When automated marketing fails.....

To be effective selling development tools, you need to find a way to better engage with evaluators.  Our job is to find out why, how, or if evaluators are installing, using, and successful using a product.

We have been using various forms of automated, "in bound" marketing tools for the better part of 8 years.  At the beginning, we used mail merging in Microsoft Word.  Then we invested into hand rolled software and our own internal server with daily synched evaluator databases sending "personalized" emails in plain text format.  (Man, I'm shedding a small tear, that was awesome when we got that built :-) ).  Even so, we had to use automated emails only where they made sense.  If we didn't get 10 to 20% responses, it didn't make sense to continue.

Now, in some cases, we use services like MailChimp, Bronto, and others that measure delivery rates, opens, and response rates.   We implement segmented emails to serve different emails or campaigns based on response, activity, and source.  It's been great to actually measure the type of messaging and campaign to success rates.  Through this process lately, it has occurred to me that much automated marketing is truly a turn off.  Customers (myself included) can spot campaigns from far away.

In some cases, automated marketing detracts and makes the experience of communicating with a company "impersonal".  What seems like a touching personal emails; are not, especially with that little "unsubscribe" and logo from third party mail provider.

Also, is it really needed?  In many cases, a hand typed casual email will garner much more response. respect. and dialog than an automated sales101 message.  My suggestion is only use automated marketing tools when you can't realistically touch people personally.  Don't get me wrong, automated marketing tools are really great for newsletters and special promotions, just be careful not overuse them.