Introduction

Marketing automation has become increasingly important to businesses in recent years. It streamlines processes and makes marketing more effective.

According to Salesforce marketing automation is the application of technology to streamline marketing and make it more effective. This involves using software for lead generation, lead nurturing, lead scoring and more.

From research by Tendenz shows that more than 90% of top marketers agree that marketing automation is very important. It helps companies grow faster.

In short, marketing automation has become indispensable to modern marketing. It provides greater efficiency, better results and faster growth.

Not setting clear goals

It is very important to set clear and measurable goals for your marketing automation. Without clear goals, it is impossible to measure and adjust the effectiveness of your campaigns. Some common unclear goals are:

"Generate more leads" - This is too vague, you need to be specific about how many more leads and within what time frame.[1]

"Increase conversion" - Again, this lacks specific information on how much higher and when to achieve it.[2]

"Making the brand known" - This is very difficult to measure without defining concrete KPIs.

Always make sure your marketing goals are formulated SMART: Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time-bound. Only then can you properly monitor progress and adjust where necessary.

Insufficient segmentation

Segmentation is crucial for effective marketing automation. If you don't segment your target audience properly, chances are your messages will be irrelevant and ignored. Good segmentation helps you send relevant messages to the right people at the right time. It also provides you with actionable insights into your audience.

Bad examples of segmentation are sending the same newsletter to all your subscribers, or targeting a promotion to all customers regardless of their interests or purchase history. Instead, it's better to segment your audience based on demographics, interests, behaviors and more. Then send targeted messages to each segment for a more personalized experience.

For example, with good segmentation, you can send new parents promotions for baby gear, or tech enthusiasts content about the latest gadgets. This creates more engagement and conversion. So make sure you don't go too broad, but tailor your messages to the needs of specific groups.

No A/B testing

A/B testing is a crucial part of effective marketing automation. By testing different versions of your campaign against each other, you can accurately measure which one performs best. Unfortunately, many companies skip this important step.

Running A/B tests is essential to optimize the effectiveness of your campaigns. For example, you can test different subject lines, images or call-to-actions to see which combination generates the most conversions or revenue. Without A/B testing, you remain in the dark about what works and what doesn't. You're missing opportunities to take your marketing automation results to the next level. [1]

We often see companies launching campaigns without testing different variants. They go straight for their first idea without checking whether other approaches would work better. This is a missed opportunity. Take, for example, email campaigns that could have tested different subject line variants, or social media ads without split testing of images. By not applying A/B testing, you are missing out on valuable insights.

No analysis of data

Data analysis is crucial to effective marketing automation. Without proper analysis of your data, you won't know which campaigns are performing well and which are not. You may also miss trends and insights that can improve your campaigns.

Many companies go into campaigns blind without first analyzing their historical data. For example, they don't look at conversion rates from various past campaigns to see which ones were most effective. They also do not properly segment their target audience based on behavior and attributes. As a result, campaigns don't reach the right people or opportunities are missed.

An example is a campaign focused on lead generation without first looking at which landing pages and calls-to-action generated the most leads in the past. By not analyzing this, you are missing opportunities to optimize your campaign.

In short, always take the time to analyze your historical data before starting a new marketing automation campaign. That way, you can build your campaign based on facts rather than assumptions, and you will get better results.

Source: https://www.sender.net/blog/marketing-automation-strategies/