Marketing automation not only automates the company’s sales activities, but also builds engaging relationships with potential and existing customers. This is a prolonged process that requires a well-thought-out strategy, but can produce satisfactory sales results in the long run.
- Managing a user’s shopping path
Users make use of different devices to communicate with the brand and browse online store offerings. They can view a given product on their phone, then read reviews from a desktop and possibly make a purchase. Marketers should build individual micro-experiences for their audience, regardless of whether they use a computer or mobile device. In the event of inactivity, it is good to remind the user about the company’s offer with automated marketing campaigns. It is worth analysing data from various sources to create a common environment across all channels. Thanks to automation, it is possible to integrate all touchpoints (push notifications, email, or SMS) and adapt consistent communication. By developing relevant content and taking action depending on the devices or media used, it is easier to keep your audience engaged. The Customer Journey takes into account various types of communication channels so that a potential customer can learn about the company’s offer in an even easier and faster way. Creating Customer Journey maps helps to understand when, how, and why customers became interested in a brand and what emotions were associated with that.
- Lead Nurturing with Marketing Automation
A well-thought-out and analysed customer path allows you to optimise the costs of advertising campaigns and improve the customer experience throughout the sales process. Owing to marketing automation, it is possible to guide the user through all the shopping funnel stages. One of them is lead nurturing, which involves informing, educating, and engaging a potential customer in the brand’s marketing and sales activities. Marketing automation tools help you track the behaviour of potential customers, allowing for checking whether they subscribe to a blog, sign up for a webinar or contribute to social media under brand posts. Automation also enables lead scoring, i.e. awarding points to recipients based on the level of their engagement, base segmentation, and sending customised advertising messages. All activities depend on actions taken by users. The key is to skilfully engage the potential customer and encourage them to buy.
- Introducing the customer to the brand
It is often the case that a user has visited a website, joined the subscriber base, and that is actually the end of their actions. This moment, i.e. the first contact with the brand, is extremely important because it is when the recipient is most involved in communication. It is worth taking advantage of this period by implementing customer onboarding. Marketing automation offers many functions that allow you to set automation paths based on user behaviour. Certain triggers will elicit an automatic action whenever a certain condition is met. For example, when a potential customer clicks on a given link, they will receive a specific message. Marketing automation tools allow for sending users a series of automatic, personalised messages that will reflect their needs and expectations. Automation not only saves time for sales and marketing teams, but also optimises the costs incurred on advertising activities.
- Reducing customer churn
The churn rate is often used in relation to the number of subscribers of a given website. It determines the number of users that have ceased to be the company customers over a specified time period, divided by the average number of customers for the same period. Reducing the customer churn rate is a big challenge for companies. Thanks to marketing automation tools, marketers can analyse the available data on audience behaviour and find a way to reactivate them. It may turn out that perhaps they did not receive answers to their questions and doubts, had negative experiences, the recommended products did not meet their expectations or did not receive the expected benefits, e.g. free delivery from an online store. Thanks to the possibility of optimising advertising campaigns as well as personalised marketing and sales activities, the marketing automation allows for regaining lost customers.
