How Marketing Automation can create value in the customer journey

And it’s also one of the most powerful tools in a digital marketer’s playbook. SERIOUSLY.

As the customer life cycle is getting longer and more complex than ever, delivering tailored, bespoke interactions at every stage of the chain is a modern marketer’s biggest hurdle. Furthermore, with the explosion of omni-channel digital marketing strategies, maintaining a one-to-one meaningful relationship with the customer is how brands can truly drive business impact.

This is where brands can turn “cold” leads into truly “hot” ones.

Before we jump into the role of marketing automation in the modern customer journey, let’s first briefly understand the modern consumer journey.

Out with the old, in with the ALWAYS ON

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The modern customer is opinionated, extremely informed and wants to be treated as an "individual". From the traditional linear form of messaging, the journey has changed to match "individual" needs, interests, preferences and expectations. This ALWAYS ON model is perpetuated by a plethora of information sources and an extremely low bar for sub-par brand experiences. The balance of power is strongly tipped towards the consumer- and the internet makes sure that this balance will never be restored. Customers evaluate brands and services in active-mode now and this pressurises brands/marketers to evolve their marketing offerings and deliver first-rate experiences on a continuous basis across all touch points.

Interested in a customer journey evolution deep-dive? Check out some of our hearted insights

The new consumer decision journey

The requisite depth of a modern customer journey map

Now let's take a giant step back and evaluate this interaction journey from a purely numbers and effort perspective. How can brands deliver this personalisation on a mass scale and STILL MAKE EACH CUSTOMER FEEL SPECIAL? How can marketers impact millions and still run a tight ship with their marketing budgets?

Enter Marketing Automation. The most powerful tool in a digital marketer's arsenal.

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Nurture your leads by streamlining and automating pointed marketing actions, tasks and outcomes. Marketing Automation enables marketers to accurately automate almost all repetitive tasks such as :

1. email marketing
2. social media posting
3. ad campaign ( setup, deploy and track)
4. content marketing
5. tracking and reporting
6. customer interaction management

Once the routine and mundane tasks are handed over to software, marketers can focus solely on the "humanising" brands and enable them to add that required personal touch. Some of the most common examples of marketing automation today are chat bots, automated email responses ( specially in ecommerce), SMS based marketing, A/B testing and more.

Automation personalises the modern customer journey?! Yup, you heard that right.

How does it work? With Marketing Automation brands can collect behavioural data of customer interactions across various channels and platforms. The software structures this data in way that marketers can "read" and take valuable insights from. Once this data is collected, marketers can look for patterns and group customers with common traits and behaviours into segments.

But how does this deliver personalisation? Because of the segment approach, messaging can be tailored for each segment- which gives the customer a unique path to follow towards the purchase. based on his behaviour and intended outcomes.

Let's take an ecommerce brand for example:

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A customer hasn't checked out his cart ( abandoned the cart) and your job as a marketer is to get him to finish his purchase without being too pushy. Through automation, you can drive him towards that objective with email marketing ( with helpful supplementary content), and still be non-intrusive. Marketing Automation will track this exact journey from start to finish with a pre-defined set of steps and guide the customer in a meaningful way. How do you ensure return purchasing? Offer a 10% discount ( the software will prompt it!).

This approach creates an avenue for an engaged conversation with the customer, as well as cater to future opportunities. Brands can use automation not only create new business, but retain the existing business, and then build on it. Customers will always come back to brands that create a space ‘for them’, and this is what taking action on marketing automation can lead to.

Marketing Automation puts the customer at the centre of everything.

So what's the end game with this?

Drive results. Drive impact. Drive leads! Use marketing automation at every stage of the customer journey and design focused workflows to satisfy your business objectives across all the touch points.

Better still, just call us and we'll take care of the rest.