Integrated task automation: How to build smarter, connected workflows across the enterprise with AI

Mastering digital marketing means knowing which tools can help you achieve your goals quickly and track efforts seamlessly. A marketer’s holy grail lineup typically includes many separate tools to span email marketing, content creation, social media, and more.

According to research, enterprises are using an average of a whopping 91 marketing cloud services. A total of 29% of marketers admit they have too many tools in their martech stack.

While these services can help with different marketing responsibilities, each of them is fragmented from one another, which can be confusing and time consuming for the marketer. 

McKinsey suggests only 1% of leaders call their companies “mature” on the deployment spectrum, referring to whether AI is fully integrated into workflows. Yet, according to research, activities that account for 10% to 15% of a marketing executive’s time can be automated. 

This is where integrated task automation comes in.

With marketers flicking through numerous websites and apps each day, whether it be Semrush for SEO purposes or Later for social media scheduling, integrating tasks into a workflow can be a time-saver.

What is integrated task automation?

Integrated task automation is when technology is utilized to carry out a series of tasks that are all connected together. A full workflow can be created through this type of automation, resulting in increased speed and output. 

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51% of employees spend at least two hours daily on repetitive tasks, according to a Formstack “State of Digital Maturity” report.

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Fifty-one percent of employees spend at least two hours daily on repetitive tasks. Much of the data-rich work could be automated to free up time for higher-level tasks that require creativity, judgment, and concentration, like strategy, campaign conceptualization, creative briefing, and so much more. 

But automation doesn’t discount the need for human involvement, especially since an omnichannel integration approach requires human intuition. Marketers are the ones who shape the narrative, determine the vision, and create and execute strategies.

When used correctly, integrated task automation can help marketers grow at scale, especially in fragmented martech stacks. Instead of data being stuck in numerous systems, they can be connected and give a unified view of different workflows. By bringing everything together into one CRM, this integration provides greater insight into everything from ideation to campaign launch.

Integrated vs. isolated automation: What is the difference?

Unlike integrated automation, where tasks across several platforms are connected together and automated into a sequence, isolated automation focuses on a standalone task in just one system.

An example of integrated automation is a connected workflow starting with lead capture, data cleaning, and segmentation. Automation could then also trigger an email sequence. The data from the lead capture, segmentation, and email marketing can then be connected into the sales team’s CRM.

On the other hand, isolated automation would simply focus on an email sequence within one platform. The data from the email sequence wouldn’t be passed onto another platform. When marketing tasks aren’t connected by automation, teams have to spend time going into each tool to export the data, analyze it, and manually send information through to the next stage or to relevant stakeholders.

With isolated automation including just one focus, which is usually repetitive tasks, there’s no connection or communication with other systems or processes. As such, it doesn’t become a sequence and can only solve one issue.

Why integrated task automation matters for enterprises and marketing tech stacks

At the heart of marketing is creativity, psychology, data analysis, and strategy. While the combination can make for a truly diverse role, there are many daily administrative tasks that can lead marketers to get bogged down in manual and repetitive work.

For example, while a campaign can be praised for its ingenuity, there are a lot of time-consuming operations behind the scenes, and these typically span multiple departments.

One campaign can include brand, content, email, performance, product, operations, event, and growth marketing. In a large enterprise, this could consist of over 200 people, creating a high risk of misunderstanding and confusion. 

Having integrated task automation sequences across campaign operations, lead routing, reporting, and more can keep everyone updated, boosts cross-team visibility, and simplifies optimization. It also streamlines the entire process and ensures no time is wasted with individual team members replicating manual data between the departments.

Relying on multiple platforms could also result in a high price tag, whereas integration automation can help lower system costs. A single integrated task automation tool has an annual or monthly cost, while multiple tools in isolation from each other come with separate price tags. This could mean paying numerous $250/$500 subscriptions every month versus a $5,000 annual bill for an integrated option.

Key benefits of integration-first automation

Reduced reliance on developer teams for repetitive tasks

When you find a way to incorporate automation into your practices that enhances employee experience rather than hinders it, you can achieve scalability and improved productivity.

Since automation is especially beneficial for repetitive tasks, you’re less reliant on developers or IT teams who likely have a long to-do list they would prefer to focus on. Website amendments, setting up new user profiles, and app/website performance optimizations are all timely activities that can sometimes get stuck in a backlog for non-marketing teams.

One example of an automation tool that alleviates dev team responsibility is Gumloop. It’s designed to automate any workflow without needing to bother the engineering team to set it up. 

Gumloop’s publicized use cases include SEO and social media marketing. It has a no-code interface, instead adopting an all-in-one AI workflow builder in a visual interface so complete personalization without coding experience is possible.

