6 Common Reasons Why Marketing Automation Fails

automation fails

Marketing automation has truly transformed the world of marketing. It has also positively affected sales and customer service. The software for automation is powerful and capable of providing great difference to virtually every process of the business. Despite all that, marketing automation fails, and leaves companies scratch their head in agony over the lost opportunity.      

A lot of organizations implement automation to their processes yet fail to get tangible results. The fault lies in poor implementation which prevents from getting the most out of the software. Worse still, when the automation fails, it also makes it difficult to have processes streamlined, smooth and easier for the business.  

To know why marketing automation sometimes fails, you first need to rightly understand the scope and scale of the software for purpose. It’s wrong to believe that the software will be a total replacement of your marketing efforts and functions. Rather, it will boost the scale of the existing marketing efforts.  

And yes, lack of proper automation strategy is also one of major reasons behind the failure of marketing automation. If the strategy is not proper, it will make it difficult to utilize the software completely and cater own cause. 

Let’s look at 6 common reasons why marketing automation fails – 

1. Absence of personal touch  

Lack of human touch is one of major causes that leads to failure of marketing automation. If personal touch is missing, there will be less engagement. If your marketing messages sound like straight off the machine, it will definitely fail to cut much ice with potential customers. If your marketing messages feel like robots, this will definitely not help serve the cause of automation. So, the focus should be on personalizing the message, or add a personal touch to the each and every message sent so that customers can feel engaged.    

2. No update to the contact list   

Contact lists are forever changing and decaying over time. Even if you have tons of contact information, this does not mean you will continue to get in touch with them as and when needed. As time elapses, people may move to new email address or may not have any interest in what you have to offer. If your automation does not have valid contacts to work with, it is bound to fail sooner rather than later. So, the focus should be on boosting the contact list and adding new prospects to make automation deliver the results it’s there for.     

3. No segmentation of audience by interest     

While marketing automation software can indeed help send messages to hundreds of people in quick time, doing this will be a strategic mistake you should avoid. Look, marketing messages best work on segmentation as what is useful for one set of people may not be the other and vice versa. When you segment your lists, it means you take a step to deliver personalized messages. To do this, you however first need to know customers’ behaviour, tastes and preferences so that you can pitch them right content and ideas.     

4. Messages delivered to potential customers at wrong time  

It’s true that automation gives the freedom of sending messages to customers anytime, but this privilege needs some caution from your side. You must first understand the right moments for sending messages. Which means, you have to target the right stage of customer lifecycle by matching their requirements. You need to identify contacts based on a match between their requirements and your core value propositions. After that, you need to nurture contacts before hoping to convert them by solving their problems.       

5. Not adopting a multi-channel marketing approach   

Using only email or weekly newsletter for marketing is surely not going to be enough. This will prevent you from utilizing the full potential of automation. With potential customers scattered through platforms and channels, only relying on email contacts to tap them would be a mistake. The focus should be on adopting a multi-channel marketing approach so that the best of automation software can be achieved easily. So, apart from email, you should also send text messages and add people to social media ad campaigns like for Twitter and Facebook.     

6. Not using content marketing  

When you don’t use content marketing with automation, it fails to provide customers information about your effort. It’s the content marketing that helps you convey marketing message to customers so that any prospects of conversion can be boosted. By using content marketing, you can grow your email list, re-engage inactive contacts and plan your selling offers. Neglecting content marketing is one of chief reasons why all the efforts of marketing automation fail to deliver the results it should. That may also affect the quality of event management you plan to host. So, take your content seriously and get the most out of your marketing automation.

Author Bio: 

Akshay Sharma is a social media marketing enthusiast and has written many topics in the related field. He loves to write and read about latest technology trends.

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