Marketing Automation – the dangers of a monologue.

Gonçalo Malho Rodrigues (managing partner)

Is marketing automation a good idea?

In principle, marketing automation is a good idea and genuinely useful in our lives. Just think of the special discount some shops send you on your birthday, or the bank that automatically moves small amounts into your savings account, letting you put money aside without having to lift a finger.

Gonçalo Malho Rodrigues (managing partner)

Is marketing automation a good idea?

In principle, marketing automation is a good idea and genuinely useful in our lives. Just think of the special discount some shops send you on your birthday, or the bank that automatically moves small amounts into your savings account, letting you put money aside without having to lift a finger.

These are just two examples where automation makes a positive contribution to our lives. So what can go wrong? Everything. If that automation happens to be badly configured, or is out of step with other areas of the company, then what you have is a machine that destroys the good customer experience you were after. And with that, I think it's becoming clear why I'm writing this piece.

A good idea, badly executed, can ruin everything.

It's much like sitting down at a restaurant table, ordering a Bitoque, and then having the waiter come over and insistently recommend the magnificent house speciality — the Bitoque.

A while ago, while browsing the internet, I saw an ad (on Google's display network) from a training company for a course I'd already been thinking about taking. Perfect, right? Supply had met demand. I clicked the ad, filled in the landing page form, received an email confirming my request and waited to be contacted by the sales team so we could close the deal. And there I stayed, waiting for that contact, for several days. A week later, the contact still hadn't come, but I started receiving regular emails with calls to action to sign up for that very same course. Yes, exactly the one I'd already said I wanted to take in the form I submitted.

What happened here is much like sitting down at a restaurant table, ordering a Bitoque, and then having the waiter come over and insistently push me to order the magnificent house speciality — the Bitoque. I've already ordered the Bitoque, all right? That's what I want to eat! Could you now please tell the kitchen to cook it so I can eat it? Thank you.

Marketing automation in progress

Apparently, Marketing was doing its job: it took this qualified lead, which was me, and, following the automation rules that had been set up, started “nurturing” me, exactly as the fundamentals of inbound marketing prescribe. The problem is that its “conversation” became out of step with the context, given that they carried on trying to sell me something I'd already said I wanted to buy. Occupational hazard: my familiarity with the process running in the background meant that, on one hand, I could understand the mechanics and suspect which part might be jamming the gears and, on the other, that I suffered from impatience and a certain amount of criticism. Like any other lead, all I wanted was to buy the product and get on with my life. I could have done without the deadlock and the resulting (uncontrollable, I'll admit) need to work out what was going on inside that company's internal processes. “Did marketing not pass the lead to sales? No. It's sales that can't keep up with the volume of leads coming in. Maybe there are no places left and that's why they've put me on the back burner? I bet it's one particular person in sales putting off making the call.”

Most of our audience is quite legitimately agnostic about the machinery operating backstage and, for that reason, their reading of it is far simpler and probably rather less forgiving: this company “couldn't be bothered”, “it's downright inconsiderate to ignore my request”, or “if they take this long to reply, I'd better not risk buying at all”. As you can see, this scenario does nothing for a company's image when, in most cases, it comes down to nothing more than disorganisation. Disorganisation that can stem from inefficiency in sales just as easily as in marketing (I won't even mention the possibility of both at once!).

Flows, pipelines, statuses, lead scoring and triggers are the building blocks. What's needed now is to think them through and configure them properly, so that everything runs smoothly.

Sales, because at a given moment it may not be able to keep up with the volume of leads the company is receiving (and in that case marketing would be doing its job: generating leads). Marketing, because either the lead never reached sales for some reason, or the automation rules point to a need to categorise incoming leads more carefully. How? Well, if I filled in a form identifying the course I want to attend, it would probably make sense for my lead to enter the company's CRM with my interest recorded and with me placed at a pipeline stage indicating that this lead is “awaiting contact” from sales. When sales contacts the prospect and qualifies them, the lead moves to a stage that matches their purchase intent. For example, if I want to buy straight away, I move to a high probability of closing. But if that isn't the case, I might move to a status such as “not ready to buy” and then, yes, that change of status should place me in a group of customers who, according to the marketing automation rules defined, would start being “nurtured” with regular emails delivering relevant content, with the aim of putting this brand top of mind for me. When the moment to buy arrives, the odds of me buying from this brand are far higher, because it's the brand I've been building a relationship with and it's therefore top of mind.

Well, the truth is this company did end up top of mind for me, though not for the best of reasons… But there you go: because I found it easier to work out what had happened, I ended up developing a sort of pet grievance, which led me to persist and phone them to find out what I had to do to buy the wretched course!

The reputation of people and of the company

(…) you get what's known as “apples falling to the ground because they're overripe”, because nobody saw them and picked them in time to be eaten.

This may be a case where people become victims of process optimisation built on badly configured marketing automation, damaging the reputation of the company's professionals and, in turn, the company's brand as a whole. What I mean is that this company may have a fantastic marketing team and the best salespeople around, but if the automation flow puts incoming leads in the wrong slots, they'll be handled the wrong way. And so you get what's known as “apples falling to the ground because they're overripe”, because nobody saw them and picked them in time to be eaten. JTNDZGl2JTIwY2xhc3MlM0QlMjJmYi1jb21tZW50cyUyMiUyMGRhdGEtaHJlZiUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmplbGx5Y29kZS5wdCUyRmFydGlnb3Mtb3BpbmlhbyUyRmF1dG9tYWNhby1kZS1tYXJrZXRpbmctcGVyaWdvcy1kZS11bS1tb25vbG9nbyUyRiUyMiUyMGRhdGEtd2lkdGglM0QlMjIxMDAlMjUlMjIlMjBkYXRhLW51bXBvc3RzJTNEJTIyMTAlMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZkaXYlM0U=