Marketing automation can really help streamline your business and help you grow. It is important though, that you understand how best to use these tools so you do not make mistakes. Remember that these tools are only there to make things easier for you, not to replace the human touch.

First and foremost, you need to make sure you keep adding fresh content that is specifically geared to your customers. For example, if you are selling to men who love dogs and want to learn how to train them better, you probably would not want content that has to do with how to help women lose weight.

Watch out for more subtle differences as well. You can generalize to some extent, but you do not want your customers to feel like you are just throwing content at them to see what sticks. Make sure your content is not only changing, but relevant to your specific customer base. A lot of times you have more than one group of customers, though, so segmenting your list is crucial to helping you target them better with your automation. You want them to feel like even though it is automated, that you care about them and their interests.

Do not use marketing automation when you should be connecting with your customers manually. For example, many tools work with drip feeding content and posts to various forms of social media. You can use these tools to make sure your social media stays active, by tweeting, sharing, posting, when you are not able to because you are asleep, or working on other projects.

Make sure, though, that you also post manually so people can hear what you have to say. If you are a member of a group on sites like Facebook, use good social manners. A few automated posts now and again that are very relevant to the group may be alright as long as you clear it first, but if you drip feed a lot of posts, many unrelated, the group may ban you.

Set it and forget it can lead you into issues. You do need to monitor your marketing automation and test it and tweak it. Make sure you are offering targeted information that helps your customers as well as sales pitches. Check on things like how much interaction you are getting with social media posts and blog posts. Analyze your stats on emails to make sure you are really maximizing your benefits from using automated tools to grow your business.