Discover common mistakes made in marketing automation campaigns. For marketing automation campaigns, it is important to avoid too general content and to opt for the personalization of messages.
1. Not defining a complete action plan
Before launching an automation marketing campaign, it is imperative to establish an action plan.
That implies:
- Define specific objectives: opt for “SMART” objectives, i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and defined over time. These goals can relate to lead generation, improving your customer service, etc.
- Build a strategy around these objectives: you develop appropriate strategies for each of your objectives. This can be the setting up of email campaigns or even SMS campaigns.
It is therefore advisable to avoid embarking on a marketing automation campaign with the intention of improvising and adapting.
2. Not knowing the target customer journey
Another essential element: knowing your target audience. Before launching a marketing automation campaign, it is important to have identified beforehand the habits of your prospects, their means of obtaining information or the content they need, and at what moment of the journey.
As such, a marketing automation tool is a real asset, with features allowing the tracking of a visitor’s activity on your website (clicks, time spent on a page, downloaded files, etc.) in order to adapt the buying process. These platforms also allow you to set up various scenarios according to the actions of your prospects and the automated sending of emails or forms.
The best marketing automation tools
3. Not creating personalized content
One of the main advantages of marketing automation is the possibility of creating personalized content, it would be a shame to provide content that is too general. Indeed, marketing automation makes it possible to respond to the specific action of a target customer, which is why it is necessary to offer adapted and personalized content. The goal: is to stimulate customer engagement and loyalty by making them feel important to the company.
It is recommended to rely on human and direct communication, in order to make the message spontaneous and authentic.
4. Not performing upstream tests
Testing is a key part of marketing campaigns and marketing automation is no exception. A/B testing is fundamental, allowing you to compare two versions of a campaign and identify which is more effective. This approach also allows you to optimize the functions of your marketing automation tool.
In the same way, you can test your emails on different media, beforehand, to ensure that the experience for the recipients will be positive, whether in terms of personalization or visual aspect.
5. Not observing the right metrics
In the context of marketing automation campaigns, analyzing the results of your mailings is important. These statistics can be provided by a marketing automation tool or an analytics solution. Among the KPIs you can check are the key acquisition indicators (lead qualification rate, active contacts, etc.), engagement (click-through rate, open rate, etc.), conversion, or even retention.
The objective of analyzing these metrics: is to optimize your campaigns on a regular basis.
Bonus: avoid becoming a spammer
Automation has its setbacks and drawbacks. Marketing automation that allows for simplified message creation and scheduling can cause you to email your contacts too often, and land you on the side of spammers. It is therefore important to keep a certain balance in the number of content sent to your customers and prospects. So be sure to only send relevant emails to the right target audience at the right time.