In the ever-changing landscape of marketing, if you want to stay on top of your game and keep boosting your sales, you have to be fast. Faster than Lucky Luck and Flash Gordon together. And excuses like “Hey, I’m no marketing fortune teller” are not acceptable.
That’s why I’m showing you fourof the latest trendsthat will shape the future of marketing automation, according to some of the latest important studies. You can thank me later.
The top 4 marketing automation trends you need to implement
1. Nostradamus Analytics
Not so long ago, we used to tap into past data analytics that would help us interpret customer behavior and plan our future marketing strategies. But in 2019, with AI continuously evolving, analytics are becoming a goldmine for predicting future customer behaviors.
And no, you don’t need a crystal ball for this. Only the helping hand of predictive analytics.
As Techopedia explains, predictive analytics describes a range of analytical and statistical techniques used for developing models that may be used to predict future events or behaviors.
This is big news for your business since you can save money and only create successful marketing campaigns while also being one step ahead of your customer’s needs and competitors.
And according to Marketing Charts, a research by Harvard Business Review in 2018 highlighted that 61 percent of enterprise business leaders consider it “very important” now, and an even higher 74 percent believing it will become so in the next two years.
There are a lot of extremely helpful predictive analytics that can help you:
- Predict customer needs and behavior
- Qualify and prioritize leads
- Target the right customer
- Bring new exciting products to the market
So what are you waiting for?
2. Tailor Made Content
It’s no secret—and you’ve probably seen it yourself: customers are becoming more and more demanding every year, expecting special treatment from marketers. We want companies to acknowledge our unique personality and needs, and act respectively.
Whether it’s a product or a service you are promoting, the first thing to do before delving into the exciting world of marketing automation is to ask yourself: how well do I know my customers?
Personalized content, of course, is not news to the marketing world. But not all brands seem to have grasped its importance. The statistics, though, speak for themselves.
- 57 percent of consumers made a purchase in the past year as a result of valuable online content from a brand.
- Smart personalization engines used to recognize customer intent will enable digital businesses to increase their profits by up to 15%.
- 65 percent of email marketers deem dynamic content as the most effective personalization tactic in their arsenal
With personalized marketing, you can create and deliver relevant content to satisfy the needs of a very specific group of customers, by collecting information such as demographics, age and personal preferences to create your targeted content.
There are a lot of email marketing softwares like Moosend and MailChimp that allow you to do personalization on autopilot.
Need a real-world example? After subscribing for the American Apparel newsletter I received this:
They know I want to feel special and they ask me to help them. What’s wrong with that? And so, of course, I hit their CTA and what I get is this page:
Brief, minimal and to the point, this email managed to gather some important info about me and now I can’t wait to see their picks for me! Which I’m sure will be spot on.
Remember: personalization is a given nowadays. So, if your goal is to win customer loyalty and boost your sales (duh!), impersonal content is a big no-no!
3. The Language of the Future
Time to upgrade your customer service experience? You have 2 options: hire more staff or…use chatbots.
Chatbots are marketing automation software that perform various functions mimicking human communication, verbal and written. Although customers can’t have a real conversation with a chatbot, they can obtain important information and find a solution to their problem simply and promptly.
You can create a chatbot that just answers premade questions, tries to answer real questions or both. Like the Free People one:
According to Business Insider, by 2020, over 80% of businesses are expected to have some sort of chatbot automation implemented. And since no one likes being left out, you can see how clear the rise of chatbots is becoming.
Rely on chatbots to bring life into your business, gain valuable data and create an overall captivating user experience that will help you engage with your customers and stand out.
4. Their Way or the Highway
It’s common knowledge that modern consumers follow multiple paths when looking to buy a product or service. They could be:
- Online store
- Physical store
- YouTube
- Blog
So, in order to have more chances to secure a purchase, you should make your customer’s journey through these channels easier.
Which leads to omnichannel marketing automation and its rise in 2019.
ClickZ recently published a new study and the results are more than impressive. In fact, using three or more channels in an automation workflow earned an 18.96 percent engagement rate, while their single-channel counterparts earned a just 5.4 percent engagement rate, while when interacting with three or more channels, customers bought 250 percent more frequently than customers who only engaged with only one channel.
Omnichannel marketing zeroes in the different stages of the sales funnel and the steps a consumer makes until they place an order, in order to create a unique way of communication for the whole critical journey.
While omnichannel marketing is not exactly child’s play compared to multichannel marketing, it’s a trend I urge you to fearlessly embrace to create impressive targeted and detailed interactions.
Putting It All Together
Marketing can be a tough cookie to crack. It transforms in the blink of an eye and makes new practices old before you realize it. But it’s exciting and profitable for those who keep their antenna up and never cease to experiment.
As technologies and AI keep evolving, marketers team up with powerful tools to provide overwhelming experiences and become more efficient.
However, we should all keep in mind that no matter how smart marketing may become in the near future, consumers will always look for and appreciate the human factor.
Have you already incorporated these hot marketing automation trends in your marketing plans? Which one proved for you the most powerful of all?
