Get Marketing Automation Right: 4 Critical Safeguards

When automation goes wrong

Picture this: Maria donates $50 to your climate campaign through an online payment. The transaction processes instantly, she gets a confirmation email, and she feels great about supporting your mission. But a week later, she gets an automated reminder: "We haven't received your donation yet. Would you still like to contribute?"

Maria's confused. She already paid—didn't she? She double-checks her bank statement, and sure enough, the $50 was withdrawn. Her trust in your organization just took a hit. Instead of a loyal donor who feels valued, you've got someone questioning whether you have your act together.

Or consider Tom, who recently canceled his membership. Yet for weeks afterward, he keeps getting member emails about upcoming events and dues payments. Every message feels like proof that your organization doesn't really see him as an individual.

Four things to watch out for with marketing automation

1. Data integration: get all your systems talking

What went wrong with Maria? Simple: her donation lived in the accounting software, but that 'paid' status never made it over to the CRM system that sends automated emails. The left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing.

How to avoid this:

• Make sure your systems sync in real-time, or better yet, use an integrated platform where everything lives in one place
• Before you flip the switch on any automation, walk through it yourself as if you were a donor—test the entire flow
• Check regularly that your data matches across systems. Make it part of your routine
• Automate payment processing wherever you can. Systems that pull in bank transactions automatically and match them to donors eliminate manual handoffs where things can get delayed

2. Team awareness: tiny changes can trigger big problems

Here's the thing about marketing automation—it's always listening. Someone fills out a form, clicks a link, gets tagged with a new status in your CRM, and boom: an automated email fires off. The problem? Your teammate might adjust something "real quick" without realizing they just triggered a whole chain of emails.

Here's what this looks like in practice: Your colleague notices that Peter works at ABC, one of your member organizations, but his personal profile isn't linked to the company yet. She fixes it—connects Peter as a "project manager" at ABC—and the start date defaults to today.

What she doesn't know: that action just kicked off an automated onboarding sequence. Peter gets an enthusiastic welcome email: "So glad you're working at ABC! Did you know you get free access to our knowledge base?"

Peter's scratching his head. He's been at ABC for five years. He already knew about the knowledge base. Instead of feeling like you get him, he's wondering if you know him at all.

How to avoid this:

• Set clear rules about who can edit what in your system
• Use permission levels so not everyone has their hands on everything
• Add warning labels to fields: "Heads up—changing this start date will trigger a welcome email"
• Build in safeguards: only trigger journeys when start dates are today or later, never for backdated entries
• Talk regularly as a team about which automations are running

3. Sync with your finance team: timing matters more than you think

Even if your systems are perfectly integrated, timing can still trip you up. Lots of organizations process donations in batches—maybe once a week, maybe once a month. If your automation doesn't know that, you'll send "where's your donation?" reminders while payments are sitting in the queue waiting to be processed.

Here's another scenario: someone donates Friday night, but your finance person doesn't work weekends. Monday morning rolls around, and the donor gets a reminder because the system ran its check on Saturday.

How to avoid this:

• Talk to your finance team. How fast do they actually process donations?
• Build in a cushion. Don't send reminders after three days—wait two weeks
• Automate payment matching where you can. Systems that automatically pull in transactions and link them to donor records cut out the delays
• For online payments (credit cards, ACH transfers), set things up so they process and match instantly
• For sensitive stuff—like anything about money—consider having a human review it before it goes out

4. Duplicate records: when the same person shows up twice

This might be the most awkward scenario of all: Someone's been a member for ten years, but they sign up again through a new campaign. If you're not careful, they'll get a welcome email treating them like a brand-new member. Talk about impersonal.

Or flip it around: A longtime donor makes a one-time campaign gift, and suddenly they're getting emails inviting them to become a monthly donor. They're thinking, "Wait, do you even know who I am?"

Why does this happen? People change email addresses, move to new cities, spell their names differently on forms. Your system doesn't realize it's the same person. Or when you import data or someone fills out a form, not all the fields needed to catch duplicates make it through.

How to avoid this:

• Set up deduplication rules: Configure your system to spot duplicates by matching combinations—email + name, or zip code + birth date. Keep the same person from ending up in your database twice
• Add a waiting period: When someone new signs up, don't immediately throw them into every automation. Give them a few days in a holding pattern so your team can manually check if they're already in the system
• Check before you recruit: Build logic into your campaigns that asks, "Is this person already a member or donor?" Only send recruitment pitches to people who don't have an active relationship with you yet
• Track only truly new people: When you're measuring campaign success, look specifically at people who joined after the campaign launched—not people who were already members. Otherwise your numbers will be inflated by folks you already had

Start small and build from there

Don't let these cautionary tales scare you off. Marketing automation can be incredibly powerful—when it's set up right. The key is to start simple. Pick one basic automation—maybe a welcome email when someone subscribes to your newsletter. Test it thoroughly. Get your team on board. Then expand gradually.

This is one of our core beliefs at Procurios: get a little better every day. You don't need everything perfect from day one. Start somewhere, learn as you go, and keep improving. That's how you build automation that doesn't just save time—it actually strengthens your relationship with supporters.

Be thoughtfully strategic about your approach. Ask yourself: what am I really trying to accomplish here? What problem does this solve? What could go wrong? When you dig into those questions—the questions behind the questions—you'll build automation that actually works for your organization and your people.