Is Marketing Automation already a thing of the past?

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.