Growing numbers of businesses are enjoying increases in efficiency, profits, and customer retention because they have a new tool in their marketing toolbox: automated marketing. However, acquiring the software won't in itself guarantee success. The reason is that like most tools, there are wrong ways and right ways of using it. One misuse is failing to use it at all. Although this seems like a trivial example, it does happen. Businesses, like individuals, sometimes acquire things and pay for services they never get around to using. Other mistakes include:

Automated marketing software has many features such as marketing automation, email marketing, social media management, invoice and estimates, form builders, sms marketing, and landing page generators. These features often allow you to set up automated workflows that do repetitive work in the background and alert you when your input is needed.

This is powerful stuff, but using one or two of these features in isolation, underutilizes the software. For example, if the email marketing is the only feature used, then your list building efforts won't benefit from the social media management and landing page generator features. Likewise, using only the landing page generator automates a single task rather than your entire marketing and lead conversion processes.

It's also possible to underutilize the individual features. For example, failing to segment your list, personalize your emails, or use the feedback available in the reporting analytics underutilizes the email marketing feature and reduces it to a generic autoresponder tool. It's important to use as many of the features as possible and make them work together by creating appropriate workflows.

The departments of highly efficient companies work together by coordinating their activities and sharing information. When a single department, such as sales, acquires automated marketing for their own purposes, then marketing is left out of the picture. The end result is that marketing lacks the benefits of automated marketing and fails to boost the number and quality of leads it sends to sales. Likewise, when the marketing department acquires automated marketing for its own use, the sales department fails to benefit from their own uses of it.

When acquiring automated marketing software, take the time to go through the vendor's instructions on its proper use and implement what you've learned. Don't hesitate to get on the phone and talk to the vendor about making the best use of your software.

If you have questions about how automation tools and services will help your business, please contact us.