Marketing Automation
Over the past six months, we at SSX Creative have been working hard on our marketing automation offerings, from learning new systems to implementing what we’ve learnt across our different clients. As we work with a broad range of businesses, it was essential to learn these systems and understand how the other companies could make full use of marketing automation.
We are and always will be learning new things; no agency knows it all, and in marketing, things change all the time.
What is Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation is when software is used to automate every day or monotonous marketing tasks. Things such as email marketing, social media posting, and much more. It's not just about sending a generic email to someone but also the ability to make it a more personalised experience.
The software used for these tasks makes automation for these tasks faster and more efficient.
How Marketing Automation can help your business
Marketing automation is a deep cavern of choices and can be tailored to suit your business more often than not. For example, with our eCommerce clients, we've built their site so that if a customer abandons their shopping cart, they'll receive an email a few hours later just as a polite reminder. This doesn't always work, but it does work on one of the sites; 14% of your abandoned checkout recovery emails were successful, which is higher than the average, around 7%.
From the simple tasks such as when someone signs up for your newsletter or if someone visits a page on your website, these are things that you'd otherwise forget about but are opportunities to content with the person. Every customer matters; making them feel welcome straightaway can enhance your relationship.
In a 2017 survey, 44% of consumers said that personalised interactions made them likely to buy from the company again.
Essential marketing automation tools
Email Automation - A simple email, like a welcome message if they sign up for a newsletter or if they abandoned their cart. It's a task that happens all the time, and if it's automated, you don't have to remember to send them. This is also an excellent tool if a customer triggers or meets specific criteria.
Customer Journey - This automation allows you to automate as it suggests the customer's journey. This is a way of taking the customer from beginning to end; it will enable you to think about where and how you want them to engage with your business. Think of it as a flow chart; if a customer does this, you send them X email. These journeys have a much higher open rate over a bulk email.
44% increase in open rates // 127% increase in click rates
Scheduling - The most common form of automation, from your social media posts to your email sends. Sending these out at prime times gives you the chance to convert more people into customers.
Retargeting - Retargeting emails are an excellent way to remind people of stuff that people may have missed or forgotten about. This can be set in a couple of different ways; a resend to people who received it but didn't open it or a reminder to everyone. What about sending it to people who opened it, and clicked the link but didn't complete the purchase? These are things that can be done with different marketing software.
Optimisation or recommendations - If you are selling products online, then on your product pages, it's proven to work well. If you have product recommendations somewhere, it increases the chance of upselling. Dynamic content on sites and emails is a very effective tool for marketing; if you can set it so people only see what is relevant to them, that is a good thing. Optimisation is also good when it comes to sending time and post time. You want your content to reach people when they're active and online.
If you’d like to talk to us about digital marketing or how we can make marketing automation work for your business then please get in touch by using the form below.
