How NOT to Let Automation Sabotage Your Marketing

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Automation technology can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your direct response marketing and communication methods.

These tools help you streamline your processes, nurture leads more effectively, and deliver timely messages to your audience without overwhelming them. Use automation to segment your audience. Fine-tune messages based on behavior and preferences, ensuring relevant and engaging content.

However, there’s something to be said about the power of the human touch. Automation should enhance personal connections rather than replace them.

​Don’t adopt automation at the expense of your company’s human side. Successful marketing blends automation with strategic thinking and human interaction to maximize results. Let’s look at some key areas where a “set it and forget it” attitude with your automation could get you in trouble.

Automation allows you to welcome new customers and subscribers. It can guide them further into your sales funnel, foster their relationships with you, and promote their repeat buying without too much effort on your part.

​You draft your carefully worded messaging and then put those email blasts or mailers on autopilot. Your customer feels seen and cared for. You get to put that extra time and effort you save into other essential business tasks.

All of that sounds really good. What could possibly go wrong when you draft email templates to use over and over again? Year after year?

The problem comes when you fail to check your old copy every year or so to ensure your writing still holds true. Have you made any changes to your company since you crafted those? Likely so.

Imagine receiving directions or a “how-to” guide from a company only to find that those instructions don’t actually walk you through the proper steps. Yet, that happens.

​Imagine your potential clients' confusion and distrust if your company logo changes but your messaging still includes the outdated font and colors. In our spammy, spoofy world, you’ve sown suspicion into the hearts and minds of the people you need to have the utmost confidence in you.

Remember to update your wording to reflect company changes as you make those changes. Schedule a yearly time to reread your copy and make the necessary adjustments.

Automated marketing tools can help you track and measure so much these days. You can practically sneak peeks at what your customers are doing online, like:

Automated marketing tools can remind your customers that it’s time to repurchase something or motivate them to hurry up and purchase before the sale expires. These tools do wonders for abandoned carts.

Your customers are becoming increasingly aware of how watched they are, and boundaries are shifting regarding how much they’ll tolerate.

​One toe over the line of those boundaries, and you’ll send them scattering to far-off reaches until they feel safe again. Good luck restoring your reputation after that.

Be VERY mindful of your messaging and behaviors. Consult unbiased outsiders, like a focus group, concerning your plans for approaching abandoned cart customers or looky-loos on your site. Opt for considerate, useful messaging instead of bold, blunt, or cheeky.

Automated funnels help you guide prospective buyers toward the ideal outcomes without having to hand-hold and walk each customer through it yourself. They go from “just browsing” to narrower and narrower options.

​Funnels help customers combat overwhelm. They more easily find what they need, enabling you to earn their trust.

Funnel fatigue is starting to become a thing. Your customers are getting quite accustomed to being sucked into a sales funnel. The cycle is all too familiar…

They see the bait–a juicy offer, a free report, a sign-up for more info.

They take the bait.

Now, they’re getting emails, texts, and offers from you.

There’s nothing wrong with the cycle. It’s just that almost EVERYONE is doing the same thing. And the predictable structure, form, and outline are just that–predictable.

​No matter how good and human-like your copy sounds, your clients can feel like just another cell in the database–just another dollar on your sales sheet–because they’re experiencing the same funnel everywhere.

Break the monotony once in a while with something unexpected.

Reference a current event. Add a personalized note. Join in the conversation on your social media platform.

​You can still use automation but scramble the pattern occasionally to get your audience’s attention.

When deciding what to automate, consider everything from your customer's viewpoint. Ask yourself how this new technology improves your business and how it could hurt your relationships with existing and potential customers.

Don't underestimate the power of the human touch in making your customers feel valued. Machines can never replace that. Use automation to boost engagement, not replace it.

For these reasons, direct response mail gets customers' attention more effectively than ever. Companies bombard your customers with emails so frequently that they quickly become background noise. Putting paper mailers directly into your customers' hands stands out compared to what they've become accustomed to.

​Find more of my direct response advertising and marketing tips like these in any of my best-selling "No B.S. Marketing…" books, on my Magnetic Marketing website, or any one of my many interviews on YouTube. Direct-response mail marketing applies to the automated age we live in.