Data is the fuel of your marketing activation or marketing automation strategy. To deliver personalized and engaging experiences to your customers, you need to be able to effectively collect, centralize and leverage your data. Your choice of platform must therefore be part of a resolutely data-centric approach.
First, make sure the solution is capable of centralizing your customer data. Your platform must be able to collect and make data from your various touchpoints interact: website, mobile app, social networks, physical points of sale, etc.
Unifying your data in your marketing automation solution will allow you to have a 360° view of your customers and their interactions with your brand.
Also check the possibilities offered by the tool in terms of segmentation. To what extent do the solutions you have pre-selected offer the possibility to create relevant audience segments, by crossing different criteria: demographic, behavioral, transactional, attitudinal data, etc.?
Segmentation makes it possible to target and personalize campaigns and messages. It is one of the core features of marketing activation solutions.
A marketing activation platform is used to activate data - a truism - but also to analyze it. So also pay attention to the analysis and reporting features offered by the platform.
A marketing activation solution must be able to provide you with dashboards to steer your marketing activity, your marketing automation scenarios, your campaigns.
There are three questions to ask about this:
Are the native reports offered in the platform customizable? If so, at what level and with what depth?
Is it possible to create 100% custom reports, via a drag & drop type editor?
Does the marketing automation solution offer connectors with business intelligence tools?
Another point of vigilance: don't forget to audit the compliance of the solution with the regulations in force on the protection of personal data (GDPR, in particular). Your platform must integrate features for managing consents, securing data and respecting individuals' rights.