Marketing Automation Challenges Roundup 2019

The advice that was given to me when I started.

Start simple. Keep it manageable. Get something small working (and push it out into the wild) rather than architect something “clever” and delay actually getting results.And don’t fear pressing “GO!”. Even when it’s enrolling tens of thousands of contacts 😉

My number one challenge is making sure that my subscribers’ list interacts positively with the content of the emails they will receive.

I have to make that both the content is just as high quality as the list of people I will be sending it out to.

They should pay more attention to content and contact quality rather than quantity.

Sending one email a day to thousands of people who will just be irritated after three days is not a good strategy.

Instead, one email per week, highly customized will get more leads and keep your contact interested in what you are offering.

For example, if your prospect downloads a beginner-level guide…don’t assume that means they’re ready to buy your product. Send them content/messaging related to what they downloaded and then if they engage, take them through the next steps gradually. You wouldn’t ask someone to marry you on a first date, so don’t expect your prospects to either.

Map out the journey you want your prospects to take using a visual flow chart like draw.io or Gliffy before building the process in your marketing automation tool.

This helps visualize the path you want your prospects to take and identify any gaps or holes that might be missing.

When drawing out the process, make sure you have an “exit step” of what’s going to happen at the end of your automation flow…is Sales going to follow-up? Are these prospects going to go down another automation track? Identify the end goal and make sure there are next steps.

Make sure it’s a right fit for what you’re looking for.

There’s a lot of software out there, so try a few and find one that solves the biggest challenges you have.

Pay attention to the sales process and your customers’ journeys.

It’s essential to map your sales processes and leverage technology to assist and optimize those processes. Without buy-in, enablement, and goal success, a marketing automation implementation may be a real challenge.

Don’t try to do everything at once and just get started with one or two flows.

One of the hardest things is people try to be too perfect. Perfect isn’t important as long as you have a system to improve over time.

Ensure you’ve implemented the right triggers to know what to send based on what actions the user had taken, and/or which actions you’d like them to take.

Start with the manual implementation of every element, and then work to slowly automate each individual element of the process over time.

Pay attention to the lead nurturing cycle.

Do not pitch to soon, and do no delay the pitch. Build a good relationship with the automation and try to solve people’s question.

Hidden pricings, technical issues and quality of support.

For a marketing automation to be seriously powerful, it should be deeply integrated (if not one and the same) with your CMS/website, CRM, email marketing tool, social media tools, and your digital ad tools.

That way you can personalize content across every digital channel, create a much more personalized customer experience, and drive the right conversion for the right person at the right time.

If you’re just getting started, I’d say focus less on long term nurture email series / tracks, as they never work that well. And instead, build out behaviourally driven email comms (just one email can be enough, if triggered when a prospect/customer does a certain behaviour).

Have a small plan and execute it. And do it manually!

Automate only if you really know what you are doing. I always start every automation process with manual work, then move to half-automation, and only set up fully automated workflows when I understand how the process really works.

Bad automation can be worse than no automation. But once you figure out the process and what to automate, it can do magic!

Start with the tools that are easy to use and stick with them.

Planning out and documenting the automation journey before jumping into the tool itself. Otherwise, it’s very easy to get confused.

Have absolute clarity of the strategy before diving into automation tactics.

Implementing one task after little instruction.

Integration and data analysis.

Personalization.

You don’t want your customers/list to know that they are just being served by robots. They trust you when signing up; you gotta build that one.

Segment your audience and personalize everything to the max!

Do you enjoy using it?

Set up an initial 10 email sequence and use gamification to reward people for opening and clicking every email you send.

To try and match the right value to their audience.

Be more human.

Automation works if it’s genuine and provides value to people (what you’re actually sending / what you’re sharing on social).

So, as an example. Typically every blog ” emails” every blog post to their subscribers. We don’t. We only email the best of the best.

You should focus on finding the low hanging fruit.

Are you getting the right leads?

Are you attracting the exact kind of audience you want?

Don’t get too hung up on the analytics at the start, better look at the basics and the overall framework before you jump into more complicated stuff.

Don’t overdo the amount of any marketing tools (too much newsletters etc.)

Focus on the analysis of marketing campaigns and an appropriate way to customer data organization and storage.

The most important thing to keep in mind: is your goal.

What action would you like to push a prospect to make after reading your emails?

AND, find the right balance between being engaging, credible (with providing real value to email readers) and pushy, but not too pushy.

Communicate through at least 3-4 channels.

Keep workflows as simple as possible.

It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole that can lead to problems. It’s often better to have 5 short automation workflows that are easy to follow and pull leads in and out of them with specific purposes, rather than one extremely long complex one that caters to everything.

