Published on August 19, 2016/Last edited on August 19, 2016/6 min read
Marketing automation technology is widely being used to achieve effective personalization at scale and higher returns on marketing efforts. But like all SaaS technology, it’s crucial to pick the right system for your company. That means not only outlining your marketing needs, but making sure that the system is compatible with your app, website, and other systems.
The best colleague to help with this aspect of your vendor search is your developer or development team. It will be essential for the marketing platform to sync up with your website and app, so you need your developer involved in selection. Engineers will likely come up with different questions than yours and you may encounter some resistance or have different opinions about which system is best.
We’ve put together a few tips to help you work with your developer during the search process to pick the best system for your company.
One common push back from developers: “Why do we need to buy this system when we could build something ourselves?” While many engineers could build something in-house, there are several good reasons for investing time and money in an existing system.
While working with a mobile marketing vendor will save time in the long run, there will be up front time costs and your development team will certainly be involved in SDK implementation and integrations.
It may seem like a good idea to save developers time early on by keeping them out of the loop during your search, but this can lead to frustrations later in the process. Before you dive in, talk with your developer about key questions to ask, functionalities that are crucial for your existing systems, and how he/she would like to be involved in the search.
Once you’ve mapped your most important components, be sure to check in periodically during the process, and especially as you start to narrow to top contenders, so that your developer can weigh in again. Some companies outsource to app developers so involving them in the search may turn into added hours that you’ll need to consider in your budget.
It falls to developers to implement any changes needed by the marketing team so they will likely have some technical questions during your search. Each system is different so your developer will have other questions beyond the below, but here are a few things they will likely want you to investigate:
Outside of developer-specific needs, here are a couple other things to consider during your search:
Change can be hard but bringing on a new marketing software system that will help you reach your goals is worth the time and effort. The best thing you can do for your team is to make the decision carefully and consult with key colleagues to make sure it will work for you now and in the future.
If you encounter resistance on development, or feel discouraged during the search, focus on the long-term picture. Outsourcing this component frees up resources for more productive work on a company’s core focus in the short-term, reduces technical debt in the long term, and reduces marketing’s reliance on valuable developer time. When developers can be creative about problem solving on their app versus creating new systems from scratch, it increases productivity and autonomy.
Wondering what other questions you should be asking to pick the best marketing vendor? Check out the Buyer’s Guide to Choosing a Mobile Marketing Automation Solution for more hard-hitting questions to ask vendors.