Feeling the crunch of the pandemic?
Growing too fast because of the pandemic?
No idea what’s going on in marketing but you know it’s probably pretty important?
Sounds like you need automated marketing in your life.
2022 is predicted to be the year that marketing automation, a tool that’s been around for at least 20 years commercially, becomes THE competitive advantage.
If you aren’t already automating your marketing, here are all of the reasons you should.
The rise of the “Micro-Journey”
By now, you’re probably familiar with the Customer Journey as a component of your marketing plan. If not, check out some of our pieces on it here and here.
Although the customer journey has always been an integral part of any successful business strategy, the world has become increasingly siloed and specific - at least as far as consumer behaviour goes.
How can your business keep up when customers shift expectations on a dime, and rising costs mean you can’t respond to those whims even if you tried?
Marketing automation can address this very issue by creating the opportunity for a micro customer journey. It allows you to automatically respond to customer preferences through highly targeted messaging and initiatives. So, if your customer wants recognition on their birthday, no problem, you can send them a birthday discount. If your behavioural data has suggested that one type of client wants to hear from you twenty times a year and the other two times, you can respond to both of their needs simultaneously.
Thanks to vast improvements in these types of systems these varied options, once only available to larger enterprises, are now available to all levels of business.
Loyalty and customer experience are paramount - and easier than ever
How do you build loyalty in a cost-effective way? According to Bain and Company, an improvement of 5% in customer retention is the recipe for a 95% increase in profit.
Marketing automation is what allows you to capitalize on your data and behavioural analytics in the most efficient and least expensive ways. On the one hand, the insights pulled from your data can help you to effectively respond to customer preferences, but on the other, the customer journeys that you can create are now shaping the way they view and interact with your brand.
The ability to influence customers is a great cost-effective way of building loyalty, proving that customer journeys realized through marketing automation is a competitive advantage for your business.
More channel integrations, less data silos, and a greater ROI
While marketing automation was once focused on email and some social channels, it now extends far beyond to SMS, push notifications in apps, and ad networks. So, not only can you pick and choose marketing channels specific to your business needs, there are not options for skilled developers to integrate channels to go above the designated abilities.
And it doesn’t stop there. With the amount of data available to businesses regarding consumers online behavioural habits, more data is becoming available focusing on their offline habits as well. Through these innovations, marketing automation is able to react increasingly to real world interactions, responding in a very timely manner.
This could change the way full-scale marketing campaigns are written, and pinpoint even more precisely how they are delivered.
Marketing automation programs that work with Sitefinity
With Sitefinity, you have the ability to integrate with many third party applications to create the most effective, customized site possible. As for marketing automation programs, here are a few great options that will work well:
- HubSpot
- Salesforce
- SharePoint
- Marketo
- Eloqua
- Wilke
If you’re looking for a great multi-purpose solution for your small business or enterprise-level goals, now is the time to consider integrating marketing automation. Your ROI and your customers will thank you for it.