Marketing automation is not a magic piece of software that will fix your marketing problems. Rather, it is a tool to empower your existing marketing team to become more efficient and streamlined.
Here are some common misconceptions that pop up when discussing marketing automation.
1. First is the common “it’s just for email”. Most believe that the only advantage to having marketing automation is to be able to increase email marketing initiatives. Although email marketing is a more prominent feature it does not take into account the power of syncing and harmonizing your marketing efforts to have a better understanding of your marketing channels.
For example, in an email campaign I can have custom landing pages that are uniquely tailored for each user and their respective interest. (Covered in this article) Afterwards, I can identify key customer journeys that occurred from that email campaign which indicates to me how leads are using my website. It’s only once I look at how email marketing is affecting site behavior do I realize the importance of connecting all of my online activities.
Try to not silo the features that are available in your marketing software, rather attempt to identify how they can all co-exist into harmonized marketing campaigns.
2. The second misconception is that marketing automation software is meant solely for the marketing department. In reality, this software will have a noticeable impact on your sales department since you will be playing an active role in qualifying leads. This allows your departments to have a smoother closing process that benefits the company as a whole.
3. Third on the list is the common “set it and forget it attitude”. This belief stems from people thinking that once automation is in place you never need to look at that process again. This belief contradicts the very reason to implement a marketing automation software. The beauty of marketing automation is to be able to analyze and pull insights from the campaigns you are running, constantly tweaking and finding ways to improve your marketing efforts and messaging. If you have no way to learn from your workflows than you also have no way of improving them.
4. The last myth is that once the deal is closed or that the customer has paid there is no more work to be done. In reality, this is where marketing automation can really shine. In the first post we covered the ultimate goal of building a proven framework to capture, nurture and grow your customer list. This myth assumes that there is no benefit to automating the post purchase part of the cycle.
For example, let’s say you are selling a product that takes 1 month before the customer starts to see results, why not send an automated email after 30 days asking how their experience with the product was? Automating the post purchase opens the door to capturing valuable customer feedback and allows you to further learn from your customers. This feedback can than be feedback to your marketing team who can better craft the messaging for that customer segment.
Now that we have debunked some misconceptions let’s take a look at how to choose the right solution for your organization.
You can read that by clicking this link here.
