Marketing Automation RFP Template That Exposes Hidden Costs Before You Sign
Specific RFP questions that reveal API overage traps, integration failures, and billing gotchas vendors leave out of the demo.
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Marketing Automation RFP Document
8 sections · Generated by Complivex
Platform Performance and Scale
Questions about campaign processing times, database limits, and how performance degrades as contact count grows from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of records.
Integration Capabilities and Limitations
Specific requirements for Salesforce sync, webinar platforms, and API rate limits, with concrete examples of data that has to flow between systems.
Pricing Transparency and Hidden Costs
Direct questions about contact-counting methodology, API overage fees, and features that require plan upgrades not shown in initial demos.
Implementation and Migration
Realistic timeline estimates, data migration capabilities, and professional services requirements with specific deliverables and success criteria.
User Management and Security
Permission models, audit capabilities, and compliance features needed for marketing teams with varying access levels and roles.
Reporting and Attribution
Multi-touch attribution capabilities, custom dashboard creation, and data export limitations that affect ability to prove marketing ROI.
Email Deliverability and Compliance
IP reputation management, GDPR and CAN-SPAM compliance tooling, and email rendering quality across Outlook, Gmail, and mobile clients. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC alignment is table stakes.
Support and Training
Response time SLAs, onboarding process detail, and ongoing training resources, with specific examples of complex issues likely to need help.
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View the worked exampleWhat's Included
47 Vendor-Tested Questions
Questions refined through many marketing automation evaluations that force vendors to admit platform limitations and hidden costs before contract signature.
Scoring Framework with Weights
Pre-built evaluation criteria weighted by importance (performance, integration, pricing) based on what actually matters in production environments.
Response Analysis Guide
How to identify vendor dodges, non-answers, and red flags, with specific examples of strong responses versus sales deflections for each question.
Contract Negotiation Checklist
Contract terms to negotiate, including API overage caps, implementation timeline SLAs, and data export guarantees that protect against vendor lock-in.
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Why This Template
- Exposes API rate limit gotchas that drive material annual overage fees, including specific questions about what counts as an API call that vendors typically obscure until after signature.
- Forces vendors to demo with your actual messy data instead of a polished sandbox, surfacing performance issues and duplicate detection failures before you're locked in.
- Includes contract terms that prevent billing surprises like 'mailable database' counts that include unsubscribed contacts and forced sales-suite upgrades to enable attribution.
- Tests integration reality with questions about Salesforce sync timing, webhook reliability, and error handling that separate platforms that actually work from demo-ware.
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