Site icon Napier – B2B PR and Marketing Agency

The AI Dilemma: Are We Relying Too Much on Automation in Marketing?

  • Natasha Websdale

    • AI is popping up across marketing automation platforms, but is it really the magic solution we hoped for? Join Hannah and Mike as they discuss the latest news from the world of marketing automation, including the latest trends and tools. In this episode, they cover:

    Don’t forget to subscribe for more episodes!

    Listen to the podcast now via the links below:

    About Napier

    Napier is a PR-lead, full service marketing agency that specialises in the B2B technology sector. We work closely with our clients to build campaigns, focusing on achieving results that have a significant positive impact on their businesses and which, above all, ensure maximum return on their investment.

    About Mike Maynard

    Mike is the Managing Director/CEO of Napier, a PR and marketing agency for B2B technology companies. A self-confessed geek who loves talking about technology, he believes that combining the measurement, accountability and innovation that he learnt as an engineer with a passion for communicating ensures Napier delivers great campaigns and tangible return on investment.

    About Hannah Wehrly

    Hannah is the Head of Business Development and Marketing at Napier and leads on pitching, proposal writing, lead nurturing, email marketing, social media and content creation. Hannah joined the Napier team back in 2017 as a Marketing Specialist after completing her degree in Marketing and Communications, and her role focuses on developing new relationships with potential clients.

    Time Stamps

    00:01:30 – Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Salesforce Automation
    00:06:30 – The Role of AI in Marketing Automation
    00:10:00 – Limitations of AI in Content Creation
    00:12:00 – HubSpot’s Podcast Transcription Feature
    00:14:30 – Simplicity in Marketing Automation Platforms
    00:18:00 – Tip of the Week: Understanding Spintax
    Follow Mike and Hannah:

    Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/

    Hannah Wehrly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wehrly-b0706a107/

    Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/

    Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/

    If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing Automation and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We’d also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.

    Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – Marketing B2B Technology: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/marketing-b2b-technology/id1485417724

    Transcript: Marketing Automation Moment Episode 20 – The AI Dilemma: Are We Relying Too Much on Automation in Marketing?

    Speakers: Mike Maynard, Hannah Wherly

    Hannah: Welcome to the Marketing Automation Moment podcast. I’m Hannah Kelly.

    Hannah: And I’m Mike Maynard. This is Napier’s podcast to tell you about the latest news from the world of marketing automation.

    Mike: Welcome to the Marketing Automation Moment podcast. I’m Hannah Whaley.

    Hannah: And I’m Mike Maynard.

    Mike: Today, we discuss Gartner’s 2024 Magic Quadrant for Salesforce automation platforms.

    Hannah: We have a chat about the different uses of AI and market automation.

    Mike: We discuss the benefits of simplicity when it comes to market automation platforms.

    Hannah: And I get excited about spin taxing emails.

    Mike: Hi Mike, welcome back to another episode of the Marketing Automation Moment. How are you doing?

    Hannah: Hi Hannah, great to talk to you about market automation again.

    Mike: Absolutely, but I think before we get started, congratulations are in order, as I believe you’ve actually been featured in the top 100 of Marketing Influences by Technology for Marketing and have also been shortlisted for Industry Personality, the Instrumentation Excellence Awards. Congratulations.

    Hannah: Oh, you promised you wouldn’t mention that, but thank you anyway. I appreciate it.

    Mike: Your head would be too big to leave the room by the end of this podcast.

    Hannah: Yeah, I think you’re trying to get me to work for the rest of the afternoon.

    Mike: Right, well, let’s kick it off because we’ve got some exciting things to discuss today. And the first thing I want to talk about is Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Report. So, they’ve released it for Q4 2024, and it focuses on 13 of the most significant, in their terms, Salesforce automation providers in the marketplace. I mean, it’s interesting, and I know you have a very strong opinion on this. We’ll get to that in a second, Mike. But it’s really lists basically where each provider is listed and ranked them on what they call their magic quadrant graph. So they cover them between leaders, challengers, visionaries, and niche players. And, you know, there was a couple of, you know, well-known names in there when I was reading it up. So, Salesforce has been put as top of the leaders category, apparently has climbed even higher than it was the year before and HubSpot and its sales hub solution has actually returned to the niche player category. I think it’s interesting, but I know you want to have a chat about this, Mike. What is the point of this report? Is there any point to this report?

