‘Marketing automation allows you to map out actions that turn leads into customers’
All company strategies and actions are driven by the customer experience – which encompasses every step of the process from identifying a need to acquiring a product or service to meeting such need. In order to maintain a positive relationship with customers throughout their entire life cycle, offering each customer a personalised experience is crucial to generating value.
Marketing automation can be a powerful approach in this ongoing relationship, especially when applied to the entire customer experience. However, many companies that incorporate automation tools into their marketing mix tend to focus solely on reaching leads that are closest to conversion and maintaining contact with their existing customer base.
“Marketing automation is the use of technology to carry out marketing activities automatically. By managing all these activities – from email campaigns to social media advertising – in one place, marketing teams can not only become more efficient, but can also improve the customer experience across channels.”
Salesforce
Increase brand awareness and lead acquisition
In the early part of the customer experience – when consumers browse for products and services or a specific brand – marketing automation tools can help attract leads. Forms and landing pages can enhance brand visibility and allow you to collect information about potential customers.
Automation can then relate the information from these newly obtained leads to your ideal customer profile, or “marketing personas”, which helps you decide when and how to communicate with them. It also shows the potential client’s level of interest and how close they are to conversion, so that teams can decide the appropriate level of investment.
Align with sales for higher conversion
Depending on the business model and available technology, marketing automation allows you to map out actions that turn leads into customers, as well as to generate qualified leads that communicate directly with the sales team through your CRM solution.
Thanks to these tools, you can segment the collected data and use it to create automatic conversion campaigns via email, text message or WhatsApp Business.
Drive repeat purchases and improve loyalty
When a lead makes their first purchase, automated systems can be configured to take personalised tracking steps, such as sending welcome emails with additional information. By obtaining customer data through automation – including their purchases, preferences and behaviour – you can offer products and services to encourage a second purchase.
This is just the first step in an ongoing relationship where, thanks to the information you get through automation, you can continue to generate a positive experience and foster customer loyalty. For example, you can connect buyers with customer service for extra support after purchasing or ask them to post a review on social media.
With marketing automation tools, you can also be in constant communication with your client base in order to generate loyalty programs and referral actions. Personalised benefit programs improve customer satisfaction and can help convert people into brand ambassadors.
Personalise content from quality data
The most important thing is focusing on quality data about potential customers, since this is what allows for dynamic segmentation based on their interest and qualification. Automation combines this data with predesigned content to send specific messages to groups based on their attributes and interests.
Just as you can plan to send communications based on customer actions or behaviour, the most advanced automation solutions allow you to generate personalised interactions that make customers feel heard and understood. This helps establish a close relationship and improves conversion and loyalty rates.
An aligned strategy
Marketing automation tools offer solutions for every stage of the life cycle, enabling personalised interactions that enhance the customer experience and positively impact all performance indicators. They also save time by eliminating the most repetitive work – allowing marketing, sales, and customer service teams to focus their efforts on tasks that generate more value.
However, keep in mind that new technology should go hand in hand with a comprehensive strategy. For the implementation of marketing automation solutions to succeed, business objectives must be aligned with the goals of different departments and based on an overarching vision that delivers a consistent customer experience.
With over 15 years of consulting experience, we at redk can help you design and implement a marketing automation strategy that fits your organisation’s needs and allows you to optimise the customer experience.
