If your company has a lead nurturing program, you’ve likely taken the time to develop your content strategy and have a solid understanding of how best to use automated emails and social media. You’re likely also using marketing automation to help attract prospects and cultivate relationships with them. But how do you ensure that you’re properly utilizing the software to attract customers and guide them through their buyer’s journey?
Here are four marketing automation mistakes marketers typically make and ways to avoid them.
4 Marketing Automation Mistakes You’re Making that Need to Stop
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- You Haven’t Segmented Your Email List
You’ve done the legwork by ensuring that you have a database full of potential leads, but your eagerness to start capturing sales causes you to send out non-customized emails repeatedly. First, you need to take a step back and segment your leads and customers by any number of criteria—for example, industry, geography, age, and past purchases—and by determining where they are in the sales cycle. By taking the time to do this, you will get the biggest return on investment. While you’re there, remove any duplicate entries and clean your database.
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- You Inundate Your Prospects with Emails
Part and parcel of not having a segmented email list are that your prospects will likely think that they are receiving too many emails. Or maybe you are so enamored of your new marketing automation software that you send out emails every chance you get. Regardless of the reason, your focus should be on engagement rates, and the way to engage your prospects is by focusing on quality and personalization (sending targeted emails). The bottom line is that prospects will unsubscribe from your emails if they feel they are receiving too many.
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- You’re Only Using Automation for Your Email Marketing Strategy
Marketing automation software has several purposes, and if you’re only using it for email, you are leaving money on the table. Familiarize yourself with the software you’re using to determine how many everyday projects can be automated. It was designed to save you time, so if you are manually updating prospect contact info and posting on social media, stop doing so. Your time is better spent on content strategy and further developing lead nurturing strategies.
Similarly, you may be using several different tools to keep track of sales numbers and other quantifiable data when you could be using a variety of marketing automation software tools to save you time and effort. The software can also cut down on the number of mistakes you could potentially make if you’re transferring data from one document or spreadsheet to another.
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- Only the Marketing Department Is Privy to Your Marketing Automation Efforts
If you’re only using marketing automation software in your marketing department, you’re not using it to its full capabilities. If you took the time to uncover all the ways the software can make your job easier, you probably found out that it can also benefit your company’s sales reps. There are many ways marketing automation software can help the sales team, including creating to-do lists and follow-up tasks based on where prospects are in the sales cycle. Aligning marketing and sales will ultimately help with your company’s bottom line.
It may also help your customer support team through periodic and tailored communication with clients. The fact of the matter is that marketing automation software was created to save you time and money. Why not take full advantage of all it has to offer?