If marketing automation vendors capitalize on these opportunities, automation software could go from a “nice-to-have” tool to a “must-have” technology.
Marketing automation providers generally offer really helpful tools for marketers. But even if the tools are helpful, they’re not necessarily perfect. Today’s solutions still have plenty of room for improvement. Let’s take a closer look at three great opportunities to move marketing automation to the next level in the year ahead.
1. Intelligent Learning
The goal of marketing automation has always been to treat prospects and customers as individuals and to present them with the right message through the right channel at the right time. The problem? Thus far, marketing automation tools work like databases, requiring marketers to manually build segments. Such solutions are missing intelligent learning. They fail to apply the data we collect, which means we can’t continuously optimize the next message.
If Bill, for example, only reads emails between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., then that’s when the system should automatically send emails to him, regardless of when the formal send is scheduled. If Jill only responds to SMS campaigns, then marketing automation platforms should be smart enough to proactively create a new segment for people like her and to recommend to the marketer that an SMS campaign be run for these particular people. If Steve likes videos and Jen likes written content, the system should be able to present the right version of content based on their click history.
“Tools should take some of the burden off of marketers and give us new insights into how to best engage our specific audience,” says Heather Teicher, vice president of marketing at TurnTo. “They should help us deliver those aha! moments that make campaigns successful.” According to Teicher, marketers shouldn’t need to dig through a campaign history to identify what an audience responds to best. They should be getting active recommendations. “The data exists,” Teicher explains, “it just needs to be delivered cleanly to marketers and updated continuously as our audiences grow and get more sophisticated.”
