How Can You Humanize The Process Of Marketing Automation?
Sep 07, 2021
Sep 07, 2021
10 min read
10 min read
In a world where businesses take every possible step to make the most with the help of technology, Marketing Automation proves to be a significant game-changer. Marketing Automation is a software technology that automates your firm’s marketing’s repetitive tasks requiring less human supervision to expound the concept. With the growing need to go the extra mile for customer satisfaction and a pleasing experience, business firms across the globe are searching for methods that allow them to become dynamic and efficient in anticipating what customers want and fulfill those things via technology.
Although a few marketing tasks, which are often too easy to be automated and repetitive, are taken charge of by Marketing Automation, there are still some ways your business can add a human touch to create more leads. According to a study, the global valuation of Marketing Automation software was scorching high USD 4.06 billion in 2019.
Source: Unsplash
Not only that, with more and more businesses investing in MA technology, the concept is expected to increase its worth in the coming years significantly. That said, it becomes a responsibility for companies worldwide to undertake marketing automation, a severe and beneficial advancement to tap on their customers. The primitive reason to avail your business with the profitable marketing automation system is the benefits that it provides your business-
- Efficient and targeted marketing,
- Increase in lead generation rates and tapping on quality leads,
- It allows your marketing experts to create creative marketing campaigns instead of stressing mundane and repetitive tasks.
5 Ways To Make Marketing Automation Technology More Human!
Before we dive into the concept of humanizing the Marketing Automation system, your business must realize why it is essential. It may strike your mind that marketing automation defines itself as the technology that allows the software to take charge of some marketing tasks requiring less human effort. However, with the increasing need for personalized communication, involving human touch in marketing automation technology is suggested to target your prospect empathetically.
Source: Unsplash
Below are some ways in which your business can catch up with adding a human touch in your marketing campaigns, with the help of practical marketing automation tools -
1. Nurture Your Leads
One of the primary ways to humanize your marketing automation approach is to understand and nurture the prospect leads, build a personalized connection with them to seek information about their expectations from your brand and the products/services you offer. There are always debates between quantity vs. quality in marketing. Since automation usually means tapping into the quantitative aspects, it is necessary to look after your generated leads to ensure acceptable quality.
Nurturing your leads refers to staying in one place and not focussing on the number of leads, but harvesting the existing leads with active listening and extensive understanding of their reviews about you. Nurturing may require an excess of time and effort, but gaining the customer’s trust helps your business add the worthiness to its name.
Source: Unsplash
2. Empathize As Much As Possible
Envisioning yourself in the customer’s shoes gives you an idea of its purchasing needs, brand expectations, and purchase behavior. If you want to connect with your customers, your business must use empathy to communicate. If customers are unsatisfied with the services, tap on their minds and aim at connecting at a personal level.
Satisfying customer experience should be your business’ ultimate objective and knowing when to empathize and under what circumstances can boost the efficiency of marketing automation’s system. Empathy also enables your business to positively affect each customer across multiple platforms by building a one-on-one understanding to realize things they care about in a product or a service.
3. Relate To Your Customer
Another way of humanizing the marketing automation process is to be rational in your marketing actions so the customers can consider your business as an identity and not a software system. Including real names in your marketing automation strategies makes it convenient for a customer to believe in your brand. For instance, when you deploy marketing automation to render email targeting, the content of the email should sound relatable to the customer to obtain a deeper connection. Using first names in addressing the customer often works well in these situations.
Making your emails and communication trail engaging and need-specific helps you add an authentic tone to your business, thus proclaiming it as a genuine brand rather than an automated process.
4. Customer Engagement
Humanizing your marketing campaigns requires your business to enhance and boost customer engagement via the emails you send. Since automation does most of the tasks, you must act upon the purchase journey of a customer. The word ‘engagement’ usually refers to a constant conversation. As marketing automation aims at targeting your customers consistently, it becomes beneficial for your business to invest much time and effort in providing that humanness via customer satisfaction.
In addition, you can create customer loyalty by focussing on customer engagement practices on various channels via customized content. And the more you communicate with your customers, the more reviews you can obtain from them, thus getting opportunities to work on and go the extra mile for your loyal customers.
5. Segment Your Customer Base
Last but not least, to bring personalization in your marketing automation, consider segregating your customers into small segments and target each with relevant communication. Broadcasting your marketing content on large groups of customers sometimes fail as they have different demographics.
Therefore, your business can segment a batch of customers to create content that triggers the relevant customers. According to a study, marketing automation requires a business to consider segmentation to intend communication to the right audience. Incorporating customer-specific information into your automated emails helps create a credible business impression.
