Although they should not be at odds with each other, the fight between the automation vs. customisation is a constant in the world of digital marketing. We have more and more tools that allow us to automating our communications with the public, but the chances of personalisation are not always up to the task.
I was thinking about this because I received an email to my professional email from a supposed CEO of another agency wanting to participate in a personal project. A project that has nothing to do with marketing or with the stories of self-improvement (similar to the thousands of other stories of self-improvement that we usually see in these supposed gurus) that this man was telling me.
I politely replied that his story had no place in my project and that I recommended that he personalise your messages. He replied, also very politely, that he did not need to personalise anything, that he was already doing very well and was very successful.
Wow ********, I thought. Then I thought that perhaps my response had also been a little passive aggressive and that I deserved it. In any case, it made me reflect on the current situation between the two countries. automation vs. customisation and whether it would really be worthwhile for him or whether he would be missing out on opportunities.
The problem of unqualified data
What do I mean by this? Well, this CEO probably sends out 300 interview requests to as many radio programmes and gets 5 replies and that seems like a success to him.
Is it a success? Well, if we consider that it has only wasted the time of write a single email full of platitudes (perhaps even taking advantage of the ease of making contents with GPT ChatWhat's the problem?
That I have probably not managed to quality answers. Or that better answers that were feasible have fallen by the wayside.
After all, that's the problem with being cold door sales. You can sell something, but it will always be much, much less than what you would sell if you were you work the entire funnel in an appropriate manner.
If you have a radio programme on marketing or entrepreneurship, following the example, you will always prefer as a guest someone you know or follow their work. than to a man who sends you an email saying that he has gone to Andorra and is doing well, but that he is begging for collaborations. You won't be doing so well if the interviews don't come to your door on their own.
In the end, you need to working the funnel in advance and that the direct contact does not occur before the discovery phase and from the business, in this case the entrepreneur, to the customer.
Working in an agency specialising in full funnel solutionsEvery time I see someone who doesn't decide to skip the funnel altogether, I get alarmed.
Qualifying data
So what would we need? First of all qualify the raw data. For example, you have taken out all the marketing and entrepreneurship professionals who have a podcast on LinkedIn. Help yourself with the artificial intelligencewhich works very well for this kind of thing.
Now, check which of them have a podcast for companies. Then screen again to see which of them are doing well. interviews with entrepreneurs. Or consider another format.
Personally, I believe - and I am right - that it would be more useful to get good clients for your agency to participate in a debate or a programme in which you talk about your area of expertise. than simply telling a success story that involves going to a tiny country where it is very cold. If you've been so successful, why couldn't you afford to stay in Madrid?
If, on the other hand, I hear you talking about how you deal on a day-to-day basis with real success storiesYou will probably have my attention and if I need someone in that field, I might remember you.
However, as the content you are looking for are interviewsdo the filtering. Once you have the filtering of marketing programmes that conduct interviews with professionals, this is the moment when we can launch automation.
But, be careful, first you have to customise all fields possible.
It is not even necessary to use the artificial intelligencewith basic tools that everyone uses such as Mailchimp we can customise fields and enter the name of the programme, for example.
The less generic the email is, the more likely it is that it will be conversion.
Is time wasted on personalisation?
This begs the question: How much effort should be put into personalisation? And the answer in this battle between automation VS customisation is that it depends.
There are times when personalisation is a must. Firstly, and as in the example, if we are going to make an approach to cold door.
On the other hand, if, for example, we have a newsletter with subscribers who are already cured in advance, we can go for the automation to 100%. These subscribers already know who you are and what you have to offer and that is why it is one of the channels that offers a higher return on investment.
However, if we are going to approach strangers, the approach needs to be different. Do you know how many copy-paste messages I receive on LinkedIn every week trying to sell me some kind of SEO tool or linkbuilding? Always with the same dynamic, request for friendship and, just after accepting, a sales message.
If you commented on my posts and we had other types of interactions maybe I would listen to you, but if you just want to sell directly what you are showing me is that you don't know what you are doing and that your tool is probably not worth my time.
In the end, the personalisation can bring a higher returnbut it also works in the longer term, before it is possible to delegate completely to the automation. Moreover, this return is not always easy to calculate and may take several years.
Networking and relationships
With the theme of personalisation It's the same as with the networking. It is undoubtedly the best way to get customers, but it is also the best way to get customers. you don't always know how long you will have to wait for this.
I often think about the strategy he followed ING Direct with its no-salary account (the current no-salary account, sponsor of Operación Triunfo on Prime Video because they still know where their clientele is). While traditional institutions forced pay account maintenance fees when you turned 25, except for direct deposit of your salary, ING had it free of charge.
What happened? Well, in my generation, the 25-year-olds were caught in the midst of the crisis and with the highest youth unemployment rates in Spain's history. There were those who got precarious jobs on the black, those who got paid in cash, those who did free internships or those who continued their training. So we all fled in disarray from our traditional banks to avoid the fees.
A few years went by and we all got jobs and left our salaries with ING. Traditional banking institutions they thought in the short term and lost the opportunity to have good customers in the long run.at least until the search for a mortgage. And we know what the housing situation is like.
There are many ways to building customer relationships and that would be the subject of a whole other article, but my point is that personalisation pays off in the endBut for that, you will have to measure them and wait for a considerable time, in some businesses even one, two or three years.
How to work on automation VS personalisation?
The answer to this question is simple: integrating personalisation into our automations. Yes, it will take more time at first, but it will be worth it later, at least if you are a long-term thinker.
It is the same as with the Black Hat SEO. Using it has an immediate advantage, but it is detrimental to you in the medium term in terms of Google keeps changing the algorithm. When I make a SEO strategy I don't use these tricky strategies and sometimes it takes me longer to achieve my goals, but I don't have to worry about the new update knocking out all my work.
The peace of mind of a job well done always comes as a bonus.
Thus, it is best to automate data already qualified and always on a case-by-case basis. Not always a automation is a good idea.
Let me give another example. When a new client arrives at a marketing agency, you can send him or her a automated form with what you need to know about their business, but if you don't then have a face-to-face meeting to comment on it, the customer will not be satisfied.
In the end, there is a difficult balance to play, in which experience puts us in a better or worse position. Automation yes, but personalisation too. Separately they are good strategies and will bring you acceptable results, but together they are unbeatable. You will save time and the potential customer will feel loved and understood. What more could you ask for?
