Marketing automation is an amazing tool that can help you organise and run your marketing more effectively. In the days of old, when people had to manually decide when was best to send an email, remember to make time to send said email, and additionally run their actual business alongside, things were pretty tough.

Now that this software is available to every smart marketer, it seems a shame to let it go to waste by making silly mistakes in the process of using it. Here are some mistakes you might be making, as well as how to avoid them and end up making the most of your marketing automation.

1) Thinking that EVERYTHING is done for you

So the main use of this software is in the title. Automation. It’s automated software. The thing is, it’s still just technology – and so far, technology is not sentient. You need to give it the materials to do its job or it’s not going to get done.

Whilst some providers will allow you to purchase their copywriters’ time, it generally doesn’t come as part of the original package. One thing is for sure: not every provider will give you that option. Make sure you’re feeding in your own regular, high-quality campaign content including emails, social media posts and whatever else you want to automate.

2) Not segmenting data

You want your contacts to engage with the content you send them, right? But if you’re sending irrelevant content to them then how will they ever engage? This is called being lazy.

It’s easier for you to send one email to all of your contacts rather than digging deeper and grouping them based on characteristics and business interests. That doesn’t mean it’s the best idea. If you send irrelevant information, you’re just going to end up with unsatisfied, uninterested leads – with the added bonus that a number of them will unsubscribe from your email list. You need to segment your data in order to send the right person the right content at the right time.

3) Doing it without a workflow

Marketing automation is good, but without a workflow, it’s not as good. Workflows work like this: you tell the technology what to do in certain situations, and it does it. For example, when email contacts engage with certain content, your workflow might move them to a different segment.

Simple. So why don’t many people do it? Granted, creating a workflow can be complicated – plus, to get a really high-quality workflow takes a little time. As they always say, though, no pain, no gain. Implementing a workflow means that you can be nurturing leads without even thinking about it, getting hot contacts out of “nowhere” simply because your marketing automation software knew exactly what it was doing and got it done.

4) Marketing that’s out of date

With marketing automation, dates and times can get a bit confusing. If you’re trying to get a lot of social media posts done at once for next week, you might not realise that by the time they’re posted, the event you kept mentioning will be long gone. Make sure your marketing hasn’t gone stale, and keep an eye on what you’re posting – and when.

It’s important to not let yourself get slack just because you think your business will run itself with marketing automation. No machine can go entirely without human aid, and you can’t overestimate these things when it comes to something as important as your company. Be consistent and active with your marketing, even alongside marketing automation, and things will run as smoother than you ever could’ve hoped.