Hey marketers and marketing automation vendors: Your capability isn’t always my benefit.

June 17, 2011 | Posted by: Katie

I have found that, when it comes to marketing automation platforms, if a user/marketer sees an interesting (potentially powerful) capability, they assume it is a benefit.

For example, just because a marketer knows I was on his software company’s web site yesterday and visited the pricing page, is it a benefit to me to get an email from him or a sales person saying,

“Hi, Bob, I noticed you were on our pricing page yesterday. Can I answer any questions for you?”

No, of course this isn’t a benefit to me, yet that is exactly what happened.

Whether the email I received was automated (which would be a big policy mistake) or one-off (poor judgement), it was not a value add to me, in fact, it was a big turnoff.  Yet the sales person or marketer assumed that because he/she had the capability, they should use it.

There is a really interesting footnote to this story: the software company in the anecdote above is a top 3 provider of marketing automation software. So much for using their own best practices.

Bob London is President of London, Ink, a marketing and communications consulting firm based in the Washington, DC area. He can be reached at bob@londonink.com.