Marketing automation will make the marketer’s life easier.
Not because of your new found ability to communicate with 100s of customers in the time it may have taken you to communicate with one.
Not because of your ability to tailor each piece of communication with ‘Hi Jeff’ rather than ‘Dear Sir/Madam’.
Not because of the methods that allow you to measure the click thru rate of each and every message you send.
Not because of the time you will save no longer having to pull data from different sources to present to the board each month.
The reward of marketing automation
The true reward of marketing automation is your ability to make the life of your customer easier. To help guide them through a daunting and often complex decision making process. To freely offer advice. To make that relationship between you and your customer personal. The marketer’s life only becomes ‘easier’ when you reward your customer (not when you believe your customer’s actions rewards you).
Before you remove the wrapping
When you finally receive sign-off, approval to invest budget in marketing automation software, there’s the natural tendency to jump right in. To ‘prove’ your persistence and deliver results. Everyday I see the trappings of marketing automation:
- the laboured call-to-action offering me a free download without telling me what that download will offer me
- the confirmation email thanking me for the ability to now market directly to me
- the repetitive message within the remarketing campaign telling me how I should download a ‘must read’ brochure without telling me why
Marketing automation has a natural tendency to force us to view customers as numbers. The true success of automation is the ability to treat those numbers as customers. Real people. Real questions. Real needs. Respond to those needs and answer those questions. Utilise automation software to help you to isolate those needs and questions rather than working on assumption. That’s how automation process will make your life easier… and your customers.
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