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Watch out, watch out, there’s a marketing robot about…

September 4th 2010

Max Clark

Max Clark is one of the 'founding three' and also Client Services Director at Marketecture. She is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (MCIM) and a Member of the Institute of Direct Marketing (MIDM) and has too many years B2B marketing experience to add up and the grey hairs to prove it! Lover of all things brand and obsessed by 2 and 3.0, data, emerging technologies and best practice, Max is keen to spread some serious b2b fun and to hear from likeminded marketing geek bloggers.

Is it just me, or have marketing automation vendors picked up where their former ‘hard sell’ CRM vendor friends left off? My early morning inbox seems to be rammed of late with emails from marketing automation software providers offering me complimentary white papers, free 30 day trials and weekly webcast invites. All rather bullish, all rather dry and all rather, well, ‘automated’. None of these companies have ever sent me a piece of print direct mail, or spoken to me to ‘engage’ one on one to learn more about my needs. To be honest as a guinea pig prospect I have been left feeling fairly deflated by the constant stream of automated and dare I say ‘robotic’ communications I have been bombarded with - all as a result of one information gathering website visit I might add!

For the uninitiated, marketing automation it’s the future you know...or so they say. ‘They’ being the companies trying to flog their wares, with phrases like ‘better understand and respond to your customers by reading their digital body language’. Don’t get me wrong, I am a massive marketing technophile and love to discover new ways of solving old marketing problems. Having worked with a client to integrate some bespoke technology recently with an enterprise level automation system, I can also see the benefits of streamlined automated contact management to help to nurture prospects along the buying cycle. But the cynic in me says all this focus on automation is de-personalising what I love about business to business communication – that being the personal touch that only a sales or brand representative of the highest human order can deliver.

At the same time, I do believe that automation provides a great skeleton support system for a revenue target focused sales force and a busy, octopus handed marketing department trying to deliver timely and consistent ‘on brand’ communications. Automation can therefore keep the dialogue going in a scientific manner, based on pre-set prospect behavioural characteristics, carefully unfolding a product or service ‘sell’ in a gentle and nurturing way. But has all this focus on cost-effective and measurable electronic automation had an impact on the ‘soul’ of our communications? Are we missing a trick by focusing all our efforts on the technology capabilities, rather than the bigger picture of one-to- one communication? People to people communication if you like, in this new era of robotic faux charm.

There’s another angle here too, with the main purported benefits of automation systems being touted as ‘increased productivity’ and ‘cost savings’. Is it therefore only a matter of time before marketing man or woman gets replaced by marketing machine? For some lead gen sales-led businesses, perhaps less focused on, or empathetic to, the complexities and holy grail of brand building this may not be far from realms of reality.

Automation systems are like CRM systems on steroids, the next generation of robotic marketers set to steal the mantle from folk like me and you. Think transformers with a diploma in cross-territory marketing communications, who come without the need for a flashy laptop, iPhone, iPad and all the other marketing accessories we marketers love! I say it in jest, but for some large corporates, I reckon the investment in automation systems could actually prompt a discussion around the boardroom table about a leaner and meaner core marketing team, with the robots picking up the slack. Then again, when was the last time a robot made a decent cuppa? My job’s safe for now I reckon then....

For the uninitiated, if you want to get a feel for the leading automation systems on the market I’ve included a summary table below extracted from a report carried out by Forrester Research in September 2009. This table summarise key market players and their core offering:


You can download a summary excerpt of the full report produced by Forrester Research for free at http://pages2.marketo.com/forrester-market-overviewconvertedpage.html?source=Website&comment=Website&offer=Forrester%20Market%20Overview

You will just need to give Marketo your contact details to pass on to their robots!