    Hannah: Well, of course, the cynical people amongst us, and that wouldn’t be me, would say that it’s all about Gartner making money from reports. And it sometimes feels like these reports, they’re interesting, but, you know, you’ve got a question, you know, for a start, why just look at Salesforce automation separate to marketing automation? I mean, surely you need products that integrate between the two. To me, that’s a basic shortfall is that it’s so focused on sales, and it therefore gives a slightly skewed version of what you’re going to see. So, you know, HubSpot for sure is an important player, particularly in market automation, increasingly in service, and somewhat in Salesforce automation. But I can see why they’re put in as a niche player just for Salesforce automation, because that’s not really their core strength. And I feel by focusing on one topic, It probably doesn’t give you the proper view about what these vendors are trying to do. It seems to be, you know, taking a snapshot of a little part of a company and then trying to imply that’s what’s happening over the whole company.

    Mike: I think that’s some really great points, Mike, and, you know, both of us have been really strong in our opinions in the past that when you have a multiple automation platform, you need to have it integrated with both hubs. And, you know, we’ve spoken about different platforms and how they split out the pricing and actually a marketer just wants everything in one place. So actually you make some great points because when you drill into the detail like that, actually the report and what it provides isn’t that helpful.

    Hannah: Yeah, and I think also, you know, I don’t want to sit here and criticize Gartner because it’s easy on these analyst reports to poke holes in it. But the analyst report is really written for enterprise customers. And so are we going to say that HubSpot really is going to start dominating the enterprise with Salesforce automation? Probably not. Probably should be a niche player. It’s probably the right place to be. But if you’re in a different industry, so if perhaps you’re running a small engineering company, perhaps 500 people, got a few people in sales, HubSpot can be way better as a solution than Salesforce. Much easier to deploy, much easier to manage, much more user-friendly. And I think just allocating positions on a grid, it doesn’t take into account the context of who’s buying. And so you get these reports, and it kind of suggests that all HubSpot is going to be upset. But actually, honestly, HubSpot should be saying, no, we focus on the smaller, medium sized customers. That’s where we’re great. And honestly, enterprise isn’t our focus. You know, if we’re doing something that is a perfect fit for the enterprise, it’s probably not a great fit for our target audience.

    Mike: I think that’s some valuable insights, Mike, and it’s definitely a different way to look at it for sure.

    Hannah: Yeah. I mean, you know, the same thing. You don’t want Salesforce and more complex systems to run at Napier. We’ve got a small marketing and sales team. We want something that’s easy to use, very configurable, preferably integrated. And I think you’d agree that, you know, looking at the benefits of different tools, your needs are very different to a lot of our clients who are large global enterprises.

    Mike: Oh, absolutely. And I mean, just to let the listeners know, we actually use a small marketing platform called Sharpspring. So it’s something I’ve always viewed is very in the shadow of HubSpot, like perhaps in, you know, five, 10 years, it might be as large as HubSpot, but it’s nowhere near that at the moment. But for what we do internally as an agency, I mean, it’s perfect for our needs.

    Hannah: Absolutely. I mean, different things for different people. And so whilst I get, you know, that people like to see these reports and like to see what analysts rate, ultimately, you’ve got to make the decision for yourself. And the decision may be that you choose to buy something that isn’t a leading product. In fact, you know, sometimes these niche players, which is kind of, you know, almost damning with faint praise kind of label, they might be the best solution for you. So I think you’ve got to think beyond just the report and think about what you need as a customer.

    Mike: Absolutely. But let’s move on, Mike, because I know you have some views about using AI and market automation that you wanted to have a discussion about today.

