Over the past few years’ marketing automation has rapidly evolved and has enabled marketers much needed ease in performing daily tasks at work. One of the most important things to remember before embarking with marketing automation is to remember that it’s a technology not a strategy. It’s simply a tool available to help leverage the desired results from a more cohesive and planned strategy. Marketing automation should allow your brand and people the ease to take advantage of the efficiencies gained by focusing times and efforts on other parts of the business, while automating otherwise time consuming tasks.

Below are some of my do’s and don’ts of Marketing Automation.

Don’t commit email spam by merely automating the recipient’s first name, you must step up your game and deliver more personalized and engaging content. You must ensure emails sent through automation are customized for the individual reader, and leverage the sophistication of your platform. Your clients must feel as though they’re receiving communication from humans, not robots.

Do leverage data and analysis to make automation work for your brand. Review, revisit, measure and adjust to understand the full range of data triggers from your campaigns and get the most out of your automation. Take advantage of the rich behavioral data provided by marketing automation to create more focused, personalized, and successful campaigns.

Don’t automate the wrong things especially at the wrong times. Understanding when and where you audience lies is crucial before embarking on any campaign. It’s crucial to hit your audience through email when they’re most attentive based on past testing and analysis. When it comes to social media it’s important to take the time to write a compelling and appropriate channel for each platform. Avoid being a bot and posting irrelevant content when your audience is offline.

Do take advantage of workflows within your system and ensure you have a clear user journey set. People come into your sales funnel at different times and familiarity with your brand. Ensure you have clear paths set based on the leads past habits to allow them to progress through your sales funnel at their own pace. Use lead nurturing to setup re-engagement campaigns to revive interest in leads who have gone inactive. It’s crucial to use lead scoring and grading to automate leads qualification to further take advantage of seeing how good a fit they are for your brand, but how much they have engaged with your site.

Automating your marketing shouldn’t be an intimidating task, although it can seem daunting at times. When successfully leveraging all the resources available, you’ll quickly see the results pay off. I would love to hear your thoughts, please leave a comment or send a tweet @MarissaPick.