How to Harness the Power of Automation
26-09-2018
Like many innovative business tools, automation can be a double-edged sword. Used effectively, automation in marketing can free you up to focus on other tasks, help you better connect with consumers, and ultimately increase your ROI. But automation alone won’t magically make all these things so—this isn’t Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, after all. Some can be so eager to utilise automation that they can fall short in getting the most out of it.
For most marketers, though, automation is certainly more friend than foe. The real magic trick comes in knowing just how to use it. T Dot UK humbly offers up its tips on how to harness the power of automation.
Automate With Purpose
The worst thing a marketer could do is automate first and ask questions later. It’s recommended that you revisit your marketing goals and current business plan to see how automation could best fit in. It’s also wise to consider an implementation strategy for automating certain tasks, rather than turning everything you do over to automation at once.
This especially goes for how automating will impact your current customers or subscribers. You want to avoid using automated emailing, for example, to simply flood your subscribers’ inboxes with waves of messages. What makes automation so useful is its ability to help you become more strategic. For example, you can use automation to send a follow-up email one week after a customer clicked your Call to Action, or send them content that is similar to the content they have previously interacted with on your site.
Treat Automation Like a Scheduling Assistant
One way that automation becomes enormously helpful to marketers is by working hard around the clock so you don’t need to. Take emails—you can use services like MailChimp or Constant Contact to put together automated drip campaigns to nurture new subscribers. You can tell automation platforms to send financial tips as tax season nears, or include other time-specific emails to your industry.
The same goes for social media. Automation can help you schedule out a whole week’s worth of posts on Sunday night. Or it can allow you to prepare a social post at 2am but publish it the next day at noon. It’s critical, though, that you not let automation take over your social entirely and cut you off from engaging in real-time with your followers. But a healthy balance of pre-scheduled posts and regular check-ins on your notifications can be the perfect alchemy for your social media strategy.
Put Automation to Work for Your Business
Consider the use of automation as if you were bringing on a new employee. You wouldn’t suddenly change everything you were doing to satisfy the whims of this new hire, much the same way you shouldn’t let your business suddenly revolve around this new technological feature. What’s best is putting automation to work for you. Look at your core customer base and see what automation can do to improve their experience.
Where automation can help with some heavy lifting is your inbound marketing: use it to handle incoming calls or provide more communication with those already interacting with your business. It can be enticing to use new automation features to take your message to a broader range of people, but don’t lose sight of the individuals who got your business where it was in the first place. See what automation can do for them, and then you can see it work its ROI magic.
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