    Hannah: Yeah, so we saw this article on the influence of Marketing Hub talking about being what claiming to be the ultimate guide to using AI in marketing automation. I mean, AI is one of those things that, and I hate to go back to Gartner that we’ve just questioned now, but Gartner famously produced the hype cycle. And it’s probably one of the products that most recently has been through this massive hype cycle. And I think basically, you know, we’ve seen everyone get super enthusiastic. And now we’re heading into this trough of disillusionment, where people are realizing that actually AI is not this magic tool that can do everything. It’s got limitations. And particularly, if you look at a lot of the industries we work with, where it’s very niche specialist, it’s very hard to get AI to keep generating fresh content, it becomes very repetitive. So, people are becoming disillusioned. There’s still people who are very excited about AI in sales and marketing, and I don’t think that’s wrong. And you know I always have an opinion, Hannah. I think a lot of the time people are using AI because their data quality is poor.

    Mike: I mean, I think that’s a really great observation, Mike, and I have to agree. I think AI is almost now being used as a comfort blanket, as what AI is going to give us all the solutions, AI is going to tell us what to do. But if you don’t have that data in place in your platform already, AI is not going to deliver what you need. And I mean, you see, you know, we talked about my love for Einstein and the little cartoon for Salesforce. And I think there’s some great tools that are helping with data, but I think you’re right. There’s almost this generalization. So to me, there’s two sections. There’s data that AI can support with and it can help. It can help you gather that data with tools like Einstein, but there’s also these markets that are going down the route of what AI is going to solve everything without actually fixing the problem that they have already.

    Hannah: Yeah, and a lot of people are using AI to basically go out look on the web and find information about a company and then customize emails. And that’s not necessarily a terrible idea. I mean, I get why people want to do it, they want to make things feel personal. But believe me, I get an awful lot of emails coming through that clearly have been AI customized, and they’ve been generated by someone who’s not looked at our website and thought, so they’ll come out randomly with some client that we might have worked with, you know, 10 years ago. And it’s like, I’m really excited to see your work with client X. And you say, well, that was a project 10 years ago. And actually, they’ve now been acquired, and they trade under a different name. So if you’ve seen that work recently, there’s something really wrong. So I think people are kind of relying on that, that AI pulling information. And sometimes it’s not great. And actually the people who have the most powerful communications, they have the best emails. They’re the people who have really looked into companies and they have something very specific to say that ties that potential customer to what they offer. And they could do that really clearly because they’ve got the data and they’ve understood what that company does. And AI today doesn’t quite cut it most of the time.

    Mike: No, I agree. I mean, we’ve had an instance internally recently where, as you know, Mike, we have a monthly newsletter. It goes out to all of our database. And we were looking at ways of how can we speed up when we’re writing this newsletter and we do this personalized intro. And last month, for the first month, we were like, why don’t we use AI to try and write this intro? AI wrote it. We put it onto the newsletter. And all I could think about was, wow, this is so bland. And there was no personality to it. You know, this goes out to our full database. It’s a really important lead nurturing tactic for us. And AI is not the way to go for it. We’ve tried that route. We’ve tried to save time, but actually we found that spending that little bit extra time is going to be more valuable for us moving forward because AI can just not get that tone that we need to engage people to read our newsletter.

    Hannah: Yeah, and I think the other thing that people misunderstand is AI gives you volume, because it’s very efficient, it’s much more efficient than using humans. But the issue is, if you look at the amount of marketing communications out there, there’s a lot of stuff that’s in the, you know, I guess the range of meh to okay, and a lot of AI fits in that meh to okay range. doesn’t have any impact. It goes out, lots of people see it, it doesn’t engage them, it doesn’t excite them, it doesn’t have anything compelling. And so yes, you can send out, you know, 10, 20, 100,000 emails that are customized by AI. But actually, sometimes you’re better off sending out 500 emails that are super targeted at the people who are going to buy and have the reasons why they should buy. So I do think that it’s increasingly going to become a vanity metric as to how much you’ve used AI to customize. And as we know, you know, a lot of vanity metrics, you know, the higher you push them, the worse your campaign. I think sometimes, you know, whilst using AI in itself is not a bad thing, pushing to maximize that benefit from AI actually can lead you to compromise on the quality of the campaign.

