One of the questions we here frequently involves how “Evergreen” the content in marketing automation can be.
More pointedly, people often ask… if I can set up automation once and never have to worry about it again, doesn’t it get outdated in time?
The short answer is that it won’t ever get outdated if you set it up correctly from the beginning.
A true marketing automation expert can identify elements of your messaging that are likely to get outdated, then replace them either with variables that you can populate yourself (for example, your latest promo codes or product images) or a script that automatically updates to keep your content relevant.
For example, imagine you want to send a specific welcome message based on the time of year a lead expresses interest in your product or service.
A good marketing automation expert will capture the date the lead signs up, and could use logic like this to generate timely messaging:
IF Join_Month = “January” THEN Intro_Text = “Let’s get this year started the right way! You can kick off the new year with these great offers…”
IF Join_Month = “February” THEN Intro_Text = “We’re deep in the month of love, and you’re going to LOVE these great offers…”
IF Join_Month = “March” THEN Intro_Text = “In like a lamb or out like a lion? You decide with these great offers…”
…and so on.
But wait… what about keeping your products current? You don’t want messages going out with last year’s inventory, items you’ve sold out of, or some hideous holdover from the early 2000s.
We’ll go into the specifics on how to do that in a future post, but the logic is the same. A talented marketing automation expert can easily configure your messages so that you can control exactly which items you promote. When your products change, it shouldn’t take more than about ten minutes to update some images and descriptions to keep your offers current.
If it takes longer than that, you need a new marketing automation expert.