How Content Automation is fundamentally changing the work of marketers

What does Content Automation do to a marketing team? Not in terms of ROI or dashboards, but in the day-to-day reality on the work floor. In workload. In focus. In mental space.

At Sparklink, we support organisations in strategically setting up Content Automation. With tailored solutions that make a difference for both the business and the team working with them.

We discuss this with Sanne Van Reeth, Marketing Automation Marketer at be•at, the venue group behind, among others, AFAS Dome and Lotto Arena.

“When I started here, one full day a week was spent just creating emails. Everything in HTML. For every single show. We have seven venues and between 750 and 800 shows per year. If you have to create four emails per event each time, you’re basically constantly repeating the same work,” Sanne recalls.

COVID exposed the fragility of that system. Shows were massively postponed or cancelled. Automations had to be stopped. What used to be exceptional suddenly became the norm. That was the moment we thought: this has to change.

The first step was the automated Visitor Journey, a series of emails around an upcoming visit: a teaser, practical information, mobility details, and a follow-up survey.

That was essentially our MVP, our minimum viable product. Just making sure the basics were in place. But even that already made a huge difference.

We used to spend a lot of time designing and sending emails. Now we only need to check and validate. That’s a completely different mindset. All event information is now entered into Salesforce. Timings, links, specific details: you input it once and it’s automatically carried through into all communications.

So you no longer have to make changes in the email itself. You do it in one central place and it’s picked up correctly everywhere. That also means everyone can contribute to the input. A venue director can enter timings, a marketer can add a link, someone else can input mobility details, and so on.

In collaboration with Sparklink, we translated that structure into a scalable automation framework, aligning data, content, and timing. This results in time savings and eliminates repetitive work.

“Content automation does bring a mental challenge, something they hadn’t really anticipated at be•at,” Sanne explains.

“At first, you lose that sense of control. You used to press ‘send’ yourself. Now, all sorts of things go out automatically,” says Sanne. Logical and efficient, but in the beginning it can make you feel like you’re losing oversight. And of course, you want to be sure everything in the automation is running correctly.

To build that trust, the team added a few extra layers of control.

We receive all emails scheduled to go out in the next two days in advance. That way, we can still make corrections if something is missing. We also have a daily report of what was actually sent. We match that with our internal planning. If everything lines up, we know the system is running as it should.

The biggest shift isn’t in what has disappeared, but in what has replaced it. You’re no longer dealing with the masses. The standard communication runs on its own. What remains are the exceptions, and those are often the most interesting.

Think, for example, of VIP packages or meet-and-greets. People who need to enter at a different time or through a separate entrance, or who can collect merchandise. These are the kinds of things we can now give much more attention to. They’re often also the visitors who invest the most in their experience. It’s great that we can now make that experience feel truly more exclusive.

The time that’s been freed up isn’t spent doing less work. Quite the opposite.

We’ve expanded the Visitor Journey and added WhatsApp as a channel, for example to send discount codes for NMBS and STIB. The approach is evolving from email automation to omnichannel automation.

We now consistently ask ourselves: where can we still be relevant? What can we automate without making it feel impersonal? In that way, automation becomes not a project, but an ongoing process.

If she could give one piece of advice to other marketing teams, Sanne wouldn’t hesitate.

There’s always something unexpected. A train strike. Roadworks. An extra event nearby. If you set up content automation too rigidly, you’ll have to stop it when something like that happens — and that’s exactly what you want to avoid.

The solution lies in layered flexibility: we have the ability to add banners or text blocks at different levels: per venue, per event series, or per specific event. That way, you can respond to exceptions without shutting down your entire flow. That preparation does require quite a bit of upfront thinking. You can’t predict every scenario, but you do need to consider where flexibility might be needed. That’s saved us a lot of headaches.

For Sparklink, this journey confirms what we often see: content automation is not a tool, but a strategic choice. When approached correctly, it creates room for quality instead of volume. Curious what such an approach could look like within your organisation? We’d be happy to think it through with you.