There’s a dark side and a beautiful future built around every new tool and technology that comes along. For all the brilliance of marketing automation, artificial intelligence, and chatbots, there are all kinds of ways to use these tools to alienate and upset your customers, as well. As with all pursuits, we have to look at the intent of your execution and make sure you’re not annoying the people you most want to serve.

Every time you “set it and forget it,” you’re missing the actual business value.

I use marketing automation of some form every day. I sent out automated newsletters to my subscribers. I schedule anywhere from 20-30 tweets to go out every day from my Twitter account. There are all kinds of parts of my business that are automated. But in each of these cases, I’ve built a system that also allows me to connect and interact directly with people who engage with that information.

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