You’ve heard people talk about it. They say it’s a game changer and you know marketers who have integrated Marketing Automation in their strategy, but what exactly is it and how can it help you boost your business?
Over the past few years, email marketing has become more and more important for advertising your business and creating customer engagement. However, email marketing is not only about the content of your mail, the most important thing is creating the right audience. Nowadays, people are becoming IWWIWWIWI-customers (I want What I want When I want it). You need to give your clients what they desire at the right time, or they’ll find it elsewhere.
You can do this manually, but it will be a time-consuming task when you have more than 10 clients with different interests and desires. And as we all know; time is money.
What is possible with Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is the answer to a personalized customer experience. It helps you to show the right content on the right channel at the right time. Perfect for those IWWIWWIWI-consumers! But what does this mean for your business?
Below you’ll find some commonly used features of Marketing Automation.
Lead generation
As a marketer, it happens that you want to set up a lastminute online contest or launch your new e-book. For that, you’d like to have a landing page to capture new data. But when you go to the dev-department to set it up, they tell you to make a ticket and wait a while… But you want it right now! (Yes, you’re also adopting the IWWIWWIWI-mindset). Thanks to Marketing Automation, you build custom landing pages and forms that match your corporate identity without having to know HTML.
Lead & client nurturing
Prospects aren’t always sales-ready the moment you get in touch with them. Stay top of mind by ‘dripping’ the content they need.
Imagine John is interested in buying a TV. You can send him an email with some tips and tricks on how to decide which TV meets his needs. And once John is a client, keep him satisfied via optimized customer journeys.
Workflow automation
Do you know that situation where those shoes keep popping up in ads, even when you’ve already bought them? Make sure your clients don’t need to feel frustrated and categorize them as ‘already bought’. This way, you can save advertising budget and provide a premium customer experience.
Want to get more out of your campaigns? Start by automating repetitive processes. You don’t need to send manual emails to get a new customer started, just automate it and the automation will do the work for you.
Email marketing
Do you often doubt on which subject you need to use for the best email open rate? Be more efficient with your email marketing thanks to features such as A/B testing, template creation, responsive design and advanced reporting.
Get more out of your mails and combine them with other personalized content using social media, texts, direct marketing and chatbots to create a powerful multichannel experience.
Content personalization
It is generally known that not every man is interested in receiving emails about high heels. Content personalization leads to true customer engagement. Use a personal salutation and tailor the content to the interests and needs of your prospect or customer.
Real-time sales anticipation
Watching your clients’ every move can be very time-consuming. Instead, send real-time up-sells and cross-sells to your customers. So, if John has bought a new suit, send him ads for complementary products like a belt or tie.
Don’t wait until customers make a purchase. When your customers put items in their cart, remind them of their interest in the product with an abandoned shopping cart email. Or go a step further by sending an abandoned browse email with recently viewed products to get customers back to your shop.
What to keep in mind before starting with Marketing Automation?
Do you want to be more efficient and optimize your customer experience? Before you start implementing a Marketing Automation strategy, consider the following:
- Establish a detailed customer journey with customer touchpoints.
- Map your customers personas.
- Analyze different Marketing Automation platforms like Salesforce based on scalability, capabilities, ease of use, personalization, integration, total cost, etc.
- Develop a plan of implementation so you can do it step by step.
- Set up a team to monitor this process smoothly.
Marketing Automation offers many advantages.
In short, it increases your turnover, lowers costs and offers the opportunity to be relevant to your customers and prospects throughout all channels.
Do you still have some questions about Marketing Automation? Do you want to know how Marketing Automation can help you save time and money? Or are you looking for someone who can manage the implementation of your Marketing Automation? Our specialists are happy to assist you. Feel free to drop us a line!
