Automated email communication can be a great tool for marketing. Especially when it comes to educating and enrolling new prospective customers about your offering. It can also be a great way to “drip” on your centers of influence, referral partners, etc. After all, leveraging this kind of technology in effect can help you “market while you sleep.”
But here’s something you want to avoid based on a recent experience of mine. I have a business relationship with a certain technology company. They are very consistent with their automated email marketing. They even have an incredible tech support team clients can call during normal business hours. (This is highly unusual these days because they actually answer their phones and talk you through a fix when needed. Have you tried calling Microsoft lately? Ouch.)
The one thing that makes we wonder about this company is their human follow up. It’s a people thing I think. Basically, every day I get an automated email follow up that is marketing-based in nature. They are “dripping” on me. A human has to write this follow up and coordinate the timing of the automation. Most days the information is helpful. Some days, not so much and I’m quick to hit the delete key.
Overall it’s effective marketing follow up. But this kind of marketing doesn’t make up for people not following up in a timely fashion. Case in point. Last week I made a phone call to one of their execs. It was last Tuesday. A couple of days go by and don’t get a return call. I get a “we’re really busy so we’ll get back to you soon” email. I send an email reply. Later that day I get a voice mail. I return the call to voice mail. Now it’s next week and I have a prospective customer who’s in the wait for a reply. I am waiting. My client is waiting. And I’m wondering how this company can be so good at automated marketing follow up and suck so bad at human follow up.
That pisses me off. I have a concern I want to voice. I want a real person to relate to my issue. And I want to be able to communicate and resolve the issue the same day or week it becomes an issue. Is that really too much to ask?
I wouldn’t gripe about this if I felt the “human” follow up is consistently good. It’s not. But the automated follow up is really good. So there’s a gap. At least for me there’s a gap. If they have time to write all the automated follow up “action sequences” as we call them, why can’t one of their execs return my freaking phone call within a day or week? Are they too busy writing automated email follow up to call me?
All marketing and customer service is for naught if there can’t be an effective human interface that resolves customer concerns and issues in a timely manner. So no matter how effective your automated email marketing might be, it’s not going to help you in the long run if your “human” follow up sucks.
Clifford Jones, Founder
WealthNet Partners, LLC
“Discover The Art of Business Development”
Scottsdale, Arizona
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