How to Improve Customer Journeys Through Marketing Automation?
The marriage of marketing with technology has transformed how we do and how we look at marketing itself.
When you use a marketing automation tool, you are also at least a social media marketing, and an email marketing tool seamlessly dug into that automation tool.
Here, the phrase at least points out the huge variety of components and submodules you can find in modern marketing automation systems.
Some companies offer a combination of automation of sales, marketing, and customer service functions into a single, compact software!
Marketing automation is a versatile strategy. Whether the customer is at the top, middle, or bottom of the funnel, there’s always something to automate; your marketing automation software is useful at all stages of the customer journey.
This section discusses how to use this tool to enhance the customer experience throughout the customer journey.
1- Milestone emails for enhancing customer relationship
Milestone emails have that name because they celebrate various milestones of the brand-customer relationship and what that relationship entails.
One great example is the number of days they have been your customer (i.e anniversaries). You could also remind them of what they have achieved in terms of the sum of all discounts or the total number of orders or even their most frequently ordered products.
Always pair milestone emails with specific discounts related to the milestone for maximum effect.
Such emails can be set up en masse through your marketing automation tool. Needless to say, this strategy is practically only if the number of outgoing milestone emails justifies automating them.
2- Chatbots to solve basic queries quickly in the TOFU & MOFU stages
At the top of the funnel (TOFU) and middle of the funnel (MOFU) stages, typically the leads have a lot of repetitive questions. And these questions often have pre-set (static) answers.
Would you rather let your sales agents waste time responding to basic queries or use their services in improving your sales function?
Pre-programmed chatbots can take a huge load off your sales team. They can be easily set up to respond to basic queries with static replies and even nurture the leads with links to articles the most useful for them.
With chatbots, you can convert your sales chat into a self-serving style communications asset. Combining the chatbots with the power of sales agents (as complements or supplements) will yield amazing results for your marketing automation efforts.
3- Social media marketing for brand awareness
Social media makes it very easy to find any group of users you want to target. Practically every type of user you can now find either on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. This is the type of source that perfectly fits your need to draw in more leads at the top of the funnel.
To send the right brand awareness message to your target audience at the right time, you could buy a social media management suite.
The smarter alternative is a small business marketing automation software that integrates social media management as one of its core functions.
4- Email marketing for lead nurturing
All leads, whether at the top or middle of the funnel, require nurturing.
And lead nurturing is a serious business!
Your emails must not only be relevant, but you must also send them with a theme and a purpose (i.e. the CTA) in mind. Their design should also be conversion-optimized.
You can send tens of different types of email marketing campaigns to nurture those leads and move them along the funnel.
Assisting you to do all of this quickly and efficiently will be your friend, your marketing automation system!
5- Product recommendation engine in an e-commerce store
Let me ask you a question:
What makes Amazon so successful?
It recommends products based on our personal purchasing history, location, and information on our purchasing habits. It sells us products, but the level of personalization they offer makes you think if it’s that personalized data that’s their real product.
Amazon achieves this using recommendation engines (RE). However, many marketing automation software needs integration with third-party REs.
This feature is now so widespread that when customers visit your e-store, they come in expecting that you will offer them suggestions for shopping. They leave the “thinking” part of shopping, at least in part, to your store.
So it makes sense to integrate an RE with your marketing automation tool.
It improves customers’ online shopping experience, improves CTR on emails, and it improves overall revenue.
Marketing automation software is useful throughout the customer journey
Whether you are a solopreneur, a small business owner, a mid-level marketing manager, or an enterprise CMO, marketing automation helps everyone.
These were just 5 examples of how these tools help improve every touchpoint all across the customer journey. There are many more that you can explore.
