If you’ve been keeping up with marketing research and best practices, you’ve likely noticed there are two seemingly contradictory trends in B2B marketing. On the one hand, we have to create more human relationships. On the other, we have to automate to scale up, be more efficient and effective and meet our customers’ expectations.

However, when implemented correctly, these two trends aren’t actually at odds. Let’s explore how we can use technology and creative to build a balanced, satisfying and humanistic approach to automation. For many professional services and B2B firms, the importance of building personal relationships deters them from making use of marketing automation. This inhibits growth. Marketing automation allows you to be more personal and more engaged, and at scale.

Modern Marketing and Automation

We now live in a world where data gathering is woven into our daily lives, capturing our online behaviour and interactions. Advances in artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning help us, marketers, to convert this data into actionable insights. We can then use marketing automation tools to apply data-driven marketing campaigns and lead generation tactics more efficiently and at scale.

When used correctly, automation can dramatically improve the customer experience. It allows marketers to deliver highly personalised content across multiple channels, more quickly and easily than ever before. For instance, small marketing teams can effectively serve large audiences by using social media scheduling, amplification tools, and dynamic landing pages. Or email marketing built around behavioural-based workflows (where specific user behaviour triggers actions from the system). Tools like lead scoring and automated follow-up notifications help sales reps stay in communication with qualified leads. Meanwhile, technology such as chatbots, AI-assisted service agents, and automated appointment booking ensure customers receive quality assistance at will.

The danger of automation is that it can also be used in a way that dehumanises people. After all, from a computer’s perspective, prospects and customers are nothing more than pieces of data. In pursuit of a higher ROI, brands can end up abusing people’s information. They treat it as nothing more than a resource to run a system and don’t consider how their actions might affect those people.

Organisations need to balance the performance benefits of automating marketing strategy with the need for human empathy. When planning how to automate marketing tasks, we need to design systems in ways that create good, customised experiences. The conversation should centre on how the technology can support, not replace, human connection.

How to Humanise Automation

Start With the Customer

Understanding and caring about other people’s problems is the first step towards creating more humanised marketing automation. This requires getting to know your customers on an individual level, not just the companies they work for. To invest in understanding their unique challenges, pain points, goals, etc. You also have to consider how their needs will change across the entire customer life cycle.

Data collection technology like website analytics and social listening tools can help you know what people are interested in. However, it’s also important to ask for direct feedback. For instance, was your newsletter relevant and useful? Did your chatbot answer their questions? The insights you uncover will help you to continuously improve your automated marketing, sales, and customer service processes. 

For instance, marketing automation data and intelligence help you to hone in on your ideal audience and enable focused, accurate, targeting and personalisation. For example, with features like automated behaviour-based email segmentation and dynamic retargeting lists, you’re able to seamlessly deliver more of the information they're interested in via the channels they use. It is also helpful for human follow-ups. By knowing what prospects are researching, what they need specific answers on, you can prepare for calls and meetings.

Taking a customer-centric approach helps you to plan better interactions at each point in their journey.

Use Integrated Marketing Automation Platforms

Marketing automation can be a time-efficient, cost-effective way to build customer relationships at scale and improve your bottom line. But to work correctly, it requires that you coordinate and collaborate across your organisation. By unifying marketing processes across your website, social, email, etc., you can ensure your customer has a cohesive, frictionless experience.

An integrated automation platform means your sales and marketing teams have a 360-degree profile of your prospects and clients. This will ensure you’re always speaking with one voice and prevent unnecessary overlap and confusion which can negatively affect customer experience. For instance, sending emails prompting someone to register for an event that they’ve already signed up for by phone. Or multiple sales reps from the same company reaching out to the same person.

Balance Human and Machine Elements

Don’t let automation feel distanced, stilted or reserved. To engage your audience, even automated marketing needs to have that human touch.  In fact automation can allow you to be more personalised, and more human, and at a scale that’s not possible otherwise.

As a foundation, make sure everything is correctly configured and that you’re working from a clean data set. Automated messages displaying things like empty merge fields don’t inspire confidence. From there, pay attention to putting your brand personality and values into your copy and design. Ditch the corporate jargon and inject a sense of humour when appropriate. Focus on creating delight and connection. For example, message bot scripts don’t have to sound harsh and robotic. Rather you can use engaging copy that strikes a friendly tone while keeping things brief and easy-to-navigate. 

Part of maintaining the human-machine balance is knowing when an automated response is appropriate, and when human interaction is better. For instance, using automated email campaigns could be highly effective during the attraction/education stages. You might then want to switch to personal follow-ups after a demo call or pitch. Your system can also hand-off a warmed up lead to your sales team once a prospect has reached a particular lead score, or visited a specific page.

However, this won’t always be the same for everyone. In some situations, your customers might prefer a fully automated setup that allows for 24/7 self-service. Ask for feedback and be ready to adapt your systems according to the needs of your customers.

Be Transparent About A.I.

While you want to include humanising elements, it’s important to be transparent about your use of marketing automation software and AI technology. Advances in ‘intelligent’ chatbots, dynamic email responses, and voice automation technology have made it increasingly difficult for people to discern if they’re communicating with a human...or a machine.

Customers don’t like being tricked, even inadvertently. When they find out the ‘person’ they were chatting with is actually a computer, it can make the entire encounter feel creepy. A lack of clarity can cause them to be sceptical of the messages they receive from your business. They end up wondering if you know (and care) that they exist, or if they’re just another email in a CRM system.

Fortunately, this can be easily resolved by making it clear when something is an automated message. For example, say that you automate a service channel during out of office hours. Simply give users a quick ‘heads up’ at the start of the session that they’re being assisted by a bot. Increasingly, people are fine with interacting with automated tools, provided they don’t feel misled and get the help they need. 

An AI service agent can triage support requests in the interim and ask if any of the information provided has solved the problem. If the user answers 'no', it informs them that a customer service rep will reply via email during office hours.

Conclusion

While it might seem contradictory, being more human, more digital, and more automated is key to a more satisfying experience for your customers. It helps you provide a more consistent, efficient, and effective buyers journey.

1827 Marketing can help automate your marketing strategy in a way that enhances your customer relationships. Our blend of creative services and marketing automation platforms helps you deliver humanised, relevant, experiences at scale. Book your free demo today.