The Biggest Marketing Automation Mistakes VARs & MSPs Make

Marketing automation has become an essential tool for Value-Added Resellers (VARs) and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) looking to scale their outreach, nurture leads, and grow revenue. But like any powerful tool, automation can backfire when misused. It can be deceptively easy for businesses of all kinds to fall into common traps that undermine their efforts and alienate prospects. 

Whether you're just getting started or refining your current approach, it helps to understand where marketing automation often goes wrong, so you can instead ensure automation works effectively for your business. Because once you do figure out how to apply it strategically, marketing automation helps you scale without sacrificing quality, frees up time for your team to focus on service delivery, and ensures you stay top-of-mind with prospects. 

Here are the biggest marketing automation mistakes VARs and MSPs make and how to fix them. 

Lack of Clear Goals and Strategy 

The Mistake: 

Jumping into marketing automation without a clear strategy often results in disjointed efforts and underwhelming results. When the focus is on jumping on a new technology, it’s common for businesses to implement tools because “everyone else is doing it” but lack a coherent plan. However, this is the easiest way to ensure a new technology pilot will fail your business, or at the very least, not provide a worthwhile ROI. 

The Fix: 

Start with clear objectives. What do you want to accomplish by leveraging marketing automation? Do you want to generate more leads? Shorten the sales cycle? Upsell current clients? Define what these goals are, then assign a few key KPIs and map out how automation will help you achieve them. Build workflows and content around your buyer personas and customer journey stages to set up marketing automation for success from the start. 

Over-Automating (and Losing the Human Touch) 

The Mistake: 

 Many MSPs and VARs set up a complex web of emails, social posts, and lead scoring workflows and assume the system will do all the work. But over-reliance on automation can make your communication feel cold, robotic, and impersonal. 

The Fix: 

Automation should enhance, not replace, genuine human connection. Use automation to handle repetitive tasks, such as follow-up reminders and lead nurturing sequences, while creating touchpoints for real conversations. Personalize your messaging with dynamic fields, segment your audience by pain points or industry, and always provide a clear path to talk to a real person. This way, automation clears your plate of the “smaller” tasks while handing you back more time to invest in making those conversations count. 

Poor Lead Segmentation 

The Mistake: 

Sending the same email blast to your entire contact list is a fast way to tank your engagement. Your clients most likely represent a variety of industries and business types, and what’s relevant to a 50-person law firm won’t always resonate with a 500-employee manufacturing company. 

The Fix: 

First, segment your leads based on criteria such as industry, company size, service needs, or buying stage. Then use your CRM and marketing automation platform to assign tags or build smart lists. Tailor your content and calls-to-action (CTAs) to match where each segment is in their buyer journey. While certain types of emails—such as big company announcements—may be relevant to your entire list, segmentation and automation will help you deliver the right message to the right people, without alienating your other prospects and clients.

Neglecting Lead Nurturing 

The Mistake: 

It's common for VARs and MSPs to focus heavily on generating leads but fall flat when it comes to nurturing them. They send a welcome email, or worse, jump straight to a sales pitch, and then go silent. 

The Fix: 

Develop lead nurturing workflows that guide prospects through their decision-making process. This could include emails that deliver educational content, case studies, webinars, and occasional check-ins. Whatever shape that content takes, aim to deliver value at every stage. In a recent survey, HubSpot customers overwhelmingly confirmed what research has long supported: before making a purchase decision, customers prefer to review a business’s content to gain an understanding of the company and their expertise. A strong nurture sequence that delivers value-add content builds trust and keeps your company top of mind until the prospect is ready to buy.

Ignoring Data and Metrics 

The Mistake: 

Some businesses treat marketing automation like a “set it and forget it” system. But failing to track and analyze performance means you’ll miss out on insights that can improve your strategy, or worse, continue investing in tactics that aren’t working. 

The Fix: 

Regularly monitor metrics like open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates. Use A/B testing to optimize subject lines, CTAs, and content. Schedule recurring time to dive into your analytics to see which workflows are driving engagement and which ones need reworking. 

Not Aligning Marketing and Sales 

The Mistake: 

If your marketing automation is generating leads, but sales isn’t following up on them or doesn’t trust the quality of those leads, you’ve got a disconnect. This is a common issue in VAR and MSP organizations where sales and marketing operate in silos. 

The Fix: 

Establish alignment between sales and marketing teams. Working together, define what qualifies as a marketing-qualified lead (MQL) and a sales-qualified lead (SQL), and agree on what the workflow for the handoff process should be. Get specific and ensure each step is assigned to a role, then use automation to alert sales reps when leads meet certain thresholds. Meet regularly to ensure this alignment continues and establish a collaborative spirit between the two departments. After all, you’re a team working towards the same end goal. Sales can also be a great source of feedback direct from prospects and clients, and marketing can use this feedback to create relevant content and email series to support sales. 

Failing to Provide Value in Automated Content 

The Mistake: 

A related point is that far too many automated emails are thinly disguised sales pitches. This turns off prospects who are looking for insights, not advertisements. They’ll tune out or unsubscribe—sometimes before you even get to make your pitch. 

The Fix: 

Focus on providing real and relevant value. Lead by sharing useful information that helps your prospects solve problems or make smarter decisions. As we mentioned above, this could take the form of blog posts, industry reports, comparison guides, or how-to videos, but whatever form it takes, your content should build credibility and position your company as a trusted advisor. 

Outdated or Dirty Contact Lists 

The Mistake: 

Using outdated contact lists or failing to clean your database regularly leads to bounced emails, spam complaints, and poor engagement metrics. 

The Fix: 

Make list hygiene a regular part of your marketing routine. You can leverage automation from a platform like HubSpot to identify and remove inactive contacts. Use double opt-in procedures and give recipients easy options to update preferences. It may feel like you need to hold on to high numbers, but a smaller, high-quality list will always outperform a large, disengaged one. While keeping the top of the funnel filled matters, it’s better to focus on adding and keeping the right, relevant, and engaged contacts.

Smart Automation is Strategic Automation 

Marketing automation isn’t a silver bullet, but a tool. When done right, automation helps you connect with prospects at scale, build trust over time, and close deals faster. But when done wrong, it leads to missed opportunities and wasted resources. 

With any tool or technology, it helps to start with a clear strategy and goals. Evaluate how well it’s working periodically, and if you’ve been using automation but haven’t been maximizing its potential, the good news is, it’s not too late to identify your issues and start again. Avoid the common pitfalls, keep your focus on your audience’s needs, and use automation to enhance, not replace, the human element in your marketing, and your future sales pipeline will thank you. 

If you’re worried about getting it right all on your own or simply don’t have the time to become a marketing automation expert, the right partner can make all the difference. They will help you evaluate where you’re starting from, then set you up with a unified platform and ensure it makes an impact on your business.  

At MarketDesign (MDCo) we're here to help you grow your business; and tools matter. We’ll ensure you've got the right tools, you're making the right investment, and that your business is set up for success. We’ve been in your shoes and will be sitting next to you at the table. Growing a business is hard; leading a thriving business is the reward. MDCo is the partner to help you reap the benefits of your investments.