The Best (Or Worst) Digital Marketing Tool — You Decide!

"The best marketers use automation to save themselves time, not save themselves work."

The bane of digital marketing ironically is also its boon: automation. A year or two ago, I remember speaking with a marketer who humble bragged to me about having "an email automation sequence that went out for almost a year."

I awkwardly smiled and nodded along, acting as if he was the genius he thought he was. Internally, however, I had an prophetic-like vision of him taking hundred dollar bills and lining it at the bottom of a ferret cage (I can neither confirm nor deny that this actually happened).

He explained to me that upon entering his email list, a new lead would receive a high frequency of emails that would slowly taper off over time. Starting from one email every day or two, it would transition into weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly emails over a span of 3-9 months that continues for about a year.

In theory, it appears to be sound, perhaps even genius — but here's the brown-stained underwear that he didn't want his girlfriend to know about: his emails many times went to spam and didn't convert (in some cases those are related, some not).

Why brag about a 'robust email sequence' that didn't convert prospects or maybe not even hit an inbox that didn't say "junk" in the recipient's email?

I have a few theories, but at this point it really doesn't matter. I did, however, find this to be a truly valuable lesson for any marketer or business owner that's looking to scale or streamline their business with lead nurturing automation.

So, where did Mr. Marketer's email extravaganza go wrong? Three key reasons:

1. Lack of personalization
2. Lack of engagement
3. Lack of quality

I'll cover these shortfalls more in-depth in future articles, discussing very specific strategies that you can implement into your workflows immediately to revolutionize the way you market to leads online.

For today, however, I'll focus on the bane and boon that is automation and why many business owners, like my friend Mr. Marketer, are misguided and misunderstand how to leverage it properly. And how the very best use it how it should be.

The Bane of Automation

“Ah you think darkness is your ally? You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!” - Bane, The Dark Knight Rises

As marketing automation popularized over the past decade or two, the marketers and sales experts before then had the blessing of needing to market without it. And yes, I did mean blessing.

Before, marketing hinged on maximizing your limited time on the best strategies and practices that had the most impact. With limited time in their schedules and even more limited technologies, growth experts couldn't waste time on tedious tasks that didn't help move the needle.

As a modern marketers, myself included, we've been immersed in automation from the beginning of many of our professional careers. Some say it's a privilege, I say, however, that it's a crutch.

As Bane in the Dark Knight Rises declares to Batman, "You merely adopted the dark (automation). I was born in (with) it, molded by it." And as we've been molded by automation, I'd say we've lost sight of best practices and good marketing principles as a result.

It's common for one to set up an automation to send out a 3 email follow-up sequence as: one email per week, at the same time, on the same day for three weeks, then forget about it. But is that truly the best?

If you were to do it manually and were looking to maximize your impact, would you be more thoughtful when you sent each email? Do research on the best times to send? Review your metrics to see what led to your best open rates? Then optimize those over time?

Almost definitely. Heck, you might even do research into the average work day of your avatar, attempting to learn when they typically check their emails based on their time zone, schedule, etc.

If you had to do everything manually, I bet you would try and make every moment of your time count.

And that's my point. Marketing is so much easier and faster with automation — and the novice does it flippantly. All because they can and feel like they should. Not because it's how they should.

We lose personality. Both our own and trying to appeal to theirs. We lose grasp of trying to engage with them and spark a conversation. Instead we blast emails in the form of e-billboards communicated at them, instead of communicating with them.

And then, we put all of our eggs in the automation basket, thinking our "lead machine" will just print us money while we kick our feet back. "It's automation, right? That's all we need to do?" Negative.

The best marketing strategies don't exist wholly on autopilot. Any top-tier marketing teams can attest to that. Find a fully automated growth machine in the professional services industry and I'll eat my shoe on my first LinkedIn live stream.

Long story short, automation can make us lazy, leading us to focus on quantity (more automated emails over a longer length of time, for example) over much needed quality.

Anywho... So, how do the most elite teams in marketing and sales leverage automation? It's not in any of the ways I've discussed so far.

The Boon of Automation

Now, let's look to the modern marketers that don't forget that they're standing on the shoulders of giants? These ones take the timeless principles of past marketing and sales legends and apply them to the present.

By then blending these with modern marketing and sales technology, they are empowered to do one key thing:

Use automation as a means of saving them time, not saving them work.

See, there's this misconception that automation is a magic solution –?wave your wand and leads convert into clients. But it's not that simple. Automation isn't a work-avoidance tool. It's a time-saver for those who know how to market.

Here's what promises that it can effectively bring to the table:

• Lead scoring: Keeping track of prospect engagement, allowing you to put a magnifying glass on the people that are most engaged in your funnel.
• Contact management: Segmenting and tagging your prospects based on the actions they take, their interests, and their demographics, and/or firmographics.
• Sparking conversations: Send targeted messages and content to send to people based on their preferred communication and giving them an opportunity to engage with you.
• Triggering notifications: Bringing you back in the loop when a manual or one-on-one action should happen, like sending a personalized email, text, or call.

Note that none of what I've mentioned doesn't mean you stop engaging with your audience one-to-one, sending timely content, personalizing your messages, or optimizing your efforts.

Quite the contrary. When used correctly, automation gives you more time to do just that.

With the right systems in place, you're now enabled to do a lot of the little things that most marketers tend to kick the can on. You can do so in a couple of ways that I've found to be the most impactful for our financial advisors:

1. Dig in to the metrics and understand what's leading to the most conversions within your business. There may very well be a trend that's distinct to your business. Once you've identified it, develop a process and scale towards that. This is ongoing, so modify your process as new data comes in so you're constantly improving over time.
2. Respond to and send individual emails, texts, or calls to your most engaged contacts. And no, I don't mean from your automation software. Have a member of your team crack open their email and send one directly and pick up the phone, texting, smiling and dialing. Devices recognize these types of communications differently from marketing emails or automated SMS and will get much better visibility.
3. Keep a pulse on the latest news in the market and send timely information that you can't automate. This is where the true value can come in and where you can rise above the rest of the competition. Anyone can send evergreen content on a timer –?but a real expert will provide real-time insights to help their leads and prospects stay abreast of the news that's impacting them.
4. Develop specific campaigns for prospects where they're at in the sales funnel and based on their engagement level. One of the most detrimental things you can do to your domain reputation (and brand reputation) is mass blast your entire subscriber list in perpetuity. Besides continuing to send emails to people that don't open (which will put your emails in spam), you're ditching opportunities to send highly targeted messages, content, and offers.

The tips you've just read are not theoretical. They're pulled from actual strategies and successes found in some of the best businesses I've seen around –?both in and outside of financial services. And it illustrates the main point of my article:

Automation doesn't save you work –?that's not what it's designed for.

If it does, you're likely missing out on some killer opportunities for growth. Think about automation as a full-time, unpaid intern that works 24/7, does tasks exactly the way you tell 'em to, and doesn't say things like "no cap," or "that slaps" (I literally still don't know what these things mean).

That's it! And I'd like to hear from you about your thoughts. Please send me a DM or comment below with what you think and if there's anything you had questions. Or better yet, what you would like to hear more about in the future.

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