It is always every company’s wish and goal to maximize the returns on the investments made on technology and the marketing automation (MA) systems are no exception. Many organisations use marketing automation systems only for email marketing, lead generation and lead nurturing. This is like driving a Ferrari on a slow track. What a waste of the beast’s capabilities?
Given the recent trends, marketers need to look beyond the net-new while also focus on the existing customers. My heart pains when I see companies using marketing automation software for just sending out emails and newsletters. So I thought, I’d write this blog and share tips which can help companies maximize the returns on the investments that they have made on their marketing automation systems. In the 1st blog of this series, we discuss 4 tips which marketers can use to derive more value out of marketing automation systems.
- Always Look for & Cater to New Accounts: Once the customer makes his maiden purchase or signs up for a free trial, you must always bear in mind that the next 7 to 30 days are the most crucial in terms of a customer lifecycle. This obviously calls for setting up serialized drip emails during this period that ultimately creates a stronger base for customer engagement. You may opt for involving numerous customer contacts – FAQs, welcome messages, details for key contact and tips – each with its own content that enable new customers to get access to relevant information. This also helps in identifying non-engaging contacts and in segregating them from those who are actually buying from you and whose preferences and tastes will guide you towards delivering and demonstrating more value.
- Renew Accounts: Ensure thatthere is a well defined customer engagement process and this could be done by way of time-bound contact via emails, messages for account renewals and up sells. Marketing Automation helps in bringing rigor and consistency through automatic triggers and this again depends on renewal timeline and customer behavior. This also is a gauge for ensuring that you are actually communicating relevant information to them regarding renewals and this includes planned and upgraded information on solutions owned by them, details of their account executive and value reviews. You may also categorize your loyal customers and keep in touch with them through automated emails promising to reward them from time to time. A periodic Thank You note for their repeat orders and loyalty as also discount coupons, free service vouchers, discounted or even free shipping are great gifts to offer and may be sent out once a month for 6 months to loyal customers to encourage them to keep buying.
- Nurture Campaigns by Cross-selling/Upselling: Cross selling and upselling doesn’t work well for organizations that use marketing automation to blast one common message to all existing customers and then wait to watch who finally gets lured. Instead, use your marketing automation system to systematically offer complementary solutions to all existing customers and prospects and this should be based on their roles, earlier purchases, digital behavior and lifecycle stage. You definitely need to know what finally lures them into responding or doesn’t as also what exactly they prefer online. This requires appropriate propensity-to-buy modeling via robust lead scoring models and will ensure increased marketing intelligence. This valuable intelligence will help generate more leads and close more deals.
- Understanding Customer Satisfaction & Follow Up: Proper understanding of customer and their needs is the foundation of customer marketing. When you utilize a marketing automation system to garner insights at contact levels, you are actually getting a better feel of customer understanding as a result of meaningful and fruitful interactions. For instance, when you deploy a survey, you are actually identifying promoters, detractors and neutrals. You build your own communication stream and this again depends actually on how the contact interacts with you. There could be instances where promoters receive messages intending advocacy capitalization and where there could be an invitation to be a reference or speaker at the following user group meeting.
Marketing Automation, which works wonders for B2B marketers, needs to be improved upon and upgraded constantly. You need to work in tandem with the sales department for developing appropriate engagement strategies based on the above mentioned avenues for yielding at least a significant impact, even in the short term.
How do you utilize marketing automation to meet marketing goals? Please share your valuable comments in the comment section below.
