How to increase the effectiveness of activities, improve the customer’s relationship and experience with the brand, and at the same time – importantly – not tarnish the budget and do not spend a lot of time on activities? Marketing automation is a process that helps you meet all these requirements. The first step is to create a Customer Journey Map. The right marketing systems and announcements are enough to create once, and their optimization and development will allow you to enjoy the increase in results.
What’s the point of marketing automation?
Marketing automation or marketing automation is based on creating processes that automatically collect, process data, and send marketing messages to customers, thereby increasing the efficiency of operations.
Feel like a customer of your own company
To be able to create a client path and a map of the client. Customer Journey Map), it is worth considering all possible situations in which the customer is in contact with our brand (touch points). This will allow you to know the path that the consumer is going to take in order to become our customer and prepare appropriate marketing messages. Acting according to the principle: show me where you are going, and I will tell you what you need gives you a chance to know exactly the mechanisms and needs. Behavior scenarios and messages vary by industry – other actions are taken for typical e-commerce, others for stationary sales.
Example 1. Customer Journey Map – mobile phone purchase flow
One example where a customer is dealing with a brand in the form of omnichanneling is the purchase of a mobile phone. The map shows step by step when the customer decides to buy in the store and online. If not everything goes our way, the scenario in which the customer abandons the purchase is taken into account. The answer to the lack of finalization is prepared marketing messages tailored to this situation.
Source: http://www.miscmagazine.com/customer-journey-mapping/
Example 2. Customer Journey Map – purchase flow
The second example of the customer’s path is a description of the experiences of a couple who are planning to buy a holiday tour. This diagram clearly shows the data and shows the level of engagement of travelers and satisfaction with the place. The more processes to pass (laborious typing of personalities, credit card details, waiting for confirmation of purchase and flight ticket), the higher the level of frustration and discouragement. It may therefore turn out that the next steps will distance the vast person from buying the product, giving them time to doubt and reflect.
Source: http://www.bhavacom.com/2012/08/
Example 3. Customer Courney Map – shopping at IKEA
A third example is the IKEA map, which shows the customer’s experience from arriving at the parking lot to the end of a visit to the store. You can see for yourself the extent to which it reflects your feelings when shopping. What is puzzling and important “self-service” belonging to the ikea business model receives a bad rating. Perhaps this is influenced by the fact that customers (with printed item numbers) have to look for them themselves in the thicket of a large warehouse. In addition, heavy items (desk or bed) customers have to put on a trolley and take them to the tills. Compensation for heavy purchases turns out to be a gastronomic offer. Hot-dog or ice cream are supposed to soothe the slashed nerves of distraught consumers and wipe out bad memories. After all, the crossing is a success – in addition to buying a dream piece of furniture, we still have a hot dog or ice cream. Is there anything in the maps that needs to be improved and changed?
Now some of my ideas on how to convert leads to customers and prepare relevant marketing messages in the context of marketing automation.
Convert leads to clients
As we know, this process is crucial for us and we try to convert the customer in many ways. Although many of them buy the product immediately after registration, there remains a large segment of people who abandon the final purchase. This is referred to as an “abandoned basket”. Currently, there are many ways to find out at what point the customer abandoned the shopping cart and what really decided about it. In this situation, the best solution is to create a marketing message that will remind the customer about an unfinished purchase or registration on the site. In my actions I am guided by the principle of 1-3-7. The sequence of these numbers is not random because it specifies the frequency of days with which the customer will receive notifications about their unfinished purchase. In this way, we influence the purchasing decisions of the customer. It is important that the first message resembling the recipient receives up to 24 hours – then his desire to buy is the greatest. To increase the level of engagement, it is also worth proposing the same purchase e.g. with a 5% discount. These methods work invariably.
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Welcome newsletter and onboarding mailings
When a customer completes a purchase, they often receive an email thanking them for the trust they have placed in the brand. In addition, it is informed about how to contact the company, where to reach it on social media, and sometimes even a proposal for another purchase. It’s hard to decide on another item when the package you ordered haven’t reached the customer yet, right?
It turns out to be a mistake to forget about a customer who does not receive any more messages until the next sale / cross-sell. There is another way to greet the customer – onboarding, or “guiding around the brand”. In this direction, you can create a series of mailings that maintain a sense of contact with the brand. With marketing automation, you can submit purchase documents, invoices and terms and conditions, present where the customer is to contact the company, give him phone numbers and current e-mail addresses, present the nearest establishments, where he can go if necessary, new product categories. In addition, e.g. after a month, it is worth preparing instructions on how the customer should use the product, provide a discount coupon encouraging subsequent purchases or ask the customer if any of his friends would not be interested in the same product / service. A series of emails (not spam!) will increase the likelihood of customer action.
Example infographic:
Source: http://www.sparkpage.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2.jpg
Trigger mailing
Another good action is trigger mailings, that is, triggered by the user’s behavior – whether on the site or as a reaction to the e-mail sent, eg, opening a link in it. Used in marketing automation, trigger mailings can also be correlated with the user’s behavior on the site, e.g. when he clicks on the appropriate category of products in a particular store. Monitoring such behavior allows you to send a discounted mailing at the right time for the purchase of products in this category, which the user of the network had just viewed.
Reminders
A good way is to send reminders m.in customers, including those who have overdue payment for a product, service, or unpaid product installment. Mailings sent in accordance with the aforementioned rule 1-3-7 bring good results. For better results I propose after 7. days to no longer send an email, but only an SMS reminder for payments. As a rule, SMS messages are more personal and therefore have a better impact on customers.
Surveys and NPS
Throughout the customer lifecycle, customer journey map must also not miss submitting relevant surveys and NPS surveys. The latter may be sent to the customer every 3 months (in case he is obliged to have a one-year contract with the company). This allows you to regularly track your brand engagement and changes. When we are informed that a customer is less involved at the end of the contract, we can offer them a better offer for the next month and make them happy to sign another contract.