Is your business thinking of integrating marketing automation in its campaigns? Saffron Edge allows your business to tap on the latest automation technologies to boost your marketing department and present your organization as a relevant search for your prospective customers. With our expert guidance on digitizing your marketing campaigns, we aim at advancing your business towards a digital transformation! To know more, contact our team today and take a step forward towards marketing automation!
Endless Aisle: How Can You Implement Real-Time Inventory Visibility In Your Retail Business
Retaining loyal customers to sustain a profitable business becomes crucial with the changing marketing landscape. But sometimes, it gets difficult for retailers to manage their inventory, which affects their sales and brand reputation. If customers find that the product is out of stock in a retail store, the chances are that they might go further to a competitor's store, which is not a good sign. A report reveals that 7% of small businesses don't track their inventory. And that's why they are struggling to boost their sales. There might be many reasons why your physical inventory might not have the products your customers want, but asking them to wait for a few days is not viable. Are you also facing the same problem? Don't worry. There is a solution to this problem, i.e., Endless Aisle. It helps businesses provide more flexibility and room to showcase products that are usually not in inventory or out of stock but can be arranged to be delivered. It allows retailers to provide their customers an opportunity to browse through your entire offline and online inventory and purchase the products they want virtually. Read on to know how Endless Aisle can help you increase your inventory without actually spending lots of bucks on their purchase and storage. What is an endless aisle? Endless aisle is a strategy that many offline retail stores often use to expand their inventory without physically maintaining it. It combines virtual as well as offline inventory present in the store. Once a customer walks inside a store, they can browse through the physical inventory and virtual inventory using a kiosk or tablet, or a mobile device and choose what they want and order the merchandise presented in the form of virtual products. Source: Unsplash This way, instead of shopping bags in hand, customers would leave stores with delivery tracking details and receive the products from the stores! Endless aisle helps retailers enhance customer experience by delivering a hybrid of online and offline shopping experiences. It allows businesses to provide customers with the opportunity to purchase products that are currently not available in their stores. It offers an easy selection of products, and provides quick services to customers. Firms can also plan and schedule deliveries aptly and keep track of shopping trends through an endless aisle strategy. Also, it allows organizations and retailers to reduce their physical inventory to save floor space. Take an example of car showrooms: When you go to a car dealership to purchase a car, the customer assistant will show you a car through a virtual medium that is out of stock. And then they will ask you to book your car in advance. What are the advantages of the endless aisle? Source: Unsplash Enhance customer experience and service By incorporating Endless Aisle in your brick-and-mortar business, you can give your customers the freedom to choose from your entire product selection and catalog. This reduces the challenge of retaining customers and increases the possibility of purchase. If your customers find the product they are looking for in your store, they might always choose you for the same product line. With Endless Aisle, upselling and cross-selling get better. The Endless Aisle allows retailers to sell additional accessories to the primary intended purchase. You can give them an array of options virtually. Since the Endless Aisle strategy allows you to always have full shelves, you don't have to worry about in-store stock. This will make purchasing and selling tasks easier for you and your customers. Increase your inventory without increasing the floor space Usually, if you want to have a large inventory, you need to rent additional floor and shelf space to accommodate the stock. With Endless Aisle, you can expand your inventory by adding your products to digital platforms .That means no need for additional space and expenses. Give your better customers insights. One of the essential things that every retailer needs is customer data, which helps them know what their target audience likes and what new item is trending in the market. The data helps you understand your customer's requirements and gives you an edge over your competitors. Endless Aisle helps you capture real-time customer data as they scroll through your virtual platform. You can determine what your customers want to buy to arrange your virtual inventory accordingly. Also, it helps you provide a more improved customer experience. Implementing an Endless Aisle in your store The most common way of implementing endless aisles is Kiosks. You can also choose smartphones and tablets based on your daily customer traffic and business requirements. Add the entire product range of your store to your digital platform to showcase your customers. The kiosks should be handled by store reps and distributed across your store. Ensure that kiosks have a search bar and accessible listing of your products to provide your customers with a hassle-free shopping experience. With these kiosks, your customers are not overly dependent on in-store assistants to help them find what they are looking for. Since your customers can easily get all your products through kiosks, the possibility of purchase also increases. Use a powerful POS (point-of-sale) software that enables customers to browse through your catalog. The POS software is cloud-based that helps you centralize your inventory. It allows you to showcase your entire product-range on a single platform. It also helps the cashier keep a tab on the stock at other locations and place an order accordingly. Takeaway! Endless Aisle is an efficient marketing and sales technique that enables retailers to provide their customers with the option of purchasing products that are out of stock and not commonly found. This helps retailers save huge bucks, which they might spend on renting large warehouses. If you are also planning to incorporate an endless aisle strategy in your retail business, reach out to us. Our team will give you a glimpse of our services and help you combine offline and online inventory to maximize customer retention and revenue. Contact us now! ...
read more
E-commerce Marketplaces vs. E-commerce Platforms: Where Should You Sell?