To think, investigate and test the logic through from the user perspective first.

If you’re implementing solely from a disinterest in manual work, or because you want your business to feel/run “lean”, you’re likely missing out on key decision influences from the user perspective that enable your automation to have it’s desired effect.

Create the initial user journey, and reverse engineer other businesses within your space. Copy their automation first and then build off of that.

100% understand the journey that you want your customers to take in the flow.

We can set any type of funnel or marketing automation flow, but one thing that can be forgotten when starting out is not to think about the whole flow and mindset of the customer going into the flow and also what they will do and how they will be when they exit.

What will be your trigger points be? How will you guide your reader to do what you want?

That is right you are the guide, you are not the strict teacher telling them what to do, that doesn’t work in this day and age. You have to use words, imagery, a bit of humor and knowledge of your customer to get them to trust you and do things.

Be consistent in everything that you do, know your brand, know your brand voice and look at every campaign as a whole to make sure your language and flow make sense.

I think one has to start with the basics and prioritize the use of marketing automation accordingly.

In this regard, it won’t make sense to learn a software which helps with increasing retention if you are a new business and are in the acquisition stage.

There are also tons of case studies and books available which can be of help.

More than that, irrespective of what the industry standard is for a particular strategy or tactic, it is important that you test your own data. For instance, to use a simple example, many new business owners are wondering what the best time to tweet would be. Now, this is something which the business owner should analyze based on their own audience’s activity level.

Constant experimentation, data analysis is the key. In this regard, as Sean Ellis says in his recently released book Hacking Growth, one has to adopt the philosophy of MVT (Minimum Viable Testing) to make the best use of one’s resources and build on that experience and the lessons it provides.

Application of the tool is really important.

First of all – your goals. What do you want to automate and why?

2. KPI. Everything you do in marketing must have it’s own KPI so you’d be able to track it.

3. Personalization and humanization. Always remember that people buy from people, not from companies (or robots 🙂 ).

If the product is flexible enough to support different workflows and integration with outside world, decent content editor for emails is a must as well.

Find resources online.

Then set-up an actionable plan with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that are easily measurable.

Finally, test and learn based on the metrics you’ve measured!

Integrations with other tools, how good the API is for instance.

Making sure the SPF & DKIM is set up to ensure their email deliverability is strong.

Also, setting up lead scoring, & the unsubscribe page with options for people to opt-out of.

Integrations with other BI tools and communication channels/tools, etc.

Marketing Automation makes more sense when seen holistically.

Make sure you invest enough time on something you buy.

As far as I know, a lot of these tools remain unused over time.

Take time on setting up the right data model and rather streamline your process to accommodate the tool you use than vice versa.

Doing it right from the beginning. Know the best practices.

Make sure that you control all customer lifecycle operations, segmentation options and track even the most trivial events.

Test the customer journey regularly and research persona and customer specific events/actions to become more relevant and increase engagement.

Start with small setups/campaigns and continue with the complex.

Learn as much as possible :), especially lead scoring system, building lead nurturing campaigns.

The tool is the easy part. Know what you want to achieve is the difficult part.

Defining the processes upon raw data, instead of designing the workflow upon the gut feeling.

Also, analyzing the steps and polishing them to perfection.

It all depends on what you want to achieve.

Read US marketing blogs on this subject on a daily basis, and at the same time, follow the “learning by doing” rule.

Easy to set up funnels for complex user behaviors and integrations with other tools that we use for the list management & segmentation.

Make sure if it’s a right fit for what you are looking for. (inc. Features & Integrations)

Create a structured system for your mailing list, tagging users, signup source and whatever other properties that you might find useful based on your email marketing strategy.

Do it before you start with automation, you’ll thank me later on – especially if you plan on sending e-mails and notifications from multiple places (your backend, Mailchimp, Mixpanel, Appcues…)

Focus on the goal.

Just getting started? Aim at one point-solution at a time.

Conquer email, then move on to CRM or social or landing page optimization or testing.

Do NOT try to implement a massive, all-purpose marketing platform as your first step.

Have a clear understanding of what topics your target personas need.

Understand your customer journey.

Build a stack of tools that work well together and complement each other.

Don’t focus on individual tasks – think in terms of flows.

They should try not to be too spammy.

Scale with your leads.

If you are just starting out and have less than a 100 customers, there is no reason to do lead scoring, mail flows for 6 different personas, and schedule a ton of content.

You will end up spending so much time setting it all up and administering it instead of doing what actually matters at this stage: get more customers.

So start simple, one persona [decision-maker], one mail flow [generic], one really good piece of content [promote the shit out of it].