Quicker insights and improved team visibility

With automation, more people across teams can access and utilize information they’d normally have to wait for. When automated tasks can be integrated, the marketing team is able to move on to their next task more quickly, leading to greater team alignment and visibility.

Improved speed and accuracy, along with unified data and insights

Once processes are automated, they no longer require the manual transfer of data into larger reports. Manually inputting data can be a monotonous process and it’s prone to errors or delays. With automation, you reduce the risk of human error that comes with having to manually pull data from a tool into a wider report.

This accuracy means there are unified insights across all of the relevant platforms, with teams able to click into a system and have everything they need at their fingertips instead of waiting for another team to add, clean, and check the data.

Most common use cases of integrated task automation in marketing

Having the perfect integrated automation marketing stack comes down to what matters most to your marketing teams, but here are some popular use cases.

Campaign launch orchestration

This form of automation can be used across initial marketing campaign ideas (with tasks automatically generated, deadlines assigned, and teams notified), content production (review and approval, with nudges and alerts set), deployment setup, and more.

For example, a campaign focusing on a new product launch could utilize integrated automation to assign tasks for the product, copywriting, and legal teams. These can be generated in a CRM and tagged to the relevant people, with dates auto-calculated in the leadup to the proposed launch date. 

Once assigned, individual team members can start working on their tasks and add them back into the platform when they’ve been completed. 

Automation can be used across many campaign-related tasks, including within email (with templates able to be automatically created) and social media (ideas can be generated and posts scheduled). The automation can then remind decisionmakers or stakeholders to provide final approval and sign off.

Cross-platform reporting automation

Rather than spending time manually pulling together information from different tools, automation can do the job as it syncs across integrations. Once connected, the data can be mapped and added to relevant dashboards and reports.

Lead-to-account matching and routing

Assigning a lead to a specific account can take a lot of back-and-forth, but automatically routing it based on predefined rules can lead to better context and accuracy.

For example, when a new lead form is submitted, automation can capture the basic information before checking the details against existing records. 

If a match is found, any new details captured can be added to the corresponding file. If not, a new account can be created with the necessary information.

After being added or adjusted, an alert can be sent to the account manager who had previously contacted the lead. If this is a fresh lead, a new account manager can be assigned the task to reach out to the potential customer.

An example of a lead matching tool is Tray.ai. It takes the information from a website visit, verifies it against lead data within a marketing automation platform, and randomly assigns the lead amongst sales development professionals. 

It also automatically loads the lead into an outbound email sequencing tool, which drastically reduces the amount of time spent going back and forth between different platforms.

Data hygiene and enrichment tasks

Automation can assist with removing duplicates, standardizing formats, and fixing errors as data can sync directly into systems. These time-consuming jobs typically require flicking through a number of reports, but this isn’t the case when automation is in use.

Instead, a tool like Ataccama has built-in validation, cleansing, and remediation. Rules for key datasets and KPIs can be included, with the data validated to be tested against these elements. Values can be standardized (country codes, phone numbers, etc.) along with the information being integrated into existing workflows.

Multi-system trigger workflows

Automated sequences can be created starting from a trigger point, with workflows able to span several teams. Everyone from marketing operations to content marketing, sales, and even product-related departments can be involved. 

Automation is particularly helpful in email marketing. A new sign-up can prompt the user to be segmented as a new email subscriber, which would then automatically initiate email sends.

The user segmentation can be done to reflect where someone is at in the lifecycle. Suggested categories include new email sign-up, free trial user, demo requested, marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead, customer onboarding, customer at risk, churned, etc.

Depending on the lead status, you can automate the start of a welcome series waterfall email campaign or a re-engagement campaign.

Best practices for implementation

Implementing new technologies and systems can feel like looking at a mountain to climb, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Follow the best practices below to set your team up for a smooth transition.

Start with the highest-friction, cross-functional tasks

Focus on tasks that are repetitive, time-consuming, energy-sucking, and frustrating for team members. Audience segmentation, data cleaning, content distribution to different platforms, and customer journey orchestration all benefit from integration and automation.

Not only will streamlining these tasks provide tangible results and higher productivity, it can boost team morale as they’re no longer doing menial tasks that can be completed quicker with technology. And, as previously mentioned, automating these monotonous activities makes them less prone to errors once they’re standardized.

Map current manual workflows before automating

There’s no point in automating for the sake of it—preparation plays an important role in the overall success of any integration. By understanding the full process and looking at the workflow from start to finish, you gain greater clarity on decision-making aspects, exceptions, and bottlenecks. 

