Keeping the Human Element in Your Marketing Automation

Marketing automation offers undeniable benefits for businesses large and small. It helps free you of mundane but vital tasks, ensuring that you’re able to focus on building your business, rather than building your lists. It’s even become integrated into almost every part of our digital existence, from social media to the shopping cart.

However, when done improperly, it could be costing your business. Automation can be invaluable, but it can also be off-putting, particularly if you don’t do what’s necessary to maintain a human element throughout all of your marketing efforts. This can ultimately cost you customers and profitability, even tarnish your brand.

Why Does It Matter?

In an age when bots an AI are increasingly common, you may wonder why maintaining a human element in your marketing, particularly digital marketing, is essential in the first place. Here’s the thing – the more human your brand is, the more likely human consumers are to engage with you.

We’re not that eager to engage with bots, no matter how sophisticated they might be. Until AI can be developed that perfectly mimics all the subtle nuances of human-to-human interaction, many people will be put off by a less-than-human experience. So, how do you ensure that you can still benefit from marketing automation while maintaining your humanity?

Know Your Customers

Does this tip sound familiar? It should. It’s perhaps the single most vital piece of information in digital marketing and should inform every single step you take. Know your customers. Understand their goals and their challenges. Imbue all of your marketing content with that understanding through personalisation and audience segmentation.

Be Emotional

Bots are cold and logical. Humans are emotional and warm. Make sure to work emotion into your digital marketing efforts. Not only does that help keep your brand more human, but it can also lead to a significantly higher lifetime customer value (LTV). How do you do that? It’s really up to you. Some possibilities include sharing positive messages on social media, supporting causes that matter to your audience, and more.

Keep Your Database Clean and Up to Date

Personalisation is a core concept in maintaining your brand’s humanity, even when automating marketing efforts. To personalise your marketing content, you need access to accurate personal information about your customers. Address emails to them, by their first name (or their last name if you’re going a more formal route). Include a nod to past interactions or purchases. Be vigilant about maintaining data cleanliness, as well – inaccurate or outdated information should be removed immediately to ensure that your database stays in good shape.

Ensure Voice Consistency

Creating the right brand voice is essential to maintaining humanity throughout each touchpoint with your customers. However, you also need to make sure that you can maintain consistency from one channel to the next. It’s all about establishing trust and building a relationship with your customers that feels more like a conversation than a traditional consumer/business relationship.

Go Beyond Conversion

Today, consumers want to feel understood and valued. Nothing shows that you treasure the relationships you’ve forged (a critical human trait) than going beyond the conversion point. If you regularly engage with a consumer up to the point that they make a purchase, and then don’t bother contacting them again, you appear mercenary at best. Nurture your customers long beyond the conversion point.

In Conclusion

When it’s all said and done, keeping the human element in your marketing automation just comes down to ensuring that you act like a real person in each touchpoint. Be genuine. Be authentic. Be emotional. Be consistent. If you’re struggling here, there’s help available. Get in touch with us at Emarkable to schedule a consultation with our expert team.