The growth of the internet has been a boon to the E-commerce industry. The ease with which you can now buy products and services online has opened up new retail opportunities. You no longer have to travel far or spend hours on end in stores waiting for your purchase. You can shop from home and still get what you want in minutes—if not seconds! The internet has also made it easier than ever before for you as an entrepreneur who wants to sell products through your website by providing them with access via their smartphones or tablets. This means that customers have more choices when shopping online; they don't simply have one option available but multiple alternatives at their fingertips instead. This establishes plenty of competition for your product and service in the market. One way to gain an edge over them is through digital marketing, which can help you devise a strategy that streamlines your operations better and increases revenue. The online space is a wide and daunting space. It can be overwhelming when one is a beginner. One of the first challenges you tackle as a small business owner is the choice of an online platform. There are lots of choices when it comes to online sales. This article will help you understand some of them and how they compare. What is an E-commerce marketplace? An E-commerce marketplace is a platform that allows sellers to list their products and make sales. There are two different types of marketplaces: Seller-to-Seller Marketplace: This type of E-commerce platform connects buyers with sellers directly. The seller can choose to host their own website or use an existing one, such as Shopify or WooCommerce. E-commerce Marketplaces vs . E-commerce Platforms: Where Should You Sell? These platforms connect merchants directly with customers through the integration of various payment methods (like credit cards), shipping options (like USPS Parcel Post), return policies, and more. E-commerce marketplace vs. other selling platforms The internet is a vast space with multiple avenues for you to sell your products and services. For you to unlock your maximum potential, you need to know which avenue is the best for you. An E-commerce marketplace is a website where buyers and sellers connect. It's a place where you can sell your products, but not all platforms are alike. Some platforms charge fees for using their service, while others don't charge anything at all—you pay only when someone buys from you or clicks on one of your ads. E-commerce Marketplace vs. Your Website The first and most obvious difference between selling on E-commerce marketplaces and your own website is that you have more control over your own site. There are plenty of reasons why this is a good thing: You can sell whatever you want on your site, even if it doesn't necessarily fit into the categories listed in the marketplace's search results (e.g., "sale" or "gift"). You can run multiple sales at once if they're related to each other—for example, one item might be 25% off, while another offers free shipping with any purchase over $50. Pros and Cons of Selling on an E-commerce Marketplace vs. a Standalone Website Every coin has two sides to it. So when it comes to marketplaces and websites, there are merits and demerits to both of them. They have been reviewed below; Marketplace sellers have a higher conversion rate. The reason for this is that they have more traffic and can easily reach customers who may be looking for their product or service. Marketplaces are easier to set up and maintain. Setting up your own E-commerce site involves creating custom software, which is time-consuming and can be expensive if you don't know what you're doing (or if it's not your area of expertise). On top of that, maintaining an online store involves updating products regularly as well as keeping track of customer orders—and this takes extra effort! By contrast, marketplaces already have everything installed in place when you sign up with them—so all you need to do is focus on marketing instead! What’s the best choice for you as a seller? As a seller, you need to decide what you want to sell and how much time and money are available. You should also consider your goals, budget, and other factors that determine which platform is best for your business. Let’s go through some of the things that will help determine which platform is right for you: There are two main types of E-commerce platforms; marketplace sellers and standalone websites. A marketplace seller sells their products on an online store run by another company (the “marketplace”). The owner of a standalone website may sell as well, but they don't have access to other sellers' products—they're not part of an ecosystem like this one does! Marketplaces are available 24/7 and always online, unlike offline stores or catalogs. E-commerce marketplaces are always online and available 24/7, whereas E-commerce platforms are available during working hours only. It's important to note that not all E-commerce platforms offer an all-inclusive solution: they may only provide an E-commerce platform with a shopping cart or fulfilment service but do not have the ability to sell through their own marketplaces or dedicated apps. You can use an E-commerce Platform if you want more control over your storefront and checkout experience. E-commerce platform is a good choice if you want to control the look and feel of your storefront and the checkout experience. E-commerce platforms make it easy to add products, manage inventory, and track sales. They also offer a variety of marketing tools that allow you to target specific groups of customers, like women over 40 or those who have been looking at your site for more than five minutes but have not made a purchase yet. Finding the right place to sell is essential so that you enjoy the many benefits of optimal exposure and visibility, as well as be able