Identify the high-friction, cross-functional task you want to automate, then write down which teams contribute to the task. Consider the task’s necessary elements (what input is required and what’s the goal for the outcome of the task) and jot them down so they can be replicated in automation.

During the mapping phase, you’ll identify opportunities to optimize the workflow. This bird’s-eye approach highlights inefficiencies that can inspire you to figure out a quicker or more accurate way of working.

Mapping manual workflows also allows the opportunity to estimate how many team hours are currently devoted to these tasks. When automation is in use, an estimation or calculation of the amount of time spent should be done again to compare and see how much time has been saved by using integrated task automation. 

The time difference can be equated to money saved, with the figure being valuable to decisionmakers as it shows that investing in the tool is worthwhile.

Leverage low-code/no-code tools for agility

According to research from McKinsey, 48% of employees agree that formal gen AI training from their organizations would make them more likely to increase day-to-day usage of gen AI tools. But while it feels like everyone has adopted some form of AI in the past few years, that’s not the case universally, as some still feel uncomfortable picking it up. 

There’s no point investing time and energy into bringing in new technology if no one’s able to use it. To help ease concerns, consider choosing tools that require little to no coding for greater adoption. This will allow the team to get started quicker without having to pick up coding skills or rely on other departments (engineering, dev, IT) to get them up to speed.

Keep in mind that dev-heavy tools do have many benefits, including more granular control and customized compliance and data privacy that align with company requirements.

But while these features are valuable and certainly have their place, plug-and-play solutions can allow more people in the team to get involved (with less time spent training on tools), so the execution of campaigns and marketing activities can be done at speed. Not only will this allow tasks to be completed quicker, it can empower marketing teams as it removes the element of reliance.

Once you’ve selected a tool, roll out training or documentation to give your team a rundown of the basics. When choosing a tool to utilize, look out for an easy-to-understand onboarding process that can be passed onto the team ahead of time.

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Pro tip: To ensure the best ease of use, focus on tools that include user-friendly interfaces, pre-built templates, and clear documentation.

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Ensure governance and change management planning

Even if the tasks are centered around pre-defined processes, they require some level of governance. This is where sustainable growth and transparency across the organization can really come into play.

Designate an overall project manager who’s able to oversee the workflow and ensure everything is running smoothly. Next, assign relevant employees to each step throughout the workflow curation process as a great way to build with governance in mind. 

Individual team members are able to take clear ownership over specific tasks. Everyone will know who’s accountable for each action and who they should go to if they have any questions. There should be documentation and version history for each stage, with the processes able to be easily explained.

Once integrated task automation has been rolled out, it needs monitoring. Use KPIs, metrics, alerts, and dashboards. Regular reviews are important too, so set aside time to ensure the automation is helping and not causing additional issues.

For example, identify metrics to review (number of failed automation steps, CRM sync failures, email delivery success rate, etc). Enable notifications to occur if something goes wrong so relevant stakeholders can be alerted and respond quickly.

In emails, this could be a notification for if an email bounce rate exceeds 5%. Or maybe daily lead volumes into the CRM have taken a nosedive, prompting an alert.

Build feedback loops for iterative optimization

Just a few years after ChatGPT launched and other tools started to become more mainstream, AI fatigue is already trickling into workplaces.

A consistent feedback loop should always be added to ensure the automation is supporting people as it should and not resulting in hidden problems, like customers receiving emails with the incorrect name or data failing to sync correctly into the CRM. These errors can spiral into much larger issues if they go unaddressed.

Consider the full workflow of the automation and the touchpoints of each step. Which teams use it in the beginning compared to those at the end? All of those people should be involved in the feedback loop. Collect their thoughts so the process can be optimized to be as helpful as possible. Otherwise, AI has the potential to compound issues rather than solve them if feedback goes unaddressed.

Each month, the assigned automation owner of the specific steps should monitor workflow failures, sync errors, and performance. Someone who manages email marketing, for example, should be looking out for missing fields in the CRM, how many new emails have been added, bounce rates, and if the segmentation is correct.

Selecting the right platforms and tools

There’s a range of platforms and tools out there that aim to speed up and de-mystify complex processes, but not all will be right for every business.

