Common Marketing Workflow Automation Mistakes & How Marcom Can Fix Them

Introduction to Marketing Workflow Automation

In today’s high-speed marketing environment, efficiency is the name of the game. Marketing workflow automation has since popped up, promising time savings, better consistency, and seamless collaboration across teams and channels.

However, without the right strategy or platform, these approaches often fall short. Many teams rush into automation without proper planning, leading them to encounter inefficiencies, silos, and poor user adoption. The result is that they are plagued with workflow automation mistakes and bottlenecks that diminish their return on investment (ROI).

That’s where MarcomCentral steps in. Our workflow automation solutions streamline processes, reduce friction, and empower your distributed teams to get more done. Below is everything to know about how you can save time on repetitive tasks and remove inefficiencies from core business processes.

Understanding Marketing Workflow Automation

Marketing workflow automation refers to the use of technology to create, manage, and execute repeatable marketing processes. These workflows can range from simple email sequences to complex, multi-channel campaign rollouts and brand asset approval chains. By automating tasks like these, your team can move faster, stay consistent, and collaborate across locations.

Of course, though, automation only works when it’s well-designed and well-managed. MarcomCentral, to that end, gives marketing teams the infrastructure necessary to centralize brand-approved content, build those automated workflows, and distribute materials quickly. You’ll maintain full visibility into who’s using what, as well as where and how they’re doing so.

Common Marketing Workflow Automation Mistakes & How Marcom Can Fix Them

Automation technologies can accelerate decision-making and eliminate human error from your workflows, but not every automation effort delivers on its promise. Many go off the rails due to missteps like a lack of scalability or inadequate preparation.

Let’s take a closer look at some common workflow automation mistakes you need to be wary of:

Failing to Scale Your Automation Strategy

Perhaps one of the most common workflow automation mistakes is starting with a solution that works for a single team but doesn’t scale across departments or regions. As your organization grows, the cracks will begin to show: You’ll run into duplicated efforts, approval bottlenecks, and broken processes.

MarcomCentral is built for scale; whether you manage a regional team or a global franchise network, our platform grows with you, and it will keep everything organized in the process. You can set custom user permissions for asset access and create custom workflows with our drag-and-drop tools.

Over-Complicating the Customization Process

Too much customization can, in fact, slow things down. When every user needs a different version of an asset, or when every campaign must be built from scratch, automation becomes inefficient.

Combating that, MarcomCentral offers customizable templates with locked brand elements. When you distribute approved brand assets to stakeholders, they will only be allowed to edit select elements. That, in turn, allows teams to personalize their content while ensuring they stay on-brand. Team members can provide localized customer experiences without compromising design integrity.

Not Integrating Across Channels or Systems

A disconnected tech stack leads to chaos. If your automation tools don’t talk to your CRM, email platform, or digital asset management (DAM) solution, you’re forcing your team to jump between systems, leading to overly complex processes, time-consuming manual tasks, and an increased workload on your team.

Integrations are the solution to that headache. MarcomCentral, with its low-code, user-friendly platform, integrates with CRMs, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and marketing automation platforms, and more. That gives you a unified source of truth for content, approvals, and performance tracking.

Skipping Team Collaboration and Communication

Automation is often implemented from the top down, without considering how users interact with the system. If teams don’t understand or trust the workflow, they’ll revert to manual workarounds. You aren’t going to streamline workflows or boost productivity if your workforce pushes back against the technology you are trying to roll out.

MarcomCentral enables real-time collaboration with shared access to assets, workflows, and approvals. Clear user roles and intuitive navigation ensure everyone can participate in the process, making project management, onboarding, and workflow management far easier.

Ignoring Analytics and Optimization Opportunities

Implementing workflow automation software without feedback loops will set you up for failure; after all, if you’re not tracking what works, you can’t improve it. You need end-to-end performance tracking capabilities so you can make data-driven decisions and get the most out of your automation investments.

With built-in analytics and reporting, MarcomCentral gives you actionable insights into asset usage, campaign performance, and user engagement, which you can use to establish a better customer experience that maximizes customer satisfaction. You can build on what works, fix what doesn’t, and continuously scale up your workflow solution to maximize productivity.

Key Features of Marcom’s Workflow Automation Solutions

MarcomCentral is packed with tools designed to help you eliminate workflow automation mistakes. In particular, you’ll gain access to all of the following:

Centralized Access to Brand Assets

One of the core offerings of MarcomCentral is its brand asset centralization. You can create and upload approved assets so that end users can launch high-impact campaigns at scale. All approved users will be able to access these assets, customize any fields you authorize, and launch customized regional campaigns. Consolidating all of your assets in one place makes it easy for users to exercise their creativity without unintentionally publishing off-brand content.