Just get started, it’s better to have something and over time improve it then wait until the end and try to make everything perfect at once.

Segment, prioritize and find what’s good enough.

Automation can easily get out of hand if you forget to say what is good enough, put your target groups into segments and prioritize your actions.

Level of support from the product, ease of setup, the level of analytics they provide.

That automation should just be a “supplement” to your marketing efforts.

It should simply be a tool that helps you save time and manage the tedious tasks.

The best way to reach out to people is to make them feel like they are special and unique, and that you are interested in them. This, unfortunately, automation alone cannot do.

That you should be careful and always have an alert when things don’t go as planned, otherwise the automation will just continue without you noticing.

Be careful and set up a secure process.

Do it.  It saves a ton of time for SMBs.

Watch best times to post and what posts are actively getting attention, comments, and likes so you can do more of it.

Focus on the results you want and find a way to measure it while you are planning.

Don’t wait for the execution phase. And never do things in phases.

Think about the customer’s experience.

You want the conversation to feel as human and genuine as possible.

No one wants to be sold to or read a long, wordy sales email. Keep it short and to the point as if you’re talking to a friend.

The key is paying attention to what feelings your customer might have at each step of their journey.

Your goal should be to remove concerns and build excitement and confidence around your product and story.

The worst thing you can do with marketing automation is send automated messages to someone that aren’t relevant to them.

Test it out on yourself first so it works flawlessly towards your customers/leads without smaller issues that can ruin your potential customers.

Test it before going live.

Having a marketing and sales background will help you navigate your automation more efficiently and effectively.

You have built your brand image for a long time, but you can destroy it in a blink of an eye.

So don’t spam, spend time preparing for everything you want to automate!

Filter your email lists, collect recipient names wherever it is possible, and use automation tools that offer maximum personalizing options.

It is also probably best to start slow and do some testing of subject lines and content, and only automate when you feel that you are ready.

Start simple.

Automate processes that you repeat but don’t need a human touch (welcome sequences, nurture campaigns, etc., sales campaigns).

Start simple and get it up and running – later you can improve and complicate to your hearts extent. 😉

Be sure to add images, great titles, and UTM-sourced links!

Pay attention to data!

Segment your data as much as possible and monitor how they respond to messaging.

People say content is king, but we think that is always outranked by relevancy.

Building something that is trackable.

Take your time. Plan meticulously, but don’t be afraid to test.

Without these three facets, the successful deployment of a marketing automation platform will be inhibited.

You must also be wary of sending customers or prospects too much content through overly complex workflows or sequences that cross-over.

You need to have a way of managing which contacts receive what information, when… and ultimately, why they are receiving it.

Put some effort in producing great content upfront, that will make your list growing easier.

Or you can do outbound later to feed the funnel. I guarantee you will not going to like.

Studying your audience is mandatory, understanding their needs and pain points should be the first thing you’re working on!

To be careful in order to don’t overload the users with too many emails in a short amount of time.

Email Marketing and FB Messenger Bots will allow you to dramatically increase the amount of sales you can generate with your business.

Start simple.

I would recommend to someone just getting into marketing automation to really understand what they’re trying to get out of it.

Without some form of goal post to look for, it’s going to be very hard to use any software properly – let alone well.

Having an end goal, whether that be lead nurturing or auto-segmenting, whatever, it’s much easier to implement something useful if you can relate it back to how it helps you as a business.

Then you can step back and look at the process as a whole and see how marketing automation can be used most effectively to help you save time and stop letting things fall through the crack (like follow up).

Sit down and brainstorm your objectives and all the billion paths your customers could take to reach them.

Clarity of documentation.

For someone who is new to marketing automation, I would recommend making sure that all their tech plays nicely together.

Check that your tools will integrate well together so that you aren’t stuck when setting everything up.

Testing.

Focus on what you need as a result & work towards in optimizing it with automation tools.

Start off simple, A/B test when you can put a minimum of 250 emails into each version, less then that and it’s just not worth it.

If you have the data you can still create simple flows if you don’t have data plugged in (so you only have an email for example), you can only really trigger emails based on timing, so bear in mind a user may complete an action before they receive an email.

That your message is relevant to your target market.

Don’t be afraid to automate, but also be aware that if you are marketing to everyone, you are marketing to no one.

Automated sending out at most active times, automatic queues.

Before getting started, make sure to do proper research on what your needs are and what you will need further down the line before picking a tool.

Building processes that are repeatable and scalable.

Ensure you hit the correct target audience.

Before using marketing automation, that person needs to make sure he/she needs it. Not all tasks need to be automated.

