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Marketing automation<\/a> is a great tool. It allows companies to set up campaigns that run on their own without further human intervention. This saves time and greatly expands what your marketing team can accomplish with limited resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unfortunately, marketing automation can also go wrong somewhat spectacularly. In this article I\u2019ll provide a list of things to check to make sure your automated programs aren\u2019t giving you or your company a big black eye.\u00a0<\/p>\n This might be the classic example of marketing automation gone wrong. Personalizing an email can increase its effectiveness, so when you discover that you have first names in your email database, you change your subject line or salutation to include it. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n But does every record <\/em>have an appropriate first name for such a use? \u201cHi Mailstop 34\u201d isn\u2019t much better than \u201cHi [First Name].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Before you insert a field into some marketing creative, make sure you have appropriate data in every record <\/strong>and <\/strong>make sure there\u2019s a fallback such as \u201cif the field is empty, insert \u2018valued customer.\u2019\u201d Most systems can manage that.\u00a0<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve accounted for every quirk and possible catastrophe from your list, you\u2019re still not in the clear. Two months later, a salesperson will upload a new email list introducing new gotchas. By then, you\u2019ve moved on to 17 other projects, and your simple personalization program is very far from the top of your mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n Here are two ways to manage this. This particular example is about email, but you can apply the same principles to other campaigns.\u00a0<\/p>\n Catch it before it happens.<\/strong> Create a requirements document for new data. For example, \u201cevery new email list must meet these standards.\u201d Include the logic of your personalization campaign in that document. If people follow procedure (good luck on that), the errors will be caught and corrected before they go live.\u00a0<\/p>\n Recover quickly.<\/strong> Make sure you\u2019re on great terms with the customer service lead. Somebody who gets an email with the subject line \u201cHi Good prospect from the annual meeting\u201d will forward it to customer service. Make sure they know they have your ear and that you will be very grateful when they clue you into this sort of mistake. For some reason, it can be like pulling teeth to get CSRs to tell you when something stupid happens. Encourage them regularly.<\/p>\n Some marketing automation problems result from bad planning, but often they\u2019re a result of an unanticipated change in an underlying assumption.\u00a0<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you have a very small collection of webpages on a narrow topic. People who are interested in that topic are good prospects for a service you provide, so you set up a campaign to email everyone who visits one of those pages. (You can do that sort of thing with a customer data platform.)\u00a0<\/p>\n These few pages are categorized a particular way in your content management system, so the setup is fairly easy. You rely on that category tag to identify the correct articles.\u00a0<\/p>\n Two months later, the SEO guy finds out that this narrow topic is good for organic traffic, so he starts adding that category tag to many new pages. Now you\u2019re bombarding your audience with emails.\u00a0<\/p>\n How do you account for such things? The SEO guy is in another department. He doesn\u2019t report to you or even tell you what he\u2019s doing and he has no idea that his changes are turning your modest campaign into a nightmare.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reporting is the answer. <\/strong>Keep track of the volume of each of your campaigns. If the volume suddenly changes, investigate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dig deeper: <\/em><\/strong>How to survive (and learn from) email marketing mistakes<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n You\u2019ve set up a very efficient system where your lead funnel adds names and email addresses to your contact management software. Every new lead goes into your welcome series. They get a welcome email, a follow-up on Week 1, etc. <\/p>\n Then, some data scientist is told to clean up the sloppy records. Your new lead isn\u2019t \u201cnew\u201d at all. He was on the list 17 years ago. The data scientist merges the fresh record with the old record and that new \/ not-new contact falls out of the series.\u00a0<\/p>\n The best solution here is to make friends.<\/strong> You won\u2019t be able to find a report or a technological solution to every possible foul-up. You need to encourage an environment where people think, \u201cThis is in so and so\u2019s domain and he\u2019s a good egg. Maybe I should check with him before I mess with this.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s simply too easy to fire and forget with marketing automation. You set up a great campaign and it serves you well for a time, but it just keeps running and running and nobody is watching it to make sure it\u2019s still fit for purpose.\u00a0<\/p>\n Keep a list, review it regularly and always put a sunset date on every campaign<\/strong>. You can extend the sunset date if it\u2019s still working properly when you review it. Letting the campaign expire is better than allowing it to keep chugging along with something that doesn\u2019t advance your goals.\u00a0<\/p>\n When you create a marketing automation campaign, find a way to seed yourself so you get the messages regularly. That won\u2019t stop the \u201cHi [First Name]\u201d problem because your record has a first name. But it can prevent some embarrassing problems.\u00a0<\/p>\n When you get the seeds, check these things.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever can go wrong will go wrong\u201d seems to be written into the fabric of creation. As a result, you can\u2019t rely on your genius planning and operational excellence to prevent catastrophe. <\/p>\n Sometimes, your best recourse is to get an early warning when catastrophe strikes. If something slips and you catch it quickly, that\u2019s far better than allowing it to linger for a month \u2014 or longer.\u00a0<\/p>\n Create a special set of reports specifically related to marketing automation campaigns. One possible way to do this is with labels or a naming convention. For example, start the name of every marketing automation campaign with \u201cMA-.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Review those reports regularly. Look for peaks, valleys and weird deviations, such as \u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n You don\u2019t have to do this personally, but somebody has to.\u00a0Marketing automation often relies on data from different systems. <\/p>\n For example, your order system might update the list that controls your cross-sell offers. That update relies on a connection between those systems, and sometimes connections fail \u2013 for various reasons. You need to make sure someone is notified when a connection fails.\u00a0<\/p>\n Marketing automation relies on forethought, reports, monitoring and good operations. Don\u2019t allow anybody to set up a marketing automation campaign without procedures to ensure you can be notified when it goes wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n Time spent at the beginning thinking about what might go wrong and how to detect an error won\u2019t catch every problem. But with luck, it will catch most of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dig deeper: <\/em><\/strong>8 major email marketing mistakes and how to avoid them<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Get MarTech! Daily. Free. In your inbox.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\u2018Hi [First Name]\u2019\u00a0<\/h2>\n
It might not be your fault<\/h2>\n
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Somebody \u2018cleans up\u2019 your data\u00a0<\/h2>\n
Keep a list of all running campaigns and review them\u00a0<\/h2>\n
Seed yourself\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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Read lots of reports<\/h2>\n
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Monitor data connections\u00a0<\/h2>\n
Steer clear of marketing automation mishaps<\/h2>\n
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