With the year rapidly coming to a close and all the distractions of year-end activities, I thought I’d keep this blog really short. It’s an important topic for 2022 – or I’d have skipped the blog altogether. If you’re not using automation tools in your marketing program, you’re going to want to start – and soon.
Marketing automation has been around for a while now, but its importance is becoming greater than ever. With recent changes in the use of third-party data as well as the projections for hiring and the economy in 2022, maximizing cost-efficiency and employee productivity will undoubtedly be more of a focal point in your business strategy next year and beyond. Marketing automation and Customer Experience Automation (CXA) provide many benefits that serve this strategic focus.
It’s probably not news to you that marketing automation provides many ways to stretch your marketing dollars and augment your sales efforts, but changes in the technology have sparked creativity. A few of the more creative ways I have seen marketing automation help with cost efficiency include solutions to enhance in-person contacts, appointment scheduling, discount eligibility, and personalized customer experiences. But creativity in this area is in its infancy. And I am certain there will be many even more creative uses developed as more companies turn to technology to bridge gaps and facilitate pivots to respond to a new business reality.
When you use these platforms, and start to become more creative in their use, consider ways to activate your customer’s experience. The key to conversion is in the experiences you provide. Again, that’s not news I’m sure, but the use of automation enables a wider range of customized experiences – which will leave a better impression. You can even see a reduction in your sales cycle time if you engineer the experiences well enough.
As CXA and automation have become more useful and necessary, it has also become crucial for every business to have a solid strategy for their marketing program and automation use before purchasing or subscribing to any platform. The available solutions are not all the same, and the range of options is growing rapidly. Costs are changing too – and in many cases this is a good thing. But if you have ever been locked into a higher cost solution that did not scale as you thought it would (or needed it to), you know the pain of making a bad decision can last for quite some time. And it’s always good to remember that the companies that provide the technology may pivot in unexpected ways, and that there is no such thing as a “future-proof” solution.
I have another blog, Choosing the Right Marketing Technology, that might help, and I am also offering a new service, focused on choosing and optimizing Mar-Tech. Give me a call if you’re interested, or better yet, set up a time that’s convenient for you on my calendar.
