One of the biggest gripes I hear from new users of marketing automation systems is how hard it is to navigate their bizarre, counterintuitive interfaces. How even simple tasks are made more complicated or not even possible at all.
It’s fair criticism, especially when you look at polished, intuitive interfaces like Mailchimp that just…work. Why the big marketing automation vendors don’t copy more of what the downmarket vendors like Mailchimp are doing is beyond me. There’s already a massive talent shortage in this space, and it isn’t helped by making the profession inaccessible because of obtuse, poor UX tools.
Advanced users ought to value simple UX more too – it means easier training for non-technical users, and time saved by a faster ramp up on a new system or environment. Of the top of my head, here are just a few ideas to start copying:
- Pre-built, plug and play GDPR and CASL compliance tools
- Auto-tagging of in-email URLs
- An intuitive, snappy content editor
- Built in feedback management for test emails
- Dashboards focused on simple, immediately useful metrics (and saving the rest for a double click report)