Marketing automation works best when it’s backed by humans
If you’ve followed my writing for very long, you know I’m not a big fan of automated emails. There are cases where they are done correctly and can be valuable, but the most common implementation seems to be “cool, let’s blast stuff out!”.
If you’re going to automate, I suggest two main rules:
- Send it from a real address, not from “noreply”.
- When someone responds, engage with them like a human.
It seems pretty easy, yes?
A few years back I shared the story for the bizarre marketing automation when I was looking to trade my car at Mountain View Ford, and now I’m back with a similar tale of woe. This time I was looking at lease rates on a Mustang Mach-E with Wade Ford, and the email automation and chaos was something to see. Here’s a quick look at what happened:
Note that the Mountain View story above was from five years ago. Surely dealerships have improved their technology since then, right? I guess not.