How not to let marketing automation campaigns ruin your week

Marketing automation is a great tool. This allows businesses to set up campaigns that run on their own without human intervention. This saves time and greatly expands the scope of what your marketing team can accomplish with limited resources.

Unfortunately, marketing automation can also fail somewhat spectacularly. This article provides a list of things you should check to see if automated programs are causing you or your company too much trouble.

‘Hello [First Name]’

This may be a classic example of marketing automation failing. Personalizing your emails increases their effectiveness, so if you discover your name is in her email database, change the subject line or greeting to include it.

But I will all records Do you have a suitable name for such a use? “Hello, Mailstop 34” is no better than “Hello.” [First Name]”

Before inserting fields into your marketing creative, make sure all records have the appropriate data. and Make sure you have a fallback, such as “If field is empty, insert ‘key customer'”. Most systems can manage this.

Even after considering all the quirks and potential catastrophes from the list, it’s still not completely resolved. After 2 months, the sales person will upload a new email introducing new notes to his list. By that point, you’ve started on 17 other projects and a simple personalization program isn’t on your mind.

Here are two ways to manage this. Although this particular example concerns email, the same principles can be applied to other campaigns.

Please catch it before it happens. Create a new data requirements document. For example, “All new email lists must meet these criteria.” Include the logic for your personalization campaign in that document. If people follow the steps (good luck), errors will be caught and fixed before going live.

Please recover soon. Build a good relationship with your customer service representatives. A person who receives an email with the subject line “Hello, Annual Meeting Prospect” will forward the email to his customer service. Be sure to let them know that you are listening and that you would be very grateful if they informed you of this type of mistake. For some reason, having a CSR report you when something stupid happens can be like pulling teeth. Encourage them regularly.

it may not be your fault

While some marketing automation problems are caused by poor planning, many are caused by unexpected changes to underlying assumptions.

• Step 1: What could go wrong?
• Step 2: How did we know?

Suppose you have a very small collection of web pages about a narrow topic. People who are interested in that topic are more likely to use the services you offer, so set up a campaign to send emails to everyone who visits those pages. (With a customer data platform, you can do just that.)

These few pages are categorized in a certain way in the content management system, so they are very easy to set up. Rely on its category tags to identify the correct article.

After two months, the SEOs realized that this narrow topic was good for organic traffic and started adding that category tag to many new pages. Now you’re bombarding your audience with emails.

How do you explain something like that? The SEO person is in a separate department. He doesn’t report to you, he doesn’t even tell you what he’s doing. And he doesn’t even realize that his changes are turning your modest campaign into a nightmare.

Reporting is the answer. Track the volume of each campaign. If the volume suddenly changes, investigate.

Let’s dig deeper: How to overcome (and learn from) email marketing mistakes

Someone will “clean” your data

We have set up a very efficient system for Lead Funnels to add names and email addresses to our contact management software. All new leads are added to the Welcome Series. Receive a welcome email, week 1 follow-up, and more.

Data scientists are then asked to clean up sloppy records. Your new lead isn’t “new” at all. He was also on the list 17 years ago. The data scientist merges the new record with the old record, and the new/non-new contacts are excluded from the series.

The best solution here is to make friends. You won’t be able to find reports or technical solutions for every possible fraud. We need to encourage an environment where people think, “This is so-and-so’s domain and he’s a good egg.” Maybe I should check with him before I mess this up. ”

Maintain and review a list of all running campaigns

Marketing automation is very easy to start and forget. You launch a great campaign and it helps for a while, but it just keeps running and no one is monitoring it to make sure it’s fit for purpose.

Create a list, check it regularly, Always set a sunset date for all campaigns. If it is still working properly when you check, you can extend the sunset date. Letting a campaign expire is better than continuing one that doesn’t meet its goals.

sow seeds in yourself

When creating your marketing automation campaign, find a way to seed your messages so that you receive them on a regular basis.That’s why I can’t stop saying “Hello” [First Name]” problem is because the record contains a first name. However, you can prevent some nasty problems.

Once you have your seeds, check the following:

• Are you still using appropriate logos and brand markers?
• Will the link still work?
• Is the offer still valid?
• Is your contact information still correct?
• Does it still sound right? What sounded good when you wrote it last year may sound terrible today.

read a lot of reports

It seems to be written into the fabric of creation that “anything that can go wrong will definitely go wrong.” As a result, you can’t rely on genius planning and operational excellence to prevent catastrophe.

In some cases, getting early warning when a catastrophe occurs is your best bet. If something slips and you catch it right away, it’s much better to let it sit for a month or even longer.

Create a special set of reports specifically related to your marketing automation campaign. One way to do this is to use labels or naming conventions. For example, all marketing automation campaign names start with “MA-“.

Please check these reports regularly. Look for mountains, valleys, strange deviations, etc.

• Are you getting more than average deliverables from your MA campaign? This could be an indication that your data source is incorrect.
• Do your marketing automation campaigns have a higher than average number of unsubscribes, or are they regularly marked as spam? If so, you may be bothering the market.
• Is anyone receiving too many messages every week or month? Ask your email service provider if they can run a report like this for you. Once you find the notification (“John is receiving 300 emails per month!”), start digging into the cause.
• Marketing automation isn’t just about email. Look at what you’re doing on all your channels, and before you set up a campaign, make sure you have a way to monitor if, when, and how it goes off track.

Monitor data connections

You don’t have to do this personally, but someone does. Marketing automation often relies on data from a variety of systems.

For example, the ordering system may update a list that manages cross-selling offers. That update relies on connectivity between these systems, and connectivity may fail for various reasons. I need to make sure that someone is notified when a connection fails.

Avoid marketing automation mistakes

Marketing automation relies on forethought, reporting, monitoring, and proper operation. Don’t allow someone to set up a marketing automation campaign without steps to ensure they are notified when a problem occurs.

• Is anyone seeded?
• Does customer service know about this campaign?
• What backend processes does this campaign rely on? Is someone monitoring those processes?
• Have you set a date for sunset?
• Do you have a list of all your marketing automation campaigns and do you review them regularly?

Spending time thinking about what could go wrong in the first place and how to detect errors won’t solve all problems. However, if you are lucky, you can catch most of them.

Let’s dig deeper: 8 major email marketing mistakes and how to avoid them