How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot with Marketing Automation

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Automating your company’s marketing efforts can save valuable time and increase your brand’s image – if done correctly. Automated marketing tools are like all of your other tools: . They need to be used properly or they make holes in your brand’s reputation as fast a monkey with an electric drill.

John Boitnott recently wrote about common pitfalls that can destroy your brand’s image. Here are a few they we try to avoid ourselves:

Automated Customer Interactions

Social media can feel time-consuming and tricky for companies large and small. Entire industries have been built around collecting brand and competitive data on social media and many companies have hired community managers to respond appropriately. It’s so much work that it can be tempting for companies to cut a few corners by automating all of that hassle away.

Don’t do it. Remember all those snippets of goofy chat bot conversations people throw up all over the Internet? You’re inviting the same disaster to come to your brand. Currently, no AI can be pass the Turing Test and until one can, any attempt to automate human interaction is an accident waiting to happen.

Check Your “Personalized” Emails

Marketers have found that personalized emails increase open and click through rates for email marketing campaigns. Even something as small as using your customer’s first name can develop a connection with a potential customer. However, there’s nothing that destroys that feeling like seeing a software tag such as FIRST.NAME in the middle of a supposedly “personal” email.

Marketers have found that personalized emails increase open and click through rates for email marketing campaigns. Even something as small as using your customer’s first name can develop a connection with a potential customer. However, there’s nothing that destroys that feeling like seeing a software tag such as FIRST.NAME in the middle of a supposedly “personal” email.

Marketing automation can be a wonderful tool for saving time and helping to build your brand’s reputation, but it needs to be used properly. Otherwise, it’ll do more harm than good.