Without automation to handle all your datasets, measure your marketing tasks and workflows, organize data segments, touchpoints, and tiring manual tasks, you are left behind. Avoiding some Marketing Automation Mistakes, you'll have more time and capacity to make conversions and improve your business' ROI.Enter your text here...
According to Gartner Research, 85% of customers will manage their professional and commercial relationships without speaking to a human by 2020.
Clearly, this figure demonstrates that automated marketing approaches are only at their beginning and the techniques are constantly evolving.
Just a gentle reminder , the marketing automation is a set of tools and techniques that allow a company to engage and convert a prospect using the highly customized content.
This approach is an essential part of your web strategy and should not be considered as an end.
On the contrary, whatever your field or your industry, an automation process must be constantly be questioned and analyzed to adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Engage and convert your prospects is a long process that must be supported by a series of mechanisms and tools operating in perfect harmony.
An effective automation process should synchronize all components located in the heart of your web strategy, business , social media, email traffic, lead generation, prospect engagement, performance analysis or internal organization of your campaigns.
This is also the ultimate condition to hope to achieve your business goals.
Automated marketing can be a good way to guide your visitors and prospects through the various stages of the customer journey.
However, it is very common to face situations where web automation tools were used inappropriately and in wrong ways. Here are the most common pitfalls and issues you should avoid .
MISTAKE # 1: THE USE Of AN INSUFFICIENT DATABASE
Before trying to automate anything, it is crucial to make sure to have a sufficiently populated database.It is preferable to get your series of content ready.
An automated process must be based on reliable data about the people you want to interact ( might be your subscribers ) .
The accuracy of the data available will have a direct influence on the success or failure of your automation process.
Effective database must be built taking into account the following two aspects:
collect new information and update existing data.
On average, an email list depreciates at 25% per year. In other words: a quarter of the information in your database become obsolete after one year.
This means that any marketing automation initiative must be supported by an effective leads generation strategy to ensure you keep your updated database.
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MISTAKE # 2: DO NOT LIMIT TO AUTOMATION ONLY TO YOUR PROSPECTS
However -some of the markerters think - lead generation is only the submerged part of the iceberg.
The automated marketing is also an ally of choice to repeat conversions, generate additional sales, improve retention or manage customer satisfaction.
The technologies and software to automate complex and repetitive tasks can be used at different levels of the funnel.
With this approach, it is possible to accelerate the rate at which your prospects moving in their customer experience with less effort.
By diversifying your automation approaches, you are sure to generate recurring and consistent results over the long term.Here you need yo perform A/B testing until you get what you want. Luckily most of the Tools and software are offering that.
MISTAKE # 3: MARKETERS DO NOT SET CLEAR PROCESS
Automation and other involved tools are very efficient, If used correctly and in an organized way.
In the contrary, without the use of a clear strategy can have negative consequences for your business.
Obviously sending targeted emails is great than sending a generic e-mail to a database of prospects and wait for positive result and sales.
In reality, it is likely that this approach generates very little short-term results.
With this type of initiative, the company also risks endangering its credibility in the long term.
You'll understand that a lack of preparation will have a direct impact on the effectiveness of your strategy and your company's reputation.
The best approach in this area is to develop a clear strategy. It is strongly advised to develop an automation process using a flowchart software even before you start to implement it.
Documenting your different process will allow you to have an overview. So you'll be able to identify links, anomalies and anticipate potential conflicts.
MISTAKE # 4: DO NOT BRING SALES PROCESS WITH MARKETING PROCESS
This point is more subtle than others because it needs to have an overview to be tackled effectively.
Surprising as it may seem, the goal of automation is not only to make a more productive marketing team.
The ultimate goal of marketing is to generate more sales. In this context, an automation process is completely useless if the sales department is not able to absorb the volume of leads generated by marketing.
Means, Marketing is a waste of time if it doesn't generate a sale.
Besides being unnecessary, this may have an impact on the profitability of the company. It is precisely for this reason that the efforts of the marketing and sales must be perfectly synchronized and go hand in hand to generate sales.
For this, the process used by sales must be an extension of those used by marketers to eliminate any interference that might meet a prospect in his buying journey.
MISTAKE # 5: DO NOT CUSTOM CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND SEGMENTING ITS PROCESSES
One of the issues of marketing automation is that some items may be perceived as too "robotic" and sometimes irrelevant. As a result your email might end to SPAM folder. Bad Right .
Look !
The segmentation here is crucial if you did not start. go now and segment your prospect.
Lear more about How Email Segmentation Could Boost Your Retention Here
To avoid this, the only effective alternative is to personalize each interaction based on the profile of your users.
In this context, it is important to segment your database so as to group profiles based on demographic or behavioral characteristics. There are many ways to segment a list of users.
Your prospects do not adopt the same behavior when they receive an email: some will read, others will click on your links, others will not even open you emails .
It is generally recommended to combine several segments to get a more accurate analysis.
Once this segmentation is done, you'll be able to put in place specific processes to the people you want to interact with.
This will notably allow you to communicate over a personal message and generate more results, sales while creating a credibility
MISTAKE # 6 : IT IS NOT ABOUT TON OF CONTENT.
All companies are full of content if one believes that multiple studies show that 70 to 80% of the contents are never actually used by brands.
The problem is not the amount of content, rather the quality and especially the usefulness of such content in the customer buying cycle.
The "good" content will drive the prospect to lead the position, then the client, and the accompanying every step of the purchase process.
Good content is one that will accompany these stages of the B2B buying Course (Engage, Feeding, Convert).
But most marketers, have no idea of the "pain point" of their target (their problems, expectations), they do not know what arguments to develop to overcome it, what are the content that will convince their prospect and increase the ROI.
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Offer content about your product at the point where the prospect is not even interested is a waste of time . The prospect needs to be educated, to be put in trust, and make sure that he understood his problems and expectations before it goes to the next step : make the sale
MISTAKE # 7 : THE USE OF UNCLEAR LEAD SYSTEM.
Any health business generates numerous prospects every day. This reality is also accentuated when a marketing automation system is in place.
In a B2B context, it is evident that the sales department will not probably process all applications simultaneously.
It is even likely that all leads have not the same value in light of business objectives.
Prioritization of prospects will be a key element in the success of the process. You'll understand that this has a direct link with the previous point as management priorities will depend on how you categorize different leads.
On the Web, it is generally three types of qualification: Leads Qualified Information (LQI), Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL).
This actually reflects a simple principle: prioritizing different prospects groups according to their buying journey.
At this point, your automation strategy should imperatively integrate a lead scoring system suitable and sufficiently precise. This should take into account the most important factors for your business that will help achieve your goals.
TRAP # 8:THE BELIEF THAT WE CAN AUTOMATE ANALYSIS
Finally, it is important to address the issue of the analysis. As mentioned earlier, a marketing automation process must not be seen as an end but rather go through continuous improvement.
Indeed, this software will be able to generate many demographic and behavioral data on your prospects. However, analysis of these data can not be automated.
The implementation and management of a marketing automation initiative is a complex process.
One of the keys to success is the level of preparation that is given to the creation or adaptation of the process.
Indeed, to be effective, marketing automation should always be based on detailed ready information that takes into account the possible scenarios.
Conclusion
Some of these common mistakes in marketing automation are very easy to solve. Others - such as lack of a solid content plan - are a bit more complicated and can be expensive to solve. In any case,
learn from past failures of the first users and avoid the same mistakes. This will help you see the ROI of your technology investment before.
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