Platforms	Workato	Tray.ai	Zapier Enterprise	Make
Ease of use, according to G2	9.1/10	8.2/10	8.6/10	8.5/10
Integrations	Has a custom integration platform and pre-built connectors to integrate with thousands of SaaS apps, databases, and ERPs, both on-prem and in the cloud	“Tray can connect to practically any software that has an API – including REST-based and SOAP-based APIs”	Can connect 300+ AI tools to nearly 8,000 everyday apps	Over 2,000 pre-built apps; can connect to any app that offers an API by using its HTTP app
Tasks	Not listed	Up to 750K as starter task credit on Enterprise level; can go over	Up to 2M or custom limits can be discussed	Up to 2M
Governance	Role-based access control, AutomationHQ, environment separation, sensitive data masking, and more	Role-based access control, workspace partitioning, log-streaming, audit trails	Role-based access controls, SSO/SCIM provisioning, comprehensive audit logs, data retention, and security controls	Audit logs, access control, data center, coding and development standards
Security	SCIM user management, SSO/SAML-based authentication, Just-In-Time (JIT) provisioning, two-factor authentication, session security, and account and user management APIs	Encryption at rest, site-to-site VPN, single sign on, compliance for sensitive data	AWS cloud security, bug bounty program, annual third-party penetration tests, security logging and monitoring, custom data retention for Zaps, encryption in transit to all Zapier products, encryption at rest	On-prem agent, single sign-on, data in transit, data at rest, penetration testing by independent third parties, vulnerability management processes

Governance, security, and scaling concerns

To keep everything running as it should, governance, security, and scalability should be considered in the setup process.

In today’s world, cybersecurity crimes are prevalent regardless of business size. Research states 46% of all breaches impact businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees.

With this in mind, look out for systems with role-based access control (RBAC), as they will only allow individuals to access the information necessary to them. RBAC protects data from being either maliciously or accidentally altered while keeping sensitive information as safe as possible.

Every use of the automation, as well as amendments, should be trackable, with audit logs necessary for compliance. Other features to look out for include encryption, version control, and approval flows.

When using automation to scale, the new integrations must be able to track failures, timeouts, and errors. Identify the reason behind the errors so the business can improve as the technology is adjusted.

Frameworks to implement to include and align stakeholders

Changing any part of the business, especially one that brings in new technology, requires open communication with all those who should be informed.

Explain aims, goals, and objectives

When any significant change is made, open communication enables people to understand the thought processes behind the decision.

Being informed early on can encourage full support, especially when the rationale is shared and understood. This then becomes a business-focused initiative rather than a technology project.

These stakeholders should include leadership teams across marketing operations, data, and content. IT and security stakeholders should be included too, along with legal and compliance.

Some people are concerned about the ethics of automation and AI, so explaining the intended benefits (speed, accuracy, being less reliant on IT) could improve understanding over its use.

There are worries that AI will take over jobs. While AI can handle menial tasks, marketing requires human nuance. Being transparent about the intentions of integrating task automation is vital as it can help to reduce uncertainty.

Decide on a review process

In the first meeting with stakeholders, a timeline should be discussed for implementing a tool and deciding on a review process. The reviewing stage should include assessing errors, speed and accuracy in marketing workflows, and feedback from the teams involved.

The review process keeps everyone involved on track and accountable, allowing them to see the difference the automation is making in the business.

It also provides an opportunity for stakeholders to provide input and share any necessary improvements. If someone is unsure of how the automation will be used, it’s a valuable learning experience for those rolling out the tool to team members.

Consider what hasn’t been correctly understood and create documentation (FAQ or user guides) in case others on the team struggle in the future.

Continue open discussions

Even after the specified elements have been automated and workflows are in full flow, the entire team and stakeholders should be made aware when changes occur.

Relay relevant metrics and KPIs and tweak the tool if something isn’t working as it should. This could mean changing the automation to better suit the desired outcome.

Your report should start with an overview of basic campaign information (e.g., workflow/campaign name, reporting period, objective, owner of the task/campaign, tools used).

Next, it’s time to get into the metrics. Depending on the use case, you should include the main metric (time taken to complete, lead conversion rate, email open rate, etc.) alongside a percentage from the current reporting period versus the previous, as well as a percentage change and a target.

Finally, add takeaways and concerns to the report alongside notes on what’s working well and what isn’t. This information can form the basis of the adjustments and recommendations to keep everything running as it should.

Next steps: Adding integrated task automation into your martech stack

According to research from CoSchedule, nine out of 10 marketers are set to ramp up AI integration this year. Another study by Epsilon shows 75% of those not currently using AI are planning to adopt it within the next year. With the news being full of newly released AI-powered martech products hitting the market each month, it can feel like an overwhelming feat to start introducing them into the workforce.

While it may feel daunting, integrated task automation isn’t as scary as it might seem. Once you’ve chosen your tool that’s within budget, is cross-functional, and can carry out all of the tasks you may need, start by being transparent about the upcoming use of automation to stakeholders. Explain the benefits and how teams worldwide are starting to adopt automation or AI of some kind. 

To learn more about making use of marketing tools and not getting left behind by your competition, check out our how-to guide for using AI marketing tools to automate and scale your strategy.