    Mike: Oh, I fully agree, Mike. I don’t think we’ve ever agreed so much in so little time, but I fully agree. And I want you to hold on to that thought because when we get to our tip of the week at the end of this episode, I want to have a little chat about Spintax and how if we are going to go down this AI route, how you can make it so it’s not just this mass, non-personalized, boring outreach. Let’s move on because I actually want to talk about Shoka AI again, but let’s talk about it in a positive light. And I’m quite passionate about this because we use AI internally to support this and this is podcast. So obviously we’re on the podcast right now, but post-podcast, we’ve got to do editing, we’ve got to write our show notes, we’ve got to get a transcript up. And it was really interesting that one of the product updates from HubSpot in August was that they’ve introduced podcast transcripts generation. So What I really liked about this, and this is what I’ve always really loved about HubSpot, is HubSpot seem to have these additional little elements, these little diamonds in the dust if you like, that you can do. So they have their SEO function that I’ve always really loved of HubSpot. And I love that they have this podcast generation actually within the platform and that these transcripts can be built along with messaging, along with things that they can put in their emails and promotion within the platform itself. What did you think about it?

    Hannah: Well, this is going to be a boring podcast where you both agree, I think, because I totally agree with you. I think, you know, we talked earlier about HubSpot being really suited to small and medium sized businesses. I’m going to stick my neck out there. HubSpot is not the best podcast transcription tool. It’s not going to get you the best clips. It’s not going to necessarily generate the best value content, but it’s going to do a damn good job. And if you’re working in a marketing team of two or three in a small business, that is going to be the solution. Unless podcast is your primary tactic, HubSpot is going to do a job that is going to be really good. And you can focus on your primary activities. At Napier, we use a couple of different tools. We use Swell AI for generating little bits of content from podcasts. We use Opus Clip for generating clips. So I think There are point tools that are better. And maybe this won’t last forever. I mean, I’m entirely open to the fact that ultimately, the integrated tools will be every bit as good as the specialist tools, but at the moment, they’re not quite there. And larger companies, I think, will spend the money, not least because they will have a podcast person who has the time to investigate tools, and has the ability to really focus on what works best for them. So I think, you know, in the short term, yes, it’s brilliant for small companies, it’s, you know, I mean, ultimately, for a HubSpot subscriber, it’s basically free, it’s added in. But you know, for enterprise companies, again, it comes back to that discussion about Gartner, the person buying is the context that really matters. And if you’re a big enterprise company, maybe you don’t want that integration of something that’s probably good enough, but not necessarily best in class.

    Mike: I think that’s a fantastic point, Mike. And, you know, in the future, I’d like to see these real specialist tools make their way into being integrated directly with the market automation platforms. You know, we’ve seen that happen with other tools and other sectors. And I think that is probably an avenue that could be realistic in the future. And it’s something that everyone would benefit from.

    Hannah: Absolutely, for sure. I mean, there was a point when, you know, people had third-party form tools, and you didn’t use the integrated form because it wasn’t as good in market automation systems. That for all but the most demanding form applications has gone away now, and the form tools that are integrated are brilliant in most of these market automation systems. So I totally agree with you. I think in the long term, integration is only going to get better and better. And presumably some of these point products will get bought and integrated in as well by some of the larger vendors.

    Mike: Absolutely, now I want to move on because we have a nice theme going this week and it is focusing on those platforms that are more specialized for the small medium businesses and in our last episode we discussed Marketo and how there were some blogs out basically being like work with me instead you know Marketo isn’t the right fit for you Now I came across quite a good blog from Acton. So they had a blog about why is the investment worth it in your market automation platform. And it did focus on the MarTech stack and it did talk about how you can simplify. But what I really liked in the messaging from this is choose the simplified version of the market automation platform. It’s so secret that Axon isn’t, you know, the most complex. It doesn’t have all these different layers that can provide marketers, but it does the job and it does it well. And it goes back to your point of who it’s set into, what’s the context that this person needs. But I thought that was quite interesting because they’re really doubling down on this, like, this is what we do. We’re really simple. You need your MarTech stack to be simple. Come and join us. And in a way, I really loved that.

