10 Marketing Automation Challenges and How to Solve Them

However, marketing automation is not without its challenges.

In this article, we’ll investigate 10 of the most common problems with digital marketing automation and how your business can overcome them.

Challenge #1: No existing marketing automation strategies

Using marketing automation tools without a plan in place can mean there’s no guarantee that your marketing automation efforts will help you achieve your overall business goals. There may even be the possibility that your marketing automation efforts will end up being a waste of money and time.

To implement marketing automation effectively, you need a comprehensive automation strategy.

The solution

Before starting to use marketing automation software, draft this strategy, which should cover:

• The marketing goals you want to achieve through your automation efforts
• Your target audience and what their pain points are
• The customer journey and the touchpoints where your customers will interact with your brand
• Where you will introduce automation workflows into the customer journey
• Which marketing automation platforms you will use
• Which members of your team will be involved at every step of the automation process
• Which customer data you will use to power your marketing automation strategy, and how you will ensure it is accurate
• How your marketing automation tools will integrate with your other marketing systems
• How you will review and optimize your marketing automation strategy to ensure success

Your marketing automation strategy should align with your overall marketing strategy and general business objectives to ensure consistency and avoid duplication of work.

Challenge #2: Misalignment between Marketing and Sales teams

It’s vital that Marketing and Sales are in agreement, especially when discussing automation processes.

Let’s say your Marketing team sets up an automated lead nurturing campaign. Prospective customers are automatically qualified using a specific set of criteria and passed on to the Sales team.

Issues will arise if these criteria weren’t agreed upon with Sales beforehand, meaning the Sales team is deluged with leads that aren’t viable. As a result, Marketing gets frustrated that their leads aren’t being closed, and Sales gets frustrated that they are wasting time on irrelevant leads.

The solution

The first step in ensuring Marketing and Sales productivity is to agree on a shared goal and key performance indicators (KPIs) before introducing any marketing automation technology.

This will help Marketing and Sales work together and understand what is needed for effective marketing automation.

It’s also essential to define what constitutes a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and sales qualified lead (SQL). This will ensure Marketing generates leads that the Sales team can easily evaluate and convert.

Clear communication is vital to ensure cooperation and accountability. Both teams need to hold regular meetings to develop content, discuss leads, and identify how automated processes can be improved.

Challenge #3: Poor data quality

Digital marketing automation relies on good-quality data to generate content and make decisions.

If you provide incomplete, outdated, or irrelevant data, there is the possibility that your automation tools can hinder rather than help your marketing efforts.

As the old technical saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out.”

Let’s say you use marketing automation software to provide a personalized website experience for customers. However, your browsing and purchase history data are inaccurate, meaning customers see recommended items that aren’t relevant to them. As a result, your customers get annoyed and you miss out on additional sales.

The solution

It’s vital to review and clean your customer data before you use it, as well as throughout the lifespan of your automated marketing campaigns.

For example, if you are running an email marketing campaign you can:

• Remove duplicate email addresses.
• Remove hard and soft bounces.
• Remove or segment inactive contacts.
• Add missing form field data.
• Check customers are in the correct segments.
• Implement validation rules on email capture forms.

While you can automate data validation to audit your data at speed and scale, it’s also important to carry out manual reviews. This allows you to identify patterns, spot problems, and implement measures to stop issues related to data quality from happening.

Challenge #4: Lack of employee training and buy-in

Marketing automation tools come with an extensive range of features and settings. If employees don’t understand how specific features work, they won’t be able to make the most of these tools or understand how to integrate them with other systems.

This leads to missed opportunities and may mean staff are reluctant to use the platforms you introduce.

The solution

Comprehensive, practical training is essential when implementing any marketing automation software. Many automation software providers offer onboarding training, as well as online resources so you can carry out your own training sessions in-house.

Provide tailored training in line with the needs of specific staff. For example, your Sales team may need different training from your Marketing team.

It’s also essential to keep staff up-to-date with any changes to automation platforms, so they can see how they can apply these new features to their model of working.

In regard to buy-in, it’s vital to involve employees from the start. Promote the benefits of marketing automation, ask staff for their input, and involve them in meetings with marketing automation software providers.

Challenge #5: Using the wrong automation tools

There are thousands of different marketing automation solutions on offer. Choosing the right marketing automation tool for your business can improve your efficiency and engage customers, but choosing the wrong tool can result in wasted resources.

According to Ascend2, 25% of marketers disagree that their marketing automation platform makes it easy to build effective customer journeys. It may be the case that starting again with a new automation tool better suited for their specific marketing processes might yield better results.

The solution

Rather than buying the first marketing automation solution you come across, take the time to research different platforms. Your platform (or platforms) of choice should perfectly align with your marketing strategy and the needs of your customers.

Ask the following questions when considering automation tools:

• What features does the platform offer?
• How much does the platform cost? Don’t just consider subscription fees, but training, integration, and support fees.
• Are there any limitations in place that may affect how my team carries out its marketing tasks?
• Will my team find the platform easy to use? A marketing automation tool doesn’t have to be aimed at beginners, but it does have to align with your team’s level of expertise.
• Will the platform scale as my business grows?
• What tools does the platform integrate with? Consider existing tools and tools you may purchase in the future.
• What kind of support and training are on offer?
• What reporting and analytics tools are available?
• Is the platform compliant with relevant data security regulations?

