How Does B2C Marketing Automation Help Engage Customers?

There just aren’t enough hours in the day for marketers to manually complete all the tasks on their plate. That’s why marketing automation solutions are so important in today’s marketing landscape. Marketing automation allows marketers to control all campaign aspects, across multiple platforms and channels, from one central location. Marketers can rely on these innovative solutions to take care of the day-to-day execution while they tackle big picture strategy and performance issues.

Marketing automation is not an unproven concept; it can boost sales productivity by 14.5% and reduce marketing overheads by 12.2%. In order to achieve these results, marketers must understand how to leverage marketing automation to fully engage with their audiences.

Leverage Automated Communication

Marketing automation makes it possible to communicate in real time with consumers at critical points throughout the consumer lifecycle. Marketers already rely on email marketing to reach large audiences, and now marketing automation allows them to optimize these processes and take these campaigns to the next level. Automated communication includes:

Onboarding emails.
Repurchase programs and ratings.
Incentives and offers.

Marketing automation programs can even go so far as to track whether or not consumers are clicking on certain links, and then automatically send progressive emails. Automated communication helps keep a brand at the top of a consumer’s inbox – and at the top of their mind.

Provide Multi-Channel Programs

It’s an unwritten rule of savvy marketing to not ‘blanket blast’ a single message across all audiences. Customers expect personalized interactions and messaging, and marketing automation enables teams to deliver on this expectation. Marketing automation programs can add an extra level of engagement to a website, and harness the power behind visitor behavior to leverage web-based triggers.

Marketers can now truly personalize content delivery and messaging thanks to detailed consumer profiles, built using data from both web-based triggers and contact behavior. The multi-channel marketing aspect is extremely important, and combines email, text messages, and social media ads across one cohesive campaign. Automation programs can help marketers plan and schedule various communications across all of these channels without losing this concept of personalization.

Test and Refine Programs and Messaging

Marketing automation relies on experimentation and education in order to continuously perform at the highest level. One example of this experimentation is A/B testing. Testing different messaging and incentives against various audience types and segments can help hone in on exactly what certain consumer ‘profiles’ are looking for.

Marketers can then use this newfound understanding to optimize programs and messaging across various campaigns. Marketing automation programs also use multi-branch testing to decide the best course of action (based on the consumer profile) and then pull in the correct messaging. These campaigns can include win-back programs, multi-step campaigns, and retargeting programs.