What Not to Automate

A while back, a client asked us about setting up a system that would automatically generate an email newsletter from their blog posts on their WordPress website. There are indeed WordPress plugins out there that can send a digest of your posts. But is it a good idea? We thought of several reasons why it might not be a good idea to automate this particular marketing function:

1. If a post is published and then retracted, the plugin might send out the blog post anyway.
2. Subscription management for tools like these are not as good as third-party vendors like Constant Contact or Mailchimp. If someone unsubscribes and (for myriad reasons), they are mailed to anyway, that puts those emails at risk of being flagged as spam. This could cascade into our server’s IP being blacklisted.
3. These kinds of plugins can be good targets for hackers to exploit to send spam, generating a security risk.
4. Most importantly, it’s very difficult to control the formatting of these emails, and because it’s automated you would not be able to predict how it looks before it goes out. If a blog post writer uses any kind of nonstandard code or formatting, the results are increasingly unpredictable.

This led us to think about what other activities in our wheelhouse might not be good candidates for automation.

Don’t Automate Your Entire Social Media Marketing Program

There are plenty of tools out there to automate your social media marketing efforts, and you’d be working around the clock if you didn’t take advantage of some of them. Hootsuite, Buffer, HubSpot, SproutSocial, Social Oomph, and Social Flow are just a few applications that will let you schedule social media posts in advance and monitor your accounts when you’re mentioned online, or you receive a comment. Theoretically, you could use IFTTT or Zapier to auto-post on Facebook when you create a new WordPress blog post. Up to a point, automation can be a good way to cover all your channels efficiently. The trouble arises when your presence feels stale or fake on a given channel. If you’re not interacting authentically with your customers, what’s the point? If you want a great example of social media done right, check out the Twitter account for Wendy’s. Their replies are proof that the company is not phoning it in when it comes to their social media.

Don’t Automate Customer Service (Yet)

Customers have come to expect instantaneous support, whether it’s provided by chat, phone, email, or ticket system. By all means, do provide a knowledgebase or FAQ to help customers help themselves. At the same time, know that many customers won’t bother to read it and will reach for a “click to chat” button immediately. If you’re hoping to get away with an AI chatbot to handle customer service questions, the technology isn’t quite there yet. It probably will be soon, but if you’ve ever tried one, you’ll know that it’s frustrating, and probably a turn-off.

Don’t Automate Security-Critical Functions in Your Home

Some of us have integrated our door locks into our home automation system, while some of us insist on “dumb” door locks and garage doors. While we at I.T. Roadmap have automated many of our homes’ functions, we are wary of staking our safety on fire alarms and ovens, as these are safety-critical devices. And as people who deal with security on an ongoing basis, we recognize that home automation does open us to some potentially serious dangers.

For example, you have an app that you set up to automatically lock your door at a specified time at night. Well, that app also has the ability to unlock the door. Ultimately, you depend on the app developer for security, and it can be easier to exploit an app’s vulnerability than it can be to overcome a physical security bar on a door.

We could continue to discuss this topic for hours. Have you been debating about whether to automate a feature of your home or business? It’s likely that we’ve considered the problem before and might have insight to add. Contact us!