You’ve been constantly hearing about it, your fellow marketers engaging in debates, but…
What is marketing automation and how does it relate to a customer engagement platform?
Marketing automation is a powerful tool that can help businesses engage with their customers more effectively. Marketing automation is a software technology that helps organizations and marketing departments market effectively on multiple channels. It does this by lifting the burden off marketers’ shoulders and allowing them to work in real-time through a unified customer engagement platform.
By automating marketing tasks and actions, marketing automation streamlines workflows.
Benefits of Marketing Automation for Customer Engagement:
Marketing automation ensures precise delivery of tailored messages to the right individuals, in the right locations, and at the right moments. This strategy enables companies to nurture prospects using personalized, valuable content, resulting in the conversion of prospects into satisfied customers, ultimately fostering customer loyalty through an advanced customer engagement platform.
Utilizing Marketing Automation for Enhanced Customer Engagement:
For instance: Raj hasn’t visited your website for more than a week, In response, an automated email is dispatched, saying, “We Miss You”. If Raj visits your website, then check if he looks at more than 5 pages. If he does, then an email with the contact information for a sales representative is automatically sent, courtesy of an integrated customer engagement tool.
Marketing automation allows a business to set such action-based rules which could be specific to a single contact or broad enough to apply to all contacts with certain characteristics through a dedicated customer engagement platform. For example, people who have visited your website in two days.
To perform all these actions manually would almost take ages. But marketing automation enables the if/then rules that drive the ongoing marketing actions of a business for every individual contact. Ideally, marketing automation equips marketers to engage on an individual level digitally. through an efficient customer engagement tool. Unique content can be curated for distinct individuals, designed to be consumed at various moments on diverse channels. For example: Did someone just submit a form requesting your product demo? Send her a welcome email introducing your product.
This type of marketing automation generates significant new revenue for companies, and provides an excellent return on the investment through a comprehensive customer engagement platform.
Limitations of Marketing Automation for Customer Engagement:
Marketing Automation has evolved into a buzzword for most marketers. But one must understand that it isn’t a software that generates a customer’s initial interest or closes the final deal.
If your marketing assets – materials that you offer to your prospects and customers, are not useful or if your data was purchased and is filled with people who are nowhere like your rest of the target audience, then marketing automation won’t work.
Marketing automation drives marketing and customer engagement actions, but it doesn’t make campaigns succeed automatically, nor does it make content more interesting. Creative and compelling content plus good, actionable data is essential for driving results out of your marketing automation campaigns through a robust customer engagement tool.
Similarly, marketing automation does not typically get conversions. Instead, it prepares a contact to get converted. A visitor may fill out a form for knowing more about a product and automatically get an email with more details about that product. Now, that excites him and he is more interested in purchasing because he received thorough details about the product. If the potential customer is well-informed and interested in the product, the salesperson’s job becomes easier- it helps better qualify leads and use their time more efficiently! It’s crucial to dispel any misconceptions – clarity and understanding are paramount!
