Marketing Automation Fails to Watch Out For

Your marketing automation efforts may fail due to technical issues, but most likely it’s because of user error. Marketing automation is only as powerful as the skill of the person using it. Jamie Lewis, a Solution Consultant at Marketo, wrote a piece called 4 Reasons Why Marketing Automation Fails that highlights some of the biggest marketing automation mistakes that lead to failure.

You aren’t treating your target audience as individuals.

Not using demographics, personalization, and user preferences in your email sends is the first step to your campaign’s demise. Treat your contacts as unique individuals by sending them personalized content, based on their unique interests and behaviors. What works for one person won’t exactly work for another. Your emails must feel like a 1:1 conversation, otherwise you run the risk of losing their interest.

User behavior is not being used to target the audience.

Another degree of granularity is using behavior-based triggers in your marketing automation. If you do not use these kinds of triggers, you miss opportunities to connect users with relevant content. Use functions like lead scoring that are included in marketing automation software. Watch how your contacts interact with your campaigns and respond with content that matches their interests.

Your marketing efforts aren’t designed to meet key business objectives.

Jamie mentions that the biggest mistake marketers can make is “not tracking key performance indicators back to corporate business objectives.” Instead of only tracking email marketing metrics like click-through rates, you need to track how your campaigns impact financial performance. Show how your marketing efforts positively affect the company’s bottom line.

You aren’t focusing on the channels your buyers frequent.

There are a lot of marketing channels. You need to know which ones your audience frequently uses. Jamie says that your goal isn’t to have a presence on every marketing channel but to learn where your audience prefers to engage with you. If your main demographic is millennials, don’t use direct mail but social media instead. Focusing on the right channels improves your efficiency because you aren’t wasting time and energy on unimportant channels.

Marketing automation fails when you don’t learn about your customers and when you don’t relate your performance back to financial impact. Turn your campaigns around by using personalization, creating behavior-based campaign triggers, showing how your campaigns affect return on investment, and learning where your users engage you.