Idea Gathering: Automated Marketing

Here on the blog, we'll be presenting weekly idea gathering wrap ups of some of our favorite customer experience strategy, design and alignment news and views.

This week our focus is on Automated Marketing.

Wikipedia defines automated marketing as the name given to software platforms designed for marketing departments and organizations to automate repetitive tasks. Automated marketing's intention is to save time, improve efficiency, and reduce human errors. But what kind of impact does it have on the customer? We'll discuss the pros and cons of implementing an automated marketing system at your business.

First the pros: According to the web magazine CMSwire.com, campaigns running automated marketing software that utilize automated e-mail responses enjoy a 200% higher conversion rate. Automatic response e-mails are the most common forms of automated marketing, and are generally triggered by an action that a visitor makes such as asking a question or downloading a form. CMSwire also suggests including a personal signature at the bottom of your automated e-mails increases open rates by 500%

Furthermore automated marketing can be utilized for phones as well. CMSwire repots that a staggering 50% of consumers who received a text message from a retailer reported making a purchase as a result. It's in this category where the ROI of automated marketing seems to be the most significant.

Others argue that automated marketing actually does more harm then good to customer experience and that automatic replies and service can not (yet) be effectively replaced by actual people. Hubspot.com ridicules current automated reply e-mail software explaining that the available filters on most e-mail clients easily blocks or de-prioritizes automated e-mails. So while the delivery stats may remain high on automated e-mail, the actual readership does not.

Hubspot also goes on to explain how automated marketing often lacks the valuable content that customers want to be receiving whether it be in an e-mail, text, or blog post. As automated marketing programs develop larger and larger contact lists they end up mass marketing to potentially unique segments of clients.

Is automated marketing right for your business? Factors to consider are number of customers and the uniqueness of their needs. If your business has a limited number of customers who all want the same thing then automated marketing will definitely save you time and money. If not, then you shouldn't rush into the decision and take some time to think about how your customers will feel getting e-mails or texts from a machine instead of a person.

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