Traditional marketing automation hasn't been very successful.
Unsubscribe rates are high, and that's not even counting the "silent unsubscribe" - unengaged recipients who never read your email or automatically filter it into their spam box.
Why not? Because no one wants to be a lead. There are many factors to consider about your marketing programs and how to incorporate marketing automation into your programs, and you should definitely consider these facts:
Four Things You Should Know About Marketing Automation:
- Your Database Expires Over Time - 25% of your list expires every year.
Marketing automation does nothing to help you grow your list. As 25% of your list will turn over each year, you need to be growing your list by at least that much each year just to stay even on the size of your list. Attention expires too - according to data from Mailchimp, the subscriber's attention drops off quickly over time too, and they are half as likely to open an email after 90 days from signing up. Even for the people on your list, their attention will be dropping off over time if your messaging is not engaging and useful to them each time. Marketing automation does nothing to help you grow your list over time - it's all about doing more and more with the same list you already had.
- Email is very unreliable - It's hard to get in the inbox!
This year, the spam filters that most people use have become much more intelligent and broad. Spam filters are no longer just for porn, viagra ads, and banking scams, but also things that email providers are pretty sure you do not want - such as Gmail's Priority Inbox. Things that Google is sure that you do not really want to see are not placed in your main inbox and generally hidden from view. This isn't just personal use of Gmail either - over 3 million organizations use Google apps to run their email for their private domain, including schools, and businesses like HubSpot. Even if you have 95+% deliverability to the address, the software that people use to clean their inboxes is now keeping you out of their real inbox. Many other email systems have features similar to this as well.
- The World Has Changed: Advertising doesn't work like it used to.
Not only is it now much harder to get your message online, but the way that people do their research and shop has also fundamentally changed in the last ten years since marketing automation began to grow. It is easily possible f3or someone who is researching products to do research today, even while on the phone with the sales rep. They can ask for references on social media, find actual reviews by your customers, find common friends who work there on LinkedIn, and search for demos and responses on YouTube. As a modern marketer, you need to be aware of these online presences and manage them properly, and be aware of the content on each.
- Marketing Automation does nothing to help generate new leads.
It's true. While marketing automation could help you generate warmer, better-educated leads from and existing list, marketing automation does absolutely nothing to help you to generate new leads. Because marketing automation does not help you generate new content or optimize your website for SEO, mobile devices, or social media. As a result, marketing automation is a very expensive route that encourages you to just spam the same list you already have in new and different ways. Instead, make sure that you have implemented a full inbound marketing strategy by blogging regularly, networking on social media inside of your field, and making sure that people can access your site and content on a variety of devices.