Many organizations have taken the automation route to keep pace with the demands of the fast paced environment they operate in. Marketing automation allows organizations to capture, score and nurture leads. However, automation is by no means the magic wand that would make all marketing related hitches disappear. In fact, too much of automation itself may be a bad thing.
Evidence for this precept comes from the fact that even in the age of automated solution, people still seek out and relate to a personal touch. For instance, prospects who scour the social media seek honest feedback on a product before making a purchasing decision. Marketers looking to convert new customers cannot do away with a well written blog or people centric content strategy. Similarly, engaging with a real marketer, rather than automated systems, increases credibility many-fold. While automation, especially in analytics, helps in identifying the right prospects and also lead customers to their goals, the decisive push that converts them is still human intervention.
Success depends on generating human content and interventions and using automated solutions to deliver them to the right people at the right time. For instance, adopting an automated system to run a monthly email and promotional campaign, delivering whitepaper, blogs or other relevant content to targeted audience helps in advancing the prospect through the marketing lifecycle or generating new leads. The automated system would trigger an email based on any specific action or initiative that the prospect undertakes and will similarly track the responses. The marketer would keep track of the actual content and follow up on the prospect’s responses. The automated solution may notify the marketer regarding a comment made by the prospect in a blog. Instead of an automatically triggered auto reply, the marketer responding directly increases chances of engagement.
