by Erika Cannon
[email protected]
The term “marketing automation” is somewhat misleading because there is nothing automatic about it. There are, in reality, several moving parts that need daily human interaction: a marketing manager to provide messaging strategy; a content writer to write those messages; a marketing technologist to run the platform; a data technologist to provide and manage the data; and an inside sales team to monitor, respond and qualify activity in the MA tool.
It’s a lot of work. Really.
So much so that 70% of marketers are not completely satisfied with their marketing automation software.
That’s a lot of unhappy.
The problem lies within the expectation: sales teams expect a computer platform to spit out prospects ready to buy. But a computer doesn’t sell! The sales team has to sell.
A marketing automation tool can tell you that a prospect is engaged by reporting electronic behavior: where the prospect went on your website; how many emails they opened. But that program cannot tell you why they are engaged. There must be human interaction to determine why and to what level another human is interested, or ready to buy.
Use a marketing automation tool to educate the prospect and establish your authority in the market space. Use a human to build trust, gauge interest and close the deal.
