Marketing Automation Is Much More Than “Just Marketing”

There has been a lot of discussion recently scrutinizing CMOs who, in some cases, are beginning to be pushed off the board by the arrival of “the new kid in town”: the Chief Growth Officer .

The CMO vs. CGO debate has been sparked by the growing belief that CMOs don’t know how to speak the same language as the rest of the C-suite when it comes to results and, in particular, demonstrating value . of their strategies and their work .

Whether you are on one side or the other in this debate, one thing is clear: technology can help drive growth and make it visible .

Here are five ways he does it:

Qualifying leads

Automation can be leveraged beyond lead generation: it can help in the user journey, in the creation of progressive web forms,  in the personalization of content and the web experience.

Personalization goes beyond the name change in the welcome message. Companies that create highly targeted and personalized experiences for recipients see a dramatic increase in conversion rates. Marketing automation can use information about the behavior and interaction of users on a website to help understand customers and push them through the user journey, gradually qualifying them before sending them messages tailored to their wants and needs, and offering the possibility of predicting the probability of purchase of each of these leads.

Customer Acquisition

Qualification is a very effective way to improve customer acquisition processes. Once you know what they’re looking for, the technology lets you know when a potential customer is ready to be contacted directly.

The use of marketing automation in the sales funnel plays an important role in creating a highly efficient process to convert leads into customers and improve the times it takes to cross each stage of the pipeline. This allows you to minimize the amount of time potential customers spend at each stage, ultimately improving conversion rates and saving your team time and money as they help grow your business.

Customer Nurturing

Marketing automation is not limited to customer acquisition: it is a very effective tool to increase retention rates . By integrating personalization features into customer loyalty campaigns and multi-channel processes, we can help existing customers feel valued, improving their satisfaction and increasing loyalty (thereby increasing the chances of up-selling or cross-selling). .

The automation of messages across different channels also offers an opportunity to optimize spend, ensuring that we target the right people with the right messages, rather than sending avalanches of prospecting messages interchangeably to both prospects and customers. existing.

Cross-Selling And Upselling

Companies should not only measure their growth by the number of new customers, but also by revenue. Studies have consistently shown that a returning customer is up to 11 times more likely to buy again from an existing company than from a new one.

“A returning customer is up to 11 times more likely to buy again from a company they are already a customer of than from a new one”

As you can see, growth comes not only from new sales, but also from cross-selling and upselling within an already established customer base. Taking automation a step beyond personalizing messages and the customer journey to address and predict the future needs of your customers also helps you retain them and build on the positive experiences they’ve had with your product.

The Evolution Of The Customer Experience

A stellar customer experience is increasingly important to attracting and retaining business opportunities. The key? When customers can access what they want, where they want it, and quickly . Marketing automation already addresses this problem and will continue to develop improved customer experiences with Artificial Intelligence and Big Data enhancement in areas such as virtual assistants, automated content production, and better and faster decision-making thanks to Deep Learning. .

The customer experience will also get a big boost as the development of Big Data and AI start to take over mundane tasks like researching and extracting potential targets. This will change marketing campaigns and their focus, freeing up time for marketers to work on creating those marketing campaigns. From this vantage point, we could see the entire marketing campaign set-up change, providing more time for marketers to focus on creating the best personalized campaigns and customer experiences. possible.

More Than It Says On The Packaging

Not understanding the full scope of what marketing automation can do for a business is an expensive mistake. Furthermore, as technology develops, the contribution of marketing automation to lead qualification and nurturing, cross-selling and upselling, as well as customer experience, will only grow and become more imperative.

Also Read: Digital Marketing Strategy: The Sales Funnel