| Because of the central role marketing plays in the success of any business through generating revenue and sales opportunities, there is a lot of pressure on the team to make the right hires. New team members have to be creative and also scientific. “Anyone involved with marketing automation will have both a scientific and an artistic skillset,” said Ashley Cover, Marketing Technology Leader for Siena Corporation, at a MarTech panel discussion. “There are workflow builds, data segmentations and analytics to deal with, and those key capabilities are key to the science of automation.” There are also artistic capabilities like email and landing page design, and even creative program development, she added. In searching for marketing professionals to fill all these roles, take some time to map out the different operations your team will be carrying out. “Every role within an automation team will gain an edge if you hire for both the art and science of automation,” Cover said. “You can look at the channels, you can look at email, somebody who’s going to do text marketing, messenger apps, etc. You also will need somebody to handle the development and creation of email, segmentation, and deal with data hygiene, people measuring analytics and measuring performance not just for email campaigns but across the platforms. And even [you’ll need] creative designers.” When hiring, it’s also important to identify how members of your marketing team will interact with others internally and externally, either when dealing with technology in the organization or carrying out other tasks. Steve Petersen, Marketing Technology Operations Manager for Western Governors University, advocates for an agile role approach to distinguishing specialized roles from integrated ones. The two basic types he uses under this approach are “T-shaped” and “I-shaped” roles. These roles come from software development, but they also can be useful in martech. Read more here. | 