Several business owners don’t acknowledge the importance of marketing automation because of the term’s impersonal connotation. However, it doesn’t need to be mechanical. In fact, it can save you time on minuscule and repetitive business processes. For instance, some tasks can be automated, and these include posting new articles on your social media accounts and segmenting your audience.

However, you should take note, some things can’t be automated. That’s why it’s important to be aware of the do’s and don’ts of marketing automation.

Do’s Of Marketing Automation

• Do Have A Strategy Or Plan In Place

You have to ensure that you have a plan or strategy in place once you consider marketing automation for your business.

If you have plans or strategies in mind, you’ll be able to make the most of marketing automation and how your business can benefit from it like using top CRM software. Doing so can also make it easier for you to reach all your targets for your business with the help of marketing automation.

Once you have a plan in place, the steps can be correctly carried out by those tasked with accomplishing them. Team members will have a definitive direction, and everyone will work on a common goal.

• Do Clean Your Database Often

While it isn’t an exciting task, cleaning the database of your marketing automation regularly is essential. Failure to do so can lead to email bounces from your subscribers who’ve updated their email addresses.

Irrelevant emails lessen the data’s accuracy, which can affect how you make good marketing decisions. So if you don’t want this to happen, make sure to clean your database regularly to ensure nothing but precise data.

• Do Work With Your Marketing Team

If you want your business to perform at its best when you add automation to your marketing strategy, you must make sure your marketing and sales team work together harmoniously. Your sales team will get quality leads once you implement marketing automation, which can minimize disputes between marketing and sales.

It also enables your sales representatives to use marketing automation to get information about your leads and ask for feedback. This may come in handy if you want to change the settings in your marketing automation platform. If you have efficient marketing software with a seamless agency dashboard, collaboration and unity among your team will be effortless. Everyone will receive relevant information, such as updates, and tasks will be accurately accomplished by the delegated individual.

• Do Have Realistic Goals

Marketing automation will only pay off if you and your entire team set the same goals. This way, you’ll be able to track how well your efforts are going. Aside from that, these targets and goals will ensure your team can have something to keep on reaching for, which is beneficial to boost motivation in your workplace. Your goal is only as good as your resources. If you overshoot and aim for the impossible, you’re setting yourself up for failure. It would be best to follow the SMART goal-setting method. It should be specific, measurable, realistic, and time-sensitive. Otherwise, your team could be up against the wall, affecting their morale and productivity at work.

Don’ts Of Marketing Automation

• Don’t Set And Forget

Marketing automation isn’t a kind of technology you’ll just set and forget. For you to get results, you should always analyze the progress, test new things, and make some tweaks to the settings if necessary.

Remember that your business evolves, so your marketing automation must grow with it. Other than that, you’ll still have to interact with your social media followers. You can’t just schedule any posts and don’t check your comments or mentions. This isn’t what social media is all about because it may result in unhappy customers or dismal results.

The common mistake business owners make once they’re new to automation is setting up blog posts to publish on their social media accounts automatically. You must always write a compelling message that’ll help entice your followers to click the link, and this isn’t something that can be automated.

Most automation tools will tell you to set it and forget it, but measurables won’t compute themselves. You need to look at insights to know if your campaign is gaining traction. These insights are incredibly straightforward and provide valuable information to allow you to make revisions to your campaign.

• Don’t Depend On Your System To Do All The Work

While your marketing automation tool may take a few items off your daily to-do list, it doesn’t mean you’re completely off the hook. You still need to prepare timely, engaging, and relevant content. That’s why you must spend time organizing your information based on your buyer persona.

Make workstreams pulling or pushing prospects through the buyer journey based on their online behavior and create content reflecting a clear understanding of your targets’ habits, so they’d be inclined to purchase from your business.

Your content can be a landing page regarding a free trial, pricing, or eBook. Whatever makes sense for your company must be on your to-do list. Also, it’d be a good idea to talk to your customers to learn what matters to them and create content based on the insights you get.

• Don’t Use Marketing Automation For Spam

Not all business owners use marketing automation because they think their customers consider it spam. However, the truth is that marketing automation can work flawlessly once you integrate it seamlessly with your content and when you use the right scheduling.

Make sure to send out your personalized emails to the right people and avoid the use of templates when responding to your leads. If possible, complement your automated efforts with in-person presses and appearances. In this way, your customers will likely trust you.

• Don’t Expect Marketing Automation To Make Content For You

One of the things you need to remember about considering marketing automation is it isn’t a type of content-creating machine. As a business owner, you should be the one who’d crafts valuable and quality content for your customers and target audience.

For instance, once you use email marketing, you need to write emails for all of your subscribers to read. Your email’s content should be valuable and relevant to them. When your subscribers often receive poor-quality emails and see many sales pitches, they may consider your business as something unreliable and may unsubscribe in the long run.

However, it doesn’t mean you can’t use marketing automation for your content. You can still take advantage of it by helping you schedule your regular posting or sending based on the analytics gathered from your potential and current customers.

Crafting clever and compelling content is the job of a creative and if you don’t have one on your team, it’s high time that you invest in hiring one to help you in delivering the best message to your audience.

Conclusion

Marketing automation doesn’t only revolve around gaining more customers, but it’s also about freeing up more of your precious time, so you can focus on other important business processes.

For instance, with marketing automation, you don’t have to stay up all night sending emails to your customers. Instead, you can take a rest and tackle more tasks efficiently. However, to make the most out of marketing automation, be sure to take note of these do’s and don’ts.