When you suggest using technology to scale marketing for a construction or building product company, what response do you think you’d get?
“We aren’t ready for that”, “that won’t work for us”, or “I don’t like the idea of “bots” spamming our prospects”.
These are all valid perspectives. But the conversation needs to be had. And realistically it’s not a question of “if” it’s had, but when. Will automated marketing solutions be adopted sooner or later? Will they be adopted as an initiative to pioneer new ground? Or in a desperate response to lost market share?
Let’s clear up some misconceptions around automated marketing for Barbour ABI and Glenigan subscribers so that this conversation can happen sooner rather than later.
Automation supplements (doesn’t replace) humans
Automation is not here to take over. It can’t replace most human roles. But it can supplement your team’s energy and efforts and provide greater scalability and capacity.
Imagine your sales and marketing team could reach more relevant prospects, and do a better job following up with them, all through some straightforward automated applications. This would allow your humans to be more human, while your machines take care of the mundane things that employees would rather not do anyway.
On top of this, automation can do things that humans just plain can’t. And it’s not that humans aren’t “smart” enough. It’s just that humans don’t have the time to consistently contribute the attention to detail that automation can, evaluate the same quantity of information, or do as much repetitive work.
This is very relevant when it comes to large construction project databases like Barbour ABI and Glenigan. These are the environments where automation shines. There is so much information in these databases that only a robot can really make the most of this.
By freeing up time for your team, you can allow them to engage more fully with the creative work that goes into your marketing. Good concepts, good writing, and creative executions are crucial to the success of your marketing.
Automation really isn’t competing with humans. It’s giving them more powerful tools and freeing them up for new initiatives. In fact, according to McKinsey, “automation could raise productivity growth globally by 0.8 to 1.4% annually”.
Automation doesn’t mean spam
There are a few things that would flag outreach as spam.
- poor timing
- generic wording
Both of these concerns can be addressed by humans using automated platforms.
Timing
Automation can initiate outreach every few days, avoid weekends, and delay communication, based on previous engagement. Of course, any contacts who want to opt out must be allowed to do so in alignment with GDPR regulations. So, setting up bots to respect the human need for space is only dependant on having respectful humans setting them up.
Tone
If the automation is too generic, it’s because the writers aren’t thinking specifically enough, or utilizing personalization features.
Human creativity is required to bring automation to life. Microsoft’s AI assistant Cortana was created by a team including a playwright, poet, and novelist, to make sure it had the right tone. Confident, but not arrogant. The same is required for emails, smart content, or chatbots in your organization. Again, giving marketing automation an appropriate personality is dependent on the creative team behind it.
Another important element to make automation messaging more personal is personalization. This can be simple things, like using your prospects first name in an email subject line. But it can also mean choosing a different message for a prospect based on previous website interactions and content engagement. Studies show personalized content is dramatically more effective than non-personalized content.
Conclusion
The future is not a spam fest. Automation won’t lead to being bludgeoned by huge amounts of impersonal messages. It will be about relevant, timely, personal messages, delivered at times and locations that are convenient for the customer. That’s what automation really makes possible.
It allows humans to enjoy their work more, as they spend their time engaging prospects and coming up with campaign concepts.
And it allows companies to get a better ROI on large databases like Barbour ABI and Glenigan by utilizing the vast amounts of data for more extensive and more targeted marketing strategies, carried out by human-guided automation tools.
For Barbour ABI subscribers, Project Prospecta is just that. A powerful tool to carry out large-scale, personalized marketing and lead scoring campaigns. This can transform a huge pool of prospects into a shortlist of warm leads who already know a good bit about you and your product, so you can sell to people who want to hear from you.
Book a demo to find out more.
