Overview

One of my favorite things about being a marketing operations consultant is that I get to work with a variety of marketing automation platforms and help clients get the most out of their investment in the platform. It’s sort of like a big puzzle that I get to come in and figure out how to put together, and that process usually starts with auditing the client’s MAP (marketing automation platform). And we get a mix of reactions. Some simply nod their head in agreement knowing that what we identified is an issue and has been an issue for quite some time. Other times clients are taken back by our findings because they had no idea something was happening in their instance and is even causing many downstream errors.

Regardless of the reaction, a MAP audit is the first and most important step in building a world-class instance that runs like a well-oiled machine. Let’s talk about how we do that here at Etumos.

What is a MAP Audit?

Let’s start with the basics: a MAP Audit is an effort to identify and document everything happening and living in your marketing automation platform. This could be anywhere from who the billing contact is at your company for the vendor, all the way to identifying a deactivated automation/workflow that last ran five years ago. The whole purpose is to provide visibility into every single corner of your platform to ensure you and your stakeholders know exactly what you do well, what you can improve upon, and where you’re completely missing the mark.

But you don’t just document the findings and never do anything with them. The next step is, based on those findings, assessing the quality of each component of your platform. This is where you truly figure out, as mentioned above, what you do well, what you can improve upon, and where you’re missing that work. It can be a shocking realization, but a necessary one at the end of the day.

Finally, you then take those scores and develop a project plan to tackle each of the issues at hand. And the best part? You already have it prioritized based on the scores you determined in the previous step. Voilá!

Why should companies take on a MAP Audit?

MAP audits are critical to the success of a marketing operations department, as there are numerous operational efficiencies that can be achieved, and benefitted from across an organization, when you better understand what you’re working with. Some of those benefits are:

1. You get the most out of your investment in the platform. Let’s be honest, you’re spending time, money, and resources by simply owning a MAP at your company, and it’s not a small amount of any of those. It only makes sense you are achieving high ROI on that investment, right? With an audit, you can identify gaps, inefficiencies, and even more opportunities to use a feature you haven’t been getting the most out of.
2. You identify opportunities to cut costs. We often come across old users, old integrations, or old contacts that are no longer needed and haven’t been needed for some time. Unfortunately, our clients have been paying for each of these without even knowing it. With tighter budgets these days it’s critical to spend money wisely. An audit helps you identify those budget-suckers and sets you on a path to making sure that never happens again.
3. You reduce and/or eliminate potential security risks. When you review your instance you likely will find a lot of skeletons in the closet. Old integrations, old users, the list goes on. Both of these may pose a significant security risk, and your IT team likely won’t be thrilled to hear this has been going. Again, an audit will catch these things and put an end to it.
4. You eliminate your heaping mounds of tech debt. You might be starting to sense a theme here, but your instance will also likely have a lot of old automations, old fields, and old assets to name a few. If you’re bound to a limit on any of these within your contract you probably are making life harder on yourself than it has to be. And in the event you and your company decide to switch to another platform, you run the risk of adding a significant amount of time onto your project to review all of this tech debt. In doing an audit, you identify and remove the debt here and now to make yourself more nimble for the future.

When should a company do a MAP Audit?

Our time is very precious within marketing operations. One second you’re putting out a fire to assist one department, and the next you’re brought into a meeting on a highly visible cross-functional project. You may not necessarily have the time right now to take on an audit project, but it doesn’t have to be done all at once. You can do it over the course of a couple weeks and/or months, but the key is to be consistent and promote the importance of the audit using the benefits listed above.

More specifically, though, here are the junctures that I have identified where it may make most sense to take on an audit or where you may have a bit more time on your hands:

1. First joining a company. You want to make a splash at your new organization, and what better way to demonstrate your value than by digging in and finding what needs to be fixed. Your first few weeks will likely be slower as you start to ramp up, and during that time you can show initiative and present your findings to your leadership team. Chances are they will appreciate the fresh perspective and feel good about hiring you on.
2. Planning your team’s OKRs. For the seasoned veterans out there who have been at their company for a while, OKRs are a great way to demonstrate your impact on and value to the business, something that can be a tad difficult to do in an operations role. OKRs also offer a great opportunity to indicate to the business you need time allocated to this because it affects a lot of other teams. Once leadership begins to see that, it’s likely they ensure you have the time to get this effort done. At this point you have a lot of visibility into your effort and other departments understand the importance of it – a win for everybody.
3. At renewal for your current platform. You might be likely to simply renew with your current platform because it’s already implemented and your organization is most familiar with it. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean everything has to be the same for this contract. You may be able to negotiate a lower price if you do things like delete unused contacts, identify features that you don’t use and ask for those to be removed, and lower your user count within the platform.

How should a company go about their MAP Audit?

Lucky for you, we have done upfront work to make your job easier when it comes to auditing your MAP instance. As you know, there’s a lot that goes on within a MAP, and when you take on the process yourself it’s possible you may forget to include an important component within your audit.

That’s why we created the MAP Audit Scorecard to guide you through the process. This same scorecard is what we use here at Etumos when we audit our client’s MAPs, so it has been vetted and ensures you aren’t missing a single thing to review throughout your process. The best part? It’s not specific to one MAP in the industry, so you can customize it to your specific needs and platform.

When accessing the scorecard, you’ll first find the Audit Summary tab. This is essentially the HQ for your audit process, as it holds the scores you gave each component of your MAP instance and will help determine the priority of items on your roadmap. To determine those scores, there are also 20+ tabs that each review an individual component within the platform. There are a variety of formats within the component tabs, as well. Some are simply documenting the current state, others are identifying immediate action items to be taken, and others require analysis that feeds into a larger strategy. All of these items together provide you and your team a one-stop-shop to house findings, action items, and next steps to get you where you want to be.

Be sure to download The Ultimate MAP Audit Scorecard so you can get started on your audit today!

Conclusion

Auditing your marketing automation platform is no small task, but it’s ultimately an effort that you will reap the benefits from for many years to come. If you ever need a partner to walk through the process with you, or even how to execute on the work after the audit, we will always be here to help.

If you’re interested in learning more about audits, be sure to check out our on-demand webinar How to Audit your Way to a Best-in-Class MAP.