Did you know that the estimated number of small businesses in the US is 31.7 million? Additionally, they make up 99.9% of all the firms in the US.
Considering how many businesses are out there, you might be feeling stressed about how to get more customers when you have so many competitors.
Fortunately, by using an automation solution, you can set yourself apart by drastically improving the customer experience.
The way businesses interact with customers and prospective customers at every stage leaves a lasting impression on the buyer’s journey. This impression is formed by the many ways the businesses touch them.
This impression has a term. It’s called customer experience (CX). And it’s all about providing a better customer experience.
In this article, we’ll review what customer experience is. We’ll also review how you can use it to get more customers.
What Is Customer Experience?
As Forbes makes clear, many factors lead to the resulting customer experience. These factors range from the efficacy of your product to how good you are at helping your customers once they’ve bought your product. The following quotation explains this.
“[the management of customer perception is, out of what brands should be doing, among the most important things. Everything that a company does will contribute to how its customers perceive it. Therefore, it impacts the entire customer experience.]”
The customer experience occurs in a variety of steps. When they go through these steps, this is called the customer journey. And, when they interact directly with you, they do this at touchpoints.
If you improve the customer experience, your lead nurturing efforts will benefit as well helping to attract more clients and grow your business.
People Like Businesses That Know Them
Have you ever walked into a store and been treated like an uninvited guest? On the other hand, how would you feel about walking into a store and finding that the sales representative remembers you and your preferences along with your name and what items you bought on your last visit to the store.
We know it’s a simple question, but which left the better impression on you? Which one will you come back to, again and again? The one with more customer support and that recognizes you, of course.
Of course, when you transition to a digital environment from brick-and-mortar stores, the creation of a lasting positive impression can be a little more complicated.
In a situation such as that, winning your customers’ trust and loyalty by persuading them that you know them requires two things; managing a large amount of personalized customer data and leveraging a number of marketing channels. By combining the two, you are empowered to create consistently positive customer experiences.
Considering how many prospective customers go through your sales funnel, this can be quite a challenge. However, there is a way you can ensure that you accomplish the following goals.
- Each of your customers believes you know who they are and, what they care about
- You have solutions for their problems
Marketing Automation to the Rescue
If you think that kind of personalized responsiveness is pie in the sky, think again. If you’re asking the question, “What are the benefits of marketing automation?” we have the answer.
Say you want to share an upcoming promotion with a specific segment of your customers and have an automated follow-up email sent based on their engagement? Marketing automation ensures you don’t miss any opportunities due to slow response times or lack of communication.
Marketing automation also lets you view engagement and the performance of every email and landing page you deploy.
It’s a win-win as Marketing automation frees you up to focus on more important tasks and sends personalized, relevant emails every time a customer does something important on your website, like leaving contact information or visiting a product page.
Today, businesses of all sizes are leveraging the power of a variety of effective marketing automation tools to enable a consistently positive customer experience.
In the process, they’re generating more leads and increasing their conversions. They’re also providing them with a more successful lifecycle, polishing their brands and boosting their sales.
How Can Businesses Improve CX With Marketing Automation?
Marketing automation isn’t a buzzword—it’s a way to make customers and prospective customers feel important every time they interact with your business. Of course, every business is different.
So, the ways you leverage marketing automation to enhance customer experience will depend on your unique marketing challenges. That said, some marketing automation strategies tend to work better than others.
This is the case for every business. So if you’re asking the question, “What are the methods for improving customer experience?” here are the following three you can implement when using marketing automation:
1. Integrate automation and your CRM to personalize the experience
In this section, we’ll answer the question: “How could customer experience be improved by marketing automation?” The customer relationship management (CRM) software you use will record (and make easily accessible) the entire history of your engagement with each customer.
Integrating your CRM with marketing automation tools will take your marketing activities to the next level, making it possible to provide a personalized experience. It will also help your marketing team come up with the best marketing strategies to convert even more of your clients. For example, it’s one thing to know about every email exchange you’ve had with a customer, but It’s quite another to automate the process with powerful tools that trigger highly relevant and personalized emails every time a customer converts on your website.
Having access to this type of customer data can make your marketing efforts more successful than ever. You can easily integrate the process of gathering data into your workflow by integrating automation and your CRM.
You’ll also be able to use A/B testing. As you can imagine, this will make efforts such as those of email marketing more effective, because you’ll be able to see which images and messages perform better and make adjustments to send out optimized personalized emails.
You will also be able to lower your churn rate and avoid abandoned cart problems. Upselling will be easier, too, as will lead generation and converting those leads into customers.
2. Encourage conversations
Talking at your customers won’t win their trust. It’s time to stop talking and start listening if you want to build meaningful customer relationships. Said differently, you want to encourage ongoing conversations to improve customer experience.
This improves customer engagement. That means creating an automated process to solicit and utilize customer feedback—about your products, your customer service, and the impact of your marketing campaigns.
Using automation, you can insert customer satisfaction surveys strategically on your site and social media platforms to generate the best results. An automation marketing tool or solution will also help you in another way.
It will help you effectively segment your audience to get the most relevant feedback. This way, when customers arrive at your landing pages, they’ll be more likely to convert.
3. Give customers the content they want
If yours is a real estate business, do you really want to push an article about the amenities of luxury homes to people who can’t afford them, or if you sell appliances, do you want to inadvertently send blogs about affordable washing machines to customers who want to buy a refrigerator?
Studies show that people want to see three to five pieces of relevant content before they’re willing to talk sales. This is one of the challenges of content marketing.
Marketing automation will ensure that the content you push will be targeted to the needs and pain points of key market segments.
This improves customer experience and increases trust in your business. It also increases the likelihood that first-time buyers will become loyal customers.
An automation system will streamline this process and improve your digital marketing efforts.
Harnessing the power of marketing automation will ensure that your business delivers consistently positive customer experiences. This would occur across multiple channels and throughout the buyer’s journey.
These channels could include anything from webinars to automated emails to conversations with chatbots or bots. You’ll also be able to use technology to your advantage, such as push notifications, SMS, and text messages.
So, how can you use marketing automation and benefit from its functionalities? And, how can you learn more about a marketing automation platform?
How We Can Help
Fortunately, Act!’s experts can give you the guidance, advice, and tools you need to succeed when you use marketing automation.
Want to learn more about how CRM and marketing automation can arm your business and sales team with the resources you need to take your marketing to the next level? Contact us today about our marketing automation software. Or see for yourself in this free 14-day trial.
