Marketing Automation, four lessons I learned

In this last year I started getting my hands on Marketing Automation. Currently with Adobe Target and after doing some experimenting with Google Optimize.

These Marketing Automation Products act on the front-end and inside the customer’s browser. They inject “Experiences” to selected “Audiences” on selected pages.

I’d like to share with you four lessons I’ve learned about Marketing Automation.

ONE – your actual marketing automation audience is smaller

The actual audience you target is significantly smaller than your total Audience. For example, if you create an A/B test balanced 50/50 and the default experience does not have any modification. Way more than half of you audience will see the default.

This happens because your Marketing Automation works only for those who accept cookies and don’t block tracking on the browser. So if your total audience is of 100 and 30 don’t accept cookies. You are actually balancing 35/65. To do a balanced test, you need to set it so 85% of your audience sees the modification.

TWO – focus on automation that is relevant

Focus on what is significant. Marketing Automation is a fascinating technology so you might be tempted to do some sophisticated experience targeting. In the process you might find out you are addressing an extremely small audience. In this case, even if you double a conversion rate it doesn’t significantly influence your results.

Do your math first, run a few reports on Analytics. You must understand if your audience is big enough to bring tangible results.

THREE – avoid overlapping campaigns

Be careful with overlapping campaigns. Once you start using Marketing Automation extensively you might risk having overlapping experiences. Especially when using popups, ribbons and other invasive contraptions, you must prioritize. This will help you avoid potentially overlapping experiences from your target audience.

You don’t want your customer to see two popups, don’t you?

FOUR – target human audiences

Target Human audiences, exclude bots. Experience targeting can affect one of Google factors for ranking. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is a Core Web Vital that measures the cumulative score of all unexpected layout shifts within the viewport (exactly what we’re doing with Target).

Since this can affect you ranking, you can exclude know search engine bots (or just GoogleBot) who have distinctive user-agents, from your targeted audiences. Do this with attention, we don’t want to fool Google. We just want to deliver better and relevant experiences to our Customers.

Conclusion

Whatever type of online business you run, the core digital marketing principles don’t change. If you focus on your Customer’s experience, you will probably do well. If you focus on your tool’s features, you will probably fail.

I want to hear from you now. What is your number one takeaway from these 4 lessons? I encourage you to share your own lessons in the comments below.

FAQ