Are Marketing Automation Systems Destroying Marketing?

This sounds like one of those titles where a book sale is the call to action of this piece. Please be assured I am not trying to sell you anything, unusual for a marketer, but I do want to provide a thought.

I have been using Marketing Automation and Social Media management tools linked to Analytics and CRM system for a few years now and these are very powerful tools. They enable personalized, engaging and fully segmented communications to almost any size of customer base or target demographic and by almost any size of company. In many ways this technology is leveling the playing field between small and large companies talking to almost any customer type.

As a consumer I am also subject to this type of email and social communication and while I can admit its power, it does have drawbacks.

1. The first of these is that a great deal of the content is low quality. Automation systems can help marketers build ROI, segment communications and a host of other items but content quality is a direct result of creativity mixed with copywriting skills of the human behind the keyboard.
2. Another major drawback is that the customer’s voice is diluted, due to the fact that much of the direction provided by automated systems deals with big data type sets, into a vanilla set of communications, content or social posts.
3. My final point is that I think these systems can be a negative force for your brand if used incorrectly. Over communicating, usually driven by a sale only focus, or communicating bad content, 100% a marketing issue, can put you straight into the spam filter and your brand with it.

These tools are remarkably powerful and can have a huge positive effect on your business if used correctly but beware becoming too reliant on them as your only tactic as they can also stop your marketing in its tracks, the pitfall I have seen many new start up’s fall into

They are part of your kitbag just as PR, SEO and advertising are.

About the Author

Robert Keane graduated from the Full-time Accelerated MBA programme at the University’s School of Management in 2014. He has 20 years plus experience in the IT sales and marketing sector and is Sales and Marketing Vice President of iLLUMA-Drive Inc. The core of the company is the fusion, using IoT technology, between IT and energy systems so that people can control all aspects of their energy generation and usage from a single integrated system. This provides home/business DC micro grids, battery systems, solar and wind energy integration and home automation functionality.