In Marketing, Don’t Optimize Operational Experiences, Optimize Customer Experiences
Tags: Professional Development, Customer Experience, Marketing, Automation, Advice

Photo by Gary Chan on Unsplash

Marketing automation is great, but does it really change the way people think about your company and products?

I’ve been marketing B2B technology products and services for over twenty years and I’m seeing a pattern I don’t like: operational automation prioritized over customer experience. I have examples sitting in my inbox right now in the form of marketing emails from several major trade organizations and software companies. These companies send this stuff every day and sometimes multiple times a day. Have they never heard of the boy who cried wolf (maybe they haven’t)?

The dark side of operational marketing

Tools like Hubspot and Marketo give marketers the ability to set up and automate the delivery of marketing messages to multiple outputs, with a few clicks. In fact, with proper set up there are no clicks- you just create and format the content and then plug it into the system for automated delivery. In some cases, marketers choose to deliver the same content every day to maximize exposure. But the reality is that they are actually rendering their efforts invisible.

Remember ‘banner blindness’? Apparently not

I’m ancient enough to remember when digital marketing was about intrusive crap like banner ads that littered online content, diluting its value and message. But humans are adaptive and we adapted to this onslaught by cognitively learning to ignore it. It didn’t take long because, even before the Internet, we were exposed to thousands of marketing messages on a daily basis and we became numb to them. Yet marketers still sent them out constantly in a ‘throw it at the wall and see what sticks’ approach. This, despite massive evidence that not only did this no longer work, but it actually does serious damage to the offending companies.

Because it’s easy doesn’t make it right

We know, for certain, that what people want online is high quality, actionable content. Content that informs and helps them make problem-solving decisions, i.e. buying decisions. Yet we continue to send those daily ‘empty’ emails. Why? The answer is simple. Quality is hard and quantity is easy. Automation has made the operational lift in marketing much easier, as it should. But marketers have taken the lazy route at the expense of customer experience. I opted in for those emails I mentioned at the opening of this article, supposedly exchanging my valued attention and time for something of value. And what did I get? Intrusive, irrelevant, annoying barrages of content that I either ignore or delete and unsubscribe. They acquired me with a promise and then used operational laziness to destroy the value of that effort.

This is not really about marketing automation

Ironically, marketing automation tools give us the tools we need to finetune the experience our customers associate with us. It’s called feedback and it tells us everyday, via analytics, whether what we are sending and posting delights the customer or infuriates them. If I send six emails in a week for the same webinar to a customer who doesn’t open them, then shouldn’t I get the message that this isn’t working or they don’t care about the topic? Apparently, if enough of the spaghetti sticks, it is worth annoying the 99% that doesn’t.

Google keeps telling us but…

SEOers, who should know better, are often as guilty of this laziness as anyone else. The reason they should know better is Google has made it loud and clear what it rewards: quality. They’re wise to the game. Potential buyers are no different. We know a good experience when we have it. And too many marketers are using tools that used improperly destroy that experience. Please stop.

This is not rocket science

Before you design campaigns and content, step back and imagine yourself on the receiving end of them. Even better, create a list in your marketing tool and put your marketing and management team on it. Then send your campaign to them. Even better, to their personal email, if they’ll share it. Get their feedback. Is the experience useful, interesting, helpful, or…a drag? This seat of the pant user experience (UX) testing is common in software and product development. Why would marketers ignore it? IMHO, there are only two reasons: incompetence or laziness. Or both. Time to step up and use the tools we have, like a professional.