Indeed, I work with clients who want to automate everything, but in fact, they don’t need to automate something that doesn’t give results.

Understand the market.

There’s a lot of programs that help you automate processes, some are really useful, and others seem like a total waste of time.

I would really recommend also to have beta users. Don’t have friends that will say just nice things about it but really ask them, “what are we doing wrong?” There’s always room for potential.

No idea.

Well synch your tools, activities and don’t forget that personal, F2F connections are 10x times better than any automated solution.

Try, test, analyse results and persist!

Prospect identification – Are you trying to reach the right person?

Align goals and ensure you are flexible to business changes.

Try to see the full customer journey and target the emails fitting to the correct audience.

Pay attention to the strategy you have in place using marketing automation and understand that streamlining your marketing efforts doesn’t allow you to stop your other marketing strategies around content.

Definitely plan ahead — Don’t expect to just make the purchase and get started!

This stuff takes time to master. Be sure to lean on the vendor to support you all the way through, especially during onboarding.

You will probably need assistance from a web developer, too…

ALWAYS expect the unexpected: Extra coding, issues with tech you’re currently using / ability to integrate and longer timelines.

HOWEVER: It’s all worth it in the end!

Imagine your marketing automation as a machine.

It has different parts, levers, and cogs. Your goal in building your machine should focus on seamlessly integrating your marketing channels to continuously push and nurture your audience down to your conversion funnel.

You have to be meticulous and plan out everything before you start building your machine. You can’t just build as you go. That’s a recipe for disaster.

While you can easily start from scratch, you shouldn’t build the bridge as you walk on it. Marketing automation requires planning – a blueprint.

You have to anticipate different circumstances and examine and adjust your value ladder (whenever needed) to match your retention strategy.

Once you all have this figure out, you can just let it work for you and focus on other aspects of your marketing campaign so you can keep feeding your machine and keep converting people into a sale.

It’s not about the tool for the sake of a tool; it’s about using tools to solve problems.

Marketing automation should save you time/money.

Workflow construction is something I find very important.

You should try to deliver very personalized and relevant messages and keep your focus on that matter,  so the tool’s construction must be easy to use.

Furthermore, the way you build and manage your lists can have a huge impact on how well you are able to connect with your contacts. That’s why it is very important that your chosen tool lets you customize your lists as much as possible.

The next thing  I would advise you to keep in mind is: your sales funnel. Whom are you speaking to? What information do they need from you? Can you measure their responses right?

If your tool can help you with these issues, then it should still be “in the game”.

In addition, in nowadays advanced technology you shouldn’t be satisfied with a tool that can’t serve multiple channels, and that can be useful for various departments.

And one last thing: the pricing packages are also one of the facts to consider. Be well informed about the market prices and if there is no free trial option – request a free demo. After all, you should test if the tool has the above-mentioned functionalities.

You need to start small and think about the people you’re contacting first.

They are not just a number in your flow; they are actual people.

Don’t overwhelm them with useless information, don’t lie to them, be honest and thoughtful.

Make sure to find properly skilled and trained marketers who have experience in marketing automation.

That they justified the investment.

Since it’s automated, there’s a lot of data available to you.

Keep track of the data and make sure you’re using it to optimize your campaigns.

Marketing automation is extremely powerful at the advanced levels.

I’d recommend beginners keeping the big picture in mind and planning out a long-term strategy instead of just setting things up with what they have.

This will also help you plan your content marketing efforts and other aspects of your marketing plan.

Make sure that you understand the needs of your audience.

Segment your prospects and customers based on their needs as well as yours.

Starting with the end in mind – building proper automation requires a strategy.

Segmenting your content for different users.

Make sure you find something that you’re going to stick to and actually use.

Marketing automation is NOT a set-it-and-forget-it type of tool.

Relationships still need to be nurtured. Remember, you’re still working with humans – it’s how you get the message to them that’s automated.

You’ll stand out in a world of automation with excellent customer service… sometimes that means human connection.

Find a (scalable) system to reach out to each subscriber in a way that it does not look automated.

Scaling up my activities.

Time saver.

Inability to manage it myself.

Reliability.

Will reduce time and effort.

Only in emergency.

Save time and automating stuff based on rule-based tasks.

Scaling business.

Attraction.

Follow up and connection.

Sales, presence, reach customers.

Ease of posting content.

Growth.

Save time and increase effectiveness, i.e. conversion.

Software should automate almost all things minimum work should be done by me.

Save me time and money.

To be more efficient: to work faster and have things under control.

Get more leads.

Get better PPC results for my clients. I have tried, but they sometimes work.