to maximize sales, both now and into the future. The best way to know if a marketplace is right for you is by doing some research on its features and comparing them against your needs. To help with this process, we have created an E-commerce platform comparison table below: There are many different ways to sell online. It’s important that you choose the right one for your business, which will depend on your goals and how much time you want to spend managing it. If you want a flexible platform where users can buy almost anything from anywhere in the world with little effort, then an E-commerce Marketplace could be perfect for your needs. However, if you would rather control everything about how customers interact with your storefront then an E-commerce Platform might be more appropriate for what you need. In Conclusion The best way to determine what E-commerce platform is right for you is by considering your business goals and objectives. Do you want a simple, straightforward process that will allow you to focus on growing your online sales? Or do you want advanced functionality that allows for complex product management and checkout? Once you've identified the platform features that will work best for your business, consider whether it's worth paying more upfront. However, if you seem to be struggling with finding the perfect service provider for your firm, look no further than Saffron Edge, an industry leading digital marketing company offering faultless solutions for your business needs. ...
read more
Ways Primary Research Can Help Your SEO Efforts
The rapid changes in the algorithm by popular search engines have altered the online landscape for businesses in a positive sense, by pushing the users to provide most useful and relevant content to their customers. This not only helped the businesses in getting quality leads but also the search engines to serve their visitors better. This is where marketing research and optimized SEO strategies stepped in: before you tackle the online space for rankings you must have a means to understand your customers. By gaining the right intelligence you will gain good insight to your customer’s needs and thoughts. This helps in developing content with informed SEO strategies and that in turn brings in legitimate increase in web traffic. How Primary Research Helps Establishing the market research early in the development cycle focuses your efforts and helps reduce costly mistakes. Depending on the financial resources available with you, research about the customer needs and product based research can be done through primary research. This is done with the help of surveys and focus groups and the data is gathered and analysed accordingly. Idealy, the making of an online strategy begins with market research long before the development of a website. Here are some of the questions to evaluate your strategy: Is the website producing a healthy volume of visitors? Do these visitors make any purchase? If so, how frequently do they purchase, and within what timeframe? Do you have analytics softwares in place to analyze the location, access and use of your website by visitors? Understanding these questions and the answers to these questions will decide the future course of your SEO strategy and mould your content accordingly- and that your SEO strategy is organic and effective. Understanding your buyer User personas are fictional or ideal users that are created to be used in the making of a user-centred content design process to understand the various user types of a website. They can help you in not only finding the right keywords but also create the right content and be a useful tool in identifying the targets for building links. By obtaining quality research data, you can begin shaping an informed SEO strategy: You will be able to create ideal buyer personas. Group them all by factors such as age, gender, and buying habits. Now you will be able to focus your product line and strategies based on this data gathered. Jot down customer’s pain point and understand why they need your product in first place or why were they searching for products or services offered by you and competitors. You must pay attention to the location of your customers. Are they local or international clients? How understanding the buyer persona helps? Buyer Personas are a great help in brainstorming for the right keywords. At the earliest stage you need to some broad research of what users might search for in a query within your niche. If you’re generating seed terms, it’s useful to keep buyer persona’s in mind- do they reflect the need and intentions of all the potential buyers? Personas might also be helpful at the final stage in the keyword research process and that is implementation. This might be less important for on-page SEO activities, but it will direct about the tone and direction of the content on the landing pages. Personas for Link Bait User Personas can also be a helpful tool when creating and implementing a link building strategy. First and foremost we could use user personas to identify link baits. For example- Roger the techie, might be likely to own a gadget blog, or is at least highly likely to to be a reader of similar sites. So what sort of content gadget sites link out to? This will help in knowing substance of the content and the format(videos, infographics, guides etc.) So you can also use your personas as a test for your content link bait- Would Roger be interested in this? Would he share it? Personas for Guest Posting Finally, User Personas would be a great way to brainstorm for guest post topic ideas. Before you start, you should think what sort of sites your personas might use and what kind of content they might want to read when they get there. ...
read more
Subscribe to our newsletter
Get fresh stories, case studies, and
advice
from successful creators and industry experts.