I Automated 80% of My Marketing Here's What the Bots Should Do (and What Only You Can)

Email Playbook: Automate the Drips, Hand-craft the P.S.

Think of your email sequence as a gentle conveyor belt: automated drips move prospects along while you collect signals. Map lifecycle stages, tag behavior, and set simple triggers - opens, clicks, time since last purchase. Use dynamic blocks for first name, recent product, and urgency cues so the bot feels context aware rather than robotic.

Then humanize the ending. The body can be templated; the P.S. should read like a note slipped in after a meeting. Mention a real detail, add one short value hit, and finish with a soft micro CTA. A signed P.S. from a real person increases replies and opens among warm leads.

Operationally, automate the drips with clear rules: one primary goal per sequence, predictable cadence, and automatic suppression for customers in other funnels. A/B test subject lines and preview text, and let behavior escalate contacts to higher touch if thresholds are met. Keep monitoring so automation adapts to new trends.

Finally, set alerts for odd spikes and give VIPs a manual review pass. Maintain a small folder of handcrafted P.S. variants to swap into automated sends, and schedule weekly spot checks. That combination keeps your system scalable while preserving the human spark that actually closes deals.

Social Posts: Batch the Boring, Write the Hot Takes Yourself

Start by automating the repeatable choreography: schedule evergreen posts, repost best-performing snippets with fresh captions, and push content into a queue that posts when your audience is online. Use templates and placeholder fields for title, hook, and CTA so a scheduler can populate thousands of hours of posting without sounding robotic. Keep a short approval loop so automation never publishes anything off-brand.

When you batch the boring, use a few tight formats that a bot can execute reliably; here are three to start with:

• 🤖 Templates: Create 3 hooks, 3 body lengths, and 2 CTAs per theme so automation can mix and match.
• ⚙️ Calendar: Map weekly pillars to time slots and let the scheduler fill gaps automatically.
• 🔥 Evergreen: Flag high-value posts for periodic reposts and rotate headlines to avoid repeat fatigue.

Reserve original hot takes, opinion threads, and nuanced replies for human hands. Feed the scheduler with signals that require manual attention: real-time news, brand crises, and conversational threads where tone matters. Time block short windows for live posting and replies so you remain present. When a post needs courage, humor, or empathy, write it live rather than delegating to a rule engine.

Finally, measure what you automate and what you craft. Track engagement lift on human versus automated posts, set alerts for spikes that need immediate human response, and iteratively move more boring tasks into the automated lane. That way most of your workflow hums on autopilot while your best, human-made hot takes get the spotlight they deserve.

Lead Gen and Scoring: Let Rules Run, Let You Close

Think of lead capture like a well trained intern that never sleeps: forms, chat widgets, ad landing pages and webhook hooks all funnel into a single inbox. Automate the boring but brittle tasks first — enrichment, tag assignment, initial nurture sequences and calendar scheduling — so your team wakes up only to warm, qualified conversations. Bots should collect context, not create friction.

Design a transparent scoring model that is easy to explain to sales. Use clear weights such as +50 for demo requests, +20 for pricing page views, +10 for content downloads and -30 for unsubscribes. Add decay (30 days is a good start) so scores reflect recent intent. Set thresholds like 75 for hot, 40 for warm and below 40 for cold, then map each band to an action path.

Automation should push, not replace, the handoff. When a lead becomes hot, enrich the record with firmographic data, recent actions and recommended talking points, then create a CRM task and ping the right queue. Define SLAs: contact hot leads within 60 minutes, warm leads within 24 hours. Give reps a micro playbook with opening lines, value hooks and the clear next step to ask for.

Measure and iterate. Track speed to contact, lead to opportunity conversion and false positive rate. Run monthly audits, A B test score tweaks and keep the scoring rules visible so reps trust them. Start with one funnel, prove lift, then scale. Let rules run the routine so humans can do what machines cannot: build relationships and close deals.

Blogs and Landing Pages: Use AI for Outlines, Use You for Voice

Think of AI as your strategic scaffolding: prompt it to produce 6-8 outline variations, hero copy snippets, meta descriptions, and H2s framed to keyword and reader intent. Give narrow constraints — audience profile, tone, approximate word counts per section, and the one metric you want to move — so the machine gives structure, not fluff. Also ask for common objections and proof-point bullets; that fast-tracks research and saves you hours of guesswork.

Then you — yes, you — add voice, trust, and specificity. Swap AI's generic transitions for a tiny anecdote, a candid admission, or a brand metaphor only you could invent. Name the real person or case study behind claims, flag where screenshots or original charts should appear, and replace passive CTAs with tested micro-variations like "See how we cut ad costs 30% in 6 weeks." Use concrete numbers and timeframes to replace vague promises; those details turn good copy into persuasive copy.

A simple workflow keeps this practical: request five outline options plus a set of headlines and CTA variants; choose the outline and write the opening paragraph yourself to lock in tone; ask AI to expand each section into a draft; then edit ruthlessly for rhythm, evidence, and unique perspective. Use AI tools to check grammar, SEO, and readability, but always verify facts, dates, and figures yourself. Tag any claims you didn't verify so legal or ops can review before publishing.

Don't treat AI as a finish line — treat it as a fast way to iterate. A/B test hero lines, one humanized paragraph versus an AI-only version, and different CTAs. Feed winning edits back into new prompts so the bot learns the playbook and gives you better drafts next round. The result: far faster production at scale, with you preserving the one thing bots can't duplicate — original voice, judgment, and trust.

The Golden Filter: If It's Data, Automate; If It's Trust, Write

Start by treating every marketing task like triage: can a rule, a script, or a dashboard solve it logically, or does it hinge on human judgment and relationship fuel? If it's repeatable, measurable, and boring to people, send it to the machines; if it requires nuance, empathy, or reputation, keep your keyboard warm.

Automate everything that produces or needs clean data — tracking, segmentation, audience syncs, ad-bid rules, A/B analysis, reporting, and scheduled sends. Machines win at scale and speed: they don't forget tags, sleep, or panic before a product launch. Use automation to make reliable signals reliable, then surface them for strategic decisions.

Write for trust: brand stories, founder notes and story arcs, apology replies, nuanced customer support, and high-value outreach. Let AI draft options and variants, but always run a human edit pass for tone, context, and consequences. Create escalation rules so sensitive interactions jump to a person rather than a canned reply.

Operationalize the split: audit tasks, score them by data versus trust, build automations with human checkpoints, set weekly review windows, and track trust metrics like response sentiment and retention. The payoff is simple — predictable funnels handled by bots, memorable trust earned by you. Automate the gruntwork; keep the craft. That human sparkle pays dividends.