Marketing Automation: Genius or Lazy?

As technology develops, automated marketing activity is becoming increasingly popular. But what exactly is it and is it actually beneficial??

The Digital Marketing Institute (2022) defined marketing automation as a term which generally describes the use of a platform which automates certain activities across email marketing, social media, customer relationship management (CRM) and more. In plain English, that means if my customer does "X" I want "Y" to happen – automatically.?

The main aim of marketing automation is to reduce repetitive tasks, personalise campaigns and segment customers based on their position in the customer journey. By saving time with certain logistical elements of campaigns, more time can be spent on creativity and ensuring the best impact from your marketing efforts.?However, it is important to note that automated marketing may not be relevant to your business or product and not everything can or should be automated since one size doesn’t fit all.?

Automated Marketing Examples

1. Email Marketing?

For B2C companies, automated email marketing activity can include anything from personalised welcome emails and abandoned cart reminders to birthday discounts or asking for feedback. Some of these automations can also apply to B2B marketing along with re-sending to non-openers and automatically assigning sales leads to the correct member of the team.

Along with automated tagging and segmentation, these email campaigns can be very specifically tailored depending on customer interests and content they have engaged with previously.?Creating these automated campaigns ensures that each customer receives a targeted series of emails improving loyalty and return on investment without having to manually create campaigns each time.?Parameters can also be set to stop contacting?a cold lead to ensure we aren’t spamming those who have lost?interest?in our business and instead focus?our efforts on prospective and engaged customers. That said, there are also campaigns which can be implemented to help re-engage customers after a certain period of inactivity.?

2. Integrated Marketing Activity?

Marketing automation platforms can often be integrated with multiple channels to help ensure an omni-channel approach without much manual contribution.?For example, an automation could be set up to create a custom audience on Facebook of those who have signed up for a newsletter. Meaning that paid Facebook and Instagram campaigns can be easily targeted to customers already engaged with your business. An added element could include a personalised site message for when that customer visits your website again to welcome them back and direct them to a page based on their interests.?In doing this, we can ensure multiple touchpoints for a campaign that are extremely targeted and tailored to each customer's interests, saving time manually setting customer demographics and contributing to a better return on marketing investment.

How not to use automated marketing

The key to setting up automated marketing is that it is only relevant when it can be used for standardised activity and targeted and personalised in a meaningful way. For example, welcome messages for new customers may always be relevant to your company and nurturing customer relationships but automated responses to negative reviews or complaints are not the best way to deal with that situation.?Overall?by automating repetitive tasks and campaigns, we can allow ourselves more time to be creative, and innovative and to nurture 1-to-1 customer relationships as necessary.

In conclusion, if you are finding repetitive tasks and campaigns within your marketing role then?investing in marketing automation software could be the way forward for your organisation. But, ALWAYS make sure to test, test, test your automation and campaigns. The last thing you want is to send an email to a customer with the wrong name or a ‘we’ve missed you’ discount when they’re already a highly engaged customer.