I’ve used a disproportionately large number of automation platforms for the modest length of my career. And, like many automatees(?), have made my fair share of blunders. Careless greetings and spurious links are the simple mistakes that can have a detrimental effect on the credibility of your business. Based on my unfortunate experiences in the outbox – as well as the inbox – I’ve compiled four fail-safe precautions to avoid these automation faux pas.
Targeting
Identify easily definable personas – the MA platform won’t segment the best target audience for your communications. Our office info@ address has recently received a number of emails containing an array of extraneous offerings: 200 high quality Indonesian cashew nuts, a job lot of polo shirts, and, my personal favourite, ‘low skilled’ job opportunities for ‘fish packer’ roles in Montreal. And I don’t mean any offence to the profession – some of my dearest friends are Canadian fish packers – but needless to say, the email generated few warm leads from our office. If you don’t know your target, the email will not reverberate.
Personalising
The HTML code for just one of my weekly emails contains 68719 characters. And it only takes one to go awry to jeopardise the validity of the rest. When it comes to personalisation, no name field is better than the wrong one. You’re a click away from letting the receiver know that you actually know them about as much as Tim Henman knows about a good time.
Forecasting
Once the platform has been installed and implementation is well underway, it’s tempting to pull a few all-nighters to setup a year’s worth of emails in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, like forecasting the weather, the further into the future one goes the less accurate the information becomes. Masterful emails are the product of meticulous attention to detail and ongoing iteration.
