The advent of social media and of the various mobile communication tools has redoubled marketing channels, reaching a level of personalisation that was unthinkable just a few years ago.
However, at the same time the number of messages and data that are conveyed has hugely grown, forming an infinite ocean of communications in which it is hard for operators to make their posts stand out, harder than it is for users to select the material they are interested in.
In fact, due to the great amount of available networks, which are also constantly changing and have different purposes, marketing operators find that they have too much to do in too short a time. In order to achieve their aims, they are increasingly relying on tools that can keep them automatically present on socials, without any personal interaction.
This system has positive and negative aspects. In fact, the dissemination of news, events and messages can be useful, but recipients will lose interest if they can tell that a machine is involved, instead of a person.
Planning marketing campaigns on socials by reducing – instead of increasing – interaction and attention is dangerous. But it is also true that the existing automation tools (which are evolving very quickly) offer powerful databases, algorithms specifically designed for marketing and Customer relationship management systems that are increasingly effective and can meet many needs. It’s still not “marketing targeted for all”, meaning that it includes every single consumer, but we are rapidly getting there.
The use of automation tools is becoming increasingly widespread. In the USA, according to the National Retail Federation, 53 percent of online campaigns used them to personalise corporate marketing in 2012.
The results of these campaigns confirmed that the use of automation tools can be positive, in terms of generated engagement, provided that they are used wisely, within adequate strategies that integrate in the best possible way the various tools provided by social marketing.