Challenge #6: Inconsistent messaging

It’s easy for your automation efforts to become inconsistent.

Different teams may set up automated campaigns with varying tones of voice, or you may launch a campaign and forget to amend it in line with changing customer preferences and needs. Some campaigns may use different fonts, colors, or versions of your company logo.

This can confuse customers, make your brand appear disjointed, and erode trust in your business.

The solution

A solid marketing strategy will ensure that all automated messages share the same tone of voice, values, and branding. It’s also important to manually review automated content to make sure it’s fresh, relevant, and cohesive.

Creating a brand style guide can ensure that employees and third-party organizations you work with build automated campaigns that have clear and consistent messaging.

Challenge #7: Not integrating systems together

It’s highly likely that you will use different automation platforms to market your business to customers. For example, you may use an email marketing automation tool, a social media automation tool, and a web personalization tool.

You may also use tools that aren’t necessarily automated, like content creation tools and SEO tools.

Using these systems separately can cause issues. As all these tools hold separate pieces of customer data, you risk creating data silos—places where information is hard to access and isolated from other data sources.

This can lead to fragmented marketing campaigns that aren’t personalized enough and don’t appeal to customers. It may also mean additional work for your teams as they have to transfer data from one system to another manually.

The solution

When choosing marketing automation software, it’s essential to select a tool that can integrate with other platforms that you already use or are planning to use.

Some platforms offer native integrations, or you can connect platforms using an application programming interface (API). Alternatively, you can use an integration platform like Zapier or IFTTT.

Regularly check the integration to make sure it is functioning and new data is being moved across in an efficient, timely manner.

Challenge #8: Being unaware of data compliance regulations

Automated marketing systems handle large amounts of personal data, including names, email addresses, credit card information, and date of birth, making major decisions with little human intervention.

Consequently, a small problem could result in a significant data compliance breach. This could lead to a loss of customer trust, negative publicity, and a substantial fine.

In the United Kingdom, Royal Mail was fined £20,000 ($27,000) after its email marketing automation system sent promotional emails to over 213,000 customers who had opted out. The organization pledged to make additional checks to prevent the issue from happening again.

As a business, you need to understand which data compliance regulations apply to your marketing processes and how to safeguard your automated systems.

The solution

The first step is to understand which data compliance regulations you need to adhere to. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union and UK or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in California.

If you handle sensitive patient health information in the United States, you may also need to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

You then need to see if your marketing automation system of choice is compliant with those data regulations.

Even if it is compliant, you need to take steps to collect, store, process, and share customer data in line with data regulations. For example, implementing opt-in consent for email marketing.

Challenge #9: Over-dependence on automation tools

Marketing teams can become too reliant on marketing automation platforms.

Let’s say you use:

• Email marketing automation to create wholly automated email journeys and sequences
• Social media automation to send automated replies to customers
• Chatbots to handle all customer queries on your website
• Automation tools to monitor key metrics rather than asking customers for feedback

As a result, your marketing can begin to feel generic and impersonal, which can frustrate customers and lead them to switch to a competitor who offers more human-centered interactions.

It can also mean you miss out on opportunities to innovate and grow, as you’re no longer engaging with customers and working to understand their evolving needs.

The solution

You should use marketing automation tools to enhance, rather than replace, human interaction.

It’s critical to review the entire customer journey and understand where connecting with a human is most important to ensure healthy customer relationships.

For example, while customers will be happy for you to send automated emails about their order, they’ll want to speak to someone directly if they have an issue with the product they receive.

Regularly review your automated campaigns to see how they perform and how you can make them better, and ask your customers for their experience and other types of feedback.

Challenge #10: Not making data-driven decisions from your marketing campaigns

Marketing automation can provide you with a wealth of actionable insights about your customers and which marketing channels are most effective at driving conversions.

By ignoring this data, you run the risk of becoming stagnant in the face of evolving customer behaviors and expectations.

The solution

The first step is to determine what data you need to achieve your goals, as defined in your marketing automation strategy.

You then need to examine your individual marketing automation systems to see what data you can gather from them.

We recommend integrating this data into one comprehensive dashboard so you can see how your automation strategy is working at a glance.

Regularly check this data to see what you’re doing well and where there’s room for improvement, as well as if there are any gaps in your knowledge you need to fill.

Key takeaways

• Marketing automation has a lot of benefits: However, while it can increase customer engagement and save time on repetitive marketing tasks, it can cause issues when misused.
• You need to start with a strategy: Ensure your automation needs align with your overall business objectives and identify the performance metrics you need to monitor.
• Make sure everyone is on board: Your teams need to be aligned, trained on the automation systems you use, and willing to make marketing automation work for your business.
• Clean your customer data: Relevant and accurate data makes your marketing automation efforts more successful.
• Marketing automation needs regular human intervention: It’s not something you can “set and forget”—it’s important to regularly check campaign performance.