Customizable Workflow Templates

Standardize your most-used marketing workflows; for instance, you can simplify asset approval chains to get dynamic content in the hands of end users faster. MarcomCentral lets you build and replicate these workflows easily, saving time and ensuring consistency.

When building templates, you’ll choose which elements to lock and which aspects authorized users can edit. For instance, you can lock in your brand logo and slogan, but allow users to adjust pricing or body content when running regional campaigns. In turn, you’ll see increased productivity and an easy-to-follow content roadmap for your decentralized team.

Compliance and Brand Control

You’ve worked hard to build an instantly recognizable brand and earn the trust of your target audience. And MarcomCentral helps you protect that reputation with our workflow automation tools. You can create custom compliance rules and enforce your policies with both editable and non-editable fields.

For example, suppose that certain types of content require a disclosure. You can add a disclosure on those pieces of content and lock that specific element of your assets to prevent compliance violations. And even if you aren’t subject to strict regulations, you can use our brand control tools to enforce internal policies.

Role-Based Permissions and Access

Not everyone needs the same level of access to your branded content. Some team members might need to be able to create and upload content, while others should only be able to review and edit approved fields. With MarcomCentral, you can easily adjust each person’s permissions based on use cases specific to their roles within the company. Our access control functions give you total oversight over who can change what. That level of orchestration is critical for protecting your brand assets and preserving the integrity of the content you’ve created.

Real-Time Analytics and Performance Dashboards

Our powerful platform makes it easy to track which assets are used most often and which campaigns drive engagement. You can determine where bottlenecks occur and refine your strategy to promote cost savings and better engagement. Our insights are also valuable for justifying your investments in workflow automation platforms.

Best Practices for Workflow Automation With Marcom

As you build workflows to minimize human intervention and cut back on manual data entry, it’s vital to have a plan in place. Here are some best practices to help you build a functional automation strategy for your business:

Standardize Your Workflows Across Teams

Inconsistent workflows are the enemy of effective automation. Using MarcomCentral, you can build repeatable templates for common marketing tasks, such as:

• Email sequences
• Ad production
• Social media campaigns

When your team members have a clear starting point, you can unlock the full benefits of workflow automation, as they won’t have to guess where to begin or build their own workflows. Instead, they can simply choose the appropriate template and use automation tools to be more productive.

Train and Empower All Users

Adoption is critical to automation success. With that in mind, you need to proactively address change resistance and other friction so you can achieve a strong ROI and condensed time to value. One of the best ways to eliminate change resistance is to adopt a user-friendly platform.

MarcomCentral’s interface and role-based access ensure that all users can easily understand and use the platform. Its drag-and-drop capabilities create a no-code experience that your team members can navigate without IT support. And with visual workflows, you can see the processes you are building in real-time and address potential bottlenecks before they impact your business.

Integrate Marcom Into Your Existing Stack

MarcomCentral delivers the best value when you fully integrate it into your marketing stack. Standard APIs make it easy to integrate MarcomCentral with Zapier, as well as several popular CRMs, CMSs, and project management tools.

By combining MarcomCentral with your other marketing and business management tools, you can eliminate the need to bounce between platforms. These integrations also allow the platforms to communicate and share data. Improving the flow of information reduces the need for redundant manual data entry and allows your team to spend more time on value-added work, such as delivering customer support.

Localize Without Losing Brand Integrity

MarcomCentral’s customizable templates allow regional teams to make tweaks to locations, offers, and contact info. However, other information, such as brand elements, will be locked down. That serves to protect brand equity while giving franchisees or field reps the freedom to connect with local audiences. The result is more impactful local campaigns that deliver meaningful results for your business.

How Marcom Can Help You Avoid Automation Mistakes

With MarcomCentral, you can avoid automation mistakes by using the following tools provided by our platform:

• Scalable workflows
• Real-time collaboration tools
• Built-in brand governance
• Measurable results and accountability

You can closely monitor metrics about asset usage and shed light on opportunities to automate more effectively. Ultimately, you are in control of your assets and brand voice.

Implementing the Right Marketing Workflow Automation Solutions

Marketing workflow automation is no longer optional; it’s essential for teams that want to move faster, scale smarter, and stay consistent. Still, automation isn’t a magic fix-all, either. You need the right platform to bring it all together. And that’s exactly what MarcomCentral delivers.

Our platform empowers your team to do more with less effort. Explore our pricing options or request a demo today to learn more.