align with the same nurturing vision. We’ve seen companies who build the strategy, the architecture, and the journey only to fall flat when it came to the Content Owners providing the required content to build the journey.
| Role | Description | Outsource Considerations |
| Visionary | This role spearheads the big-picture vision of what the customer journey should look like. | Most enterprises leverage internal expertise and subject matter experts to create the company strategy. Usually, the CMO or Director of Marketing fills this role. |
| Project Manager | An often-overlooked role, project managers keep the initial project on track and manage ongoing content and operational requests. | For companies wishing to create a centralized ticketing system for content development and nurturing operations, those companies may consider using an agency that already has those processes in place. |
| Strategist / Architect | The architect provides the technical vision for bringing the nurturing strategy to life with marketing automation technology. | This role requires short-term specialized expertise that is usually filled best by external specialists who specialize in nurturing architecture. |
| Marketing Operations | Marketing operations is responsible for ensuring nurture program information and associated data are aligned with the rest of the system. | Best-in-class organizations leverage a mix of internal and external resources to balance specialized expertise vs internal knowledge. |
| Campaign Operations | New or updated content is given to campaign operation team members who set up the emails, test links, add brand elements, and execute campaigns. | Executional in nature, larger companies tend to outsource this role to ensure quality while scaling the business. |
| Content/Business Owners | Content owners manage and/or develop content email copy customized for the customer journey. | This role is usually performed internally by subject matter experts. |
Questions Checklist
- Are team members aligned on the goals and expectations?
- Does your organization have the resources to scale?
- Should your organization rely on internal or external expertise? Is the role core to your organization?
- How is quality controlled as people move from one position to another?
THE RIGHT PROCESS
Processes that Ensure Quality Control
A service desk request management application such as Asana would be used as a central hub for the intake of requests where all – client and Digital Pi – will have a role and responsibility with all projects and tasks would be approached in multiple phases.
Project Management Keeps Projects on Track
With so many requests coming in, make sure to adopt processes that track deadlines and timeframes to keep the project on track.
Does your company have the processes in place to deliver email content?
- Are quality controls in place to manage and develop ongoing content requests?
- What is the process for refreshing content?
- Are QA processes established for link checking, list management, format checking and other email quality checks?