Marketing platforms and marketing automation revolutionized digital marketing. The platforms gave an incredible ROI, cut down staff costs by being able to automize lead nurturing, and even changed the way we worked. Where we before had traditional marketing and sales teams, we now see that “smarketing” where you nurture leads by marketing automation until they are truly sales-ready is becoming a more accepted and preferred way of working.
But marketing automation has gotten some big hurdles to overcome. Since GDPR we are obliged to be more restrictive with how we gather personal data, many CRM systems and marketing platforms have blocked some functionality- rightfully so- to make the platform GDPR compliant. There are also more VPNs easily available, not only for tech-nerds, but also for ordinary people. This blocks CRMs and marketing platform’s ability to gather data- which is what has been called the businesses’ gold for the last years.
So why is this happening?
The answer is quite easy. It is what people want. People do not want unasked for advertisement; they do not want to feel supervised by unknown companies. And they do not want their inbox full of emails about things they have not asked for.
What are we seeing in digital marketing?
A lot of email workflows aren’t living up to the same numbers that they used to. So, what does this mean? Is marketing automation already a thing of the past? Doesn’t it work anymore? Video did kill the radio. But decades later podcasts have exploded in popularity. Perhaps this is the journey we have to do in marketing automation.
Maybe we have a decision to make. Try our best to continue to gather data against an unwilling crowd that is getting an increased technical support to avoid it, or we can accept that it is a losing battle.
So, does that mean that marketing automation is dead?
The short answer- no. But we must reinvent it. Create meaningful content, content that is for your customers and their needs, not for you. Analyze your website and social media. Are you helping your customers and visitors with the problems that they are having?
We might not need personal data to analyze if we are succeeding at these things. Anonymous data by analyzing increase or decrease in website traffic and social media reach/interactions might be enough.
So maybe it’s time we take the leap and say goodbye to the time we worshipped personal data, and instead create real useful content? So visitors can choose to convert and get notifications when we are ready to share more knowledge or content.
Create the things of value. And leave a form open for those who want to consent. Leave it up to the visitor to decide if your content was valuable enough.
Are you interested in learning more about Inbound Marketing and how you can get customers to come to you instead of having to chase? Feel free to read our guide to get started.
Do you want to know more about Inbound Marketing? Don’t hesitate to contact me! Book a free consultation directly in my calendar below.
PETER KNAPP
New Business / Marketing Manager
peter.knapp@nexergroup.com
+46 708 85 03 03
