The evolution of marketing technology has evolved to an astonishing degree, providing marketers the tools to reach their audience in a single, automated swoop. Marketing automation technology nowadays empowers marketers to communicate with their global network of potential and existing customers; the dynamic puissance of a simple automated campaign is boundless, organizationally impactful, yet also extremely dangerous.

Unlike most technology, marketing automation offers no CTRL-Z option, no “undo” button. That’s why it’s essential to execute correctly on the first time to avoid embarrassing campaign mishaps. Having partnered with dozens of marketing teams over the past five years at Bluewolf, I've encountered many instances of  campaigns gone wrong -- and helped implement creative processes to fix them. Here are some highlights from my journey, along with key pieces of advice I’ve gathered along the way:

No quality assurance process for segmentation

One of the most common marketing automation blunders is sending out an event invite to non-invitees. I've spoken to marketing teams that have sent invitations to their entire database to private steak dinners. If the invite should go out to eight guests, but 7000 addresses appear in your list, you know that you’ve done something wrong, or you're planning to pick up the tab for one extraordinary feast.

An easy way to determine if a campaign segment is correct is to cross-reference its size against another list, such as the previous successful send list. At Bluewolf, we advise our clients to take campaign planning seriously; we encourage them to map out expectations and goals offline, outside of the marketing automation tool, so that numbers are not skewed by possible bad data. Lists can also be pulled from an integrated CRM such as Salesforce. Not to say that all segments should be pulled straight from CRM, but there's no harm in running a manual comparison every now and then. 

“I'm sorry Mr. Jackson”: incorrect personalization

All marketing automation tools offer some functionality to make a mass email look personally tailored to each recipient. Research shows that adding personalization to emails can improve response rates -- hence, many companies have adopted this practice. However, it’s essential to note that most companies have bad data. That is the reality for most marketers today. We have the tools to create sophisticated campaigns, but everything we do depends on data. As such, an incorrect use of personalization can destroy relationship with a customer in an instant. 

This is our sandbox!

When working in a test environment or “sandbox” of a marketing automation tool, make sure that no emails are sent automatically. Needless to say, emails containing test content such as "This is our sandbox!!" and "We'll save you money, yo!" should never see the light of day. Here are some suggestions for safe sandbox marketing automation handling:

• Corrupt all email addresses. Typically, data tools can be leveraged to deploy mass updates. Otherwise, export a list of all your valid email addresses and append test to all of them. Then re-import them back into the MA tool as an update. This way, if an email does get sent out, a test account somewhere will receive it instead of a actual contact.
• Add a rule to your “exclude list” to exclude all contacts where email address contains "*@*". This means that any email address containing “@” (which is all of them) will be blocked, thereby safeguarding you from embarrassing email deployments.
• Always have a second pair of eyes check your work.

Active senders

• Active employees only!
  
  When employees leave your company, make sure you have a program in place to removes them from campaigns, so that your automation tool does not send emails on their behalf to prospects. This is not only confusing for the prospect, but also makes your marketing efforts look foolish.
• Never email from the grave
  
  Might seem obvious, but I’ve seen campaigns go out from people that not only left the company, but have actually checked out…for good. Again, create a sync between your employee database and your marketing automation tool to prevent this blunder. This situation is awkward to say the least; make sure your dynamic senders are not only active but, alive.
• "Marketo Admin sent you an email!"
  
  It’s very common for certain records to be owned by an administrative user or an internal group email address. You need to be sure that dynamic senders are real people (with real names!) who are capable of responding promptly if a prospect replies. So put a global rule in place that states something along the lines of:
  
  
  
  If record owner equals Admin, Operations, Donald Duck, or Michael Scott, send email from {some name that makes sense}