    Hannah: I thought it was a great article as well, Hannah. I really enjoyed it. I mean, obviously, it’s very self-serving in that they’re pitching the simplicity of Acton versus some of the larger, more complex products. But also, you and I have seen with some of our clients, where they’ve had a more complex product, it really doesn’t matter because they aren’t able to take advantage of the capabilities. In some cases, it takes much, much longer. I mean, we’re talking months, quarters, maybe even over a year. to roll out these products and it does a simpler one. And I think maybe, maybe there’s something to it. You know, when you talk about it, perhaps there is going to be a bit of a backlash against marketing technology from some marketers. And there’s actually gonna be a push to return to, you know, simpler tools where you use all the features rather than complex tools where perhaps you only use 10% of them.

    Mike: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I can’t count the amount of conversations I’ve had where, you know, our clients or prospects we’re speaking to are like, well, I’ve got HubSpot, for example, and I don’t know what it does. All I do is send emails on it. And it’s, you know, they’re pouring this investment in, you know, monthly and day in and day out. And You know, that blog and this type of message is really going to resonate with those types of people because it’s, you know, you’re using it for these simple tasks. This is still a type of automation. Take away that cost, come and be our partner instead.

    Hannah: Yeah, I mean, I’ve heard clients say to me, you know, in frustration with their market automation teams, you know, it feels like we’re paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a best in class tool. And we could pretty much do it all on Mailchimp. And I don’t think anyone means that seriously. But I think the sentiment there, the frustration that these tools are so powerful, but so complex, that they’re not necessarily delivering the benefits they’re capable of. And maybe some people are much better at going, let’s go back, let’s simplify, let’s take the advantage of reduced costs, because we’re going for simpler tools. And let’s focus on doing what we do really well, rather than trying to take advantage of all these features, which is going to require a lot of effort training education.

    Mike: Absolutely. I think that’s spot on, Mike. Now, let’s round up. I’m conscious of time, so let’s move on to our tip of the week. Now, as I mentioned earlier in the episode, I want to have a talk about Spintax. Now, this is something that you’ve brought to me quite recently, Mike, is something that we can use internally. So do you want to take the lead and just explain a little bit about what it is and what it does?

    Hannah: Yeah, I mean, Spintax, I guess, is a form of artificial intelligence, but it’s not really intelligent. So what you do is you generate content, typically emails, and then Spintax will change combinations of words. So you give a combination of words. So you could talk about market automation tools or market automation platforms, for example. And so Spintax will randomize words within the email. And the great thing about this is that if you’re sending a large number of emails, particularly if you’re sending them to a single company, they’re much less likely to get flagged as being bulk emails because the emails themselves are inherently a little bit different. So again, it’s a super simple approach. It’s just randomizing some text basically. But what it does is it gives you this, um, you know, algorithmic feel of being a unique emails, and that can actually significantly enhance your deliverability. So it’s a really neat tool. It’s available on a lot of email packages and it’s incredibly simple. It’s generally set up manually as well. So generally you’re providing the options for the, uh, the different words that can be used. So you get absolute control over what happens and you don’t end up with, you know, any kind of AI hallucination.

    Mike: I love this so much, Mike, and I can see the benefits so clearly. And I think as well, you know, when you’re reaching out to these bulk contacts in one company, you know, in our dreams, we like to hope that people compare the emails and read them and knowing that they’re not just going to read that exact same email, but it’s not too much effort from us internally. I think it’s a brilliant, it’s a brilliant tool.

    Hannah: Yeah, I think it’s fun. And I know we’ll be playing about with some experiments on how much it impacts deliverability as well. So maybe in a future episode, we can talk about our results from some of our experiments that we’re doing.

    Mike: Oh, absolutely. Great idea, Mike.

    Hannah: Well, Hannah, thank you very much. I really appreciate all the great stories you’ve brought to this episode. You’ve done all the hard work this time and brought lots of new ideas. And so thank you for your time. I hope everyone listening subscribes to the podcast and we’ll speak to the next time.

    Mike: Brilliant. Thanks, Mike.

    Hannah: Thanks for listening to the Marketing Automation Moment podcast.

    Hannah: Don’t forget to subscribe in your favorite podcast application and we’ll see you next time.

    Author

    Exit mobile version