Every marketer has done it. You get an email drafted, edited and proofed. You set it up in your marketing automation system and schedule it to go out. When the send date arrives, you get the email in your inbox (because, of course, you’re on every list, right?). Immediately, you see a glaring typo in the subject line, or a link doesn’t work, or your CTA graphic is broken.
Marketing automation can transform your campaigns and bring great promotional efficiency to your organization – but only when it’s implemented correctly. Next, I’ll share five marketing automation fails that I’ve seen (or committed) first hand, and some easy ways to avoid them.
1. Typos
While they can happen to even the most experienced marketer from time to time, typos will instantly invalidate your campaigns in the eyes of your clients. It’s critical to pay close attention to all content before it’s distributed.
Keep in mind that catching typos is not a one-person job; make sure you have at least two sets of eyes reviewing each email. Catching a small typo can make the difference between completing 100 sales and losing 100 potential customers.
2. Imprecise Targeting
Sending content to the wrong list is a surefire way for any email marketing campaign to fail. Before building a campaign, it’s important to know who your target audience is. What types of potential clients are you hoping to attract with your messaging and content?
Your marketing team must work closely with your sales team leaders to determine the ideal target audience. Then, you can use marketing automation to create buyer personas for your prospects. That way they’ll receive only the most relevant content, ensuring a strong return on your campaign investments.
3. Not Integrating With Your CRM
Your CRM system contains the most valuable client data and is therefore your most critical sales resource. Link your CRM to your automated campaigns to ensure you’re fully leveraging all of the actionable data you have. Without this level of integration, your campaigns will be difficult to implement and analyze effectively. You’ll also have a harder time identifying which campaigns worked and which ones didn’t.
4. Not Committing to QA
Quality assurance helps you reduce errors in your marketing automation campaigns and determine the best strategies for achieving optimal results. Without a solid quality assurance process and an experienced team driving it along, your campaigns can become inconsistent. Furthermore, your results may begin to suffer.
It’s important to set up a QA system that allows content creators to be able to quickly obtain clear feedback from marketing team members. Doing so will ensure that any lessons learned are incorporated into upcoming campaigns.
5. Broken Links
When you include links to your website or to source documents within your automation campaigns, it’s critical to ensure all links work as intended. One broken link can cost you thousands of clicks back to your website and could impact your reputation in the marketplace. Once again, it’s very important to have multiple sets of eyes on anything you wish to make public. Test, test and test some more!
It’s human nature to make errors like these sometimes, and no marketer is perfect. But it’s crucial to eliminate as many of these gaffes as you can before they happen. If you don’t make the effort, there’s a lot of business that could slip through your fingers. I strongly encourage any marketing professional to take these tips to heart. Of course, I’d love to continue the conversation with anyone looking for an effective inbound marketing strategy.
