Marketing automation: best platforms and practices

Marketing automation revolutionized how businesses engage with their customers and drive sales. By leveraging technology and advanced software, marketing automation enables you to streamline and automate various marketing tasks, saving time and resources while maximizing efficiency. Delivering targeted, timely, and relevant marketing messages to your audience enhances customer engagement and improves conversion rates, customer retention, and overall business growth. 

This article presents best practices and the most efficient marketing automation platforms to achieve scalability.

Benefits of marketing automation

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Efficiency

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Wasted time is the nightmare of every marketer. No one wants to waste time repeating content creation and process with thousands of customers. This would overshadow other vital tasks. Marketing automation can help you complete repetitive tasks efficiently.

By automating repetitive and manual tasks, marketers can divert their attention towards more rewarding endeavors, such as strategic lead nurturing and customer retention.

Nurturing Leads

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It is essential to nurture potential customers, strengthen relationships with them, and ultimately convert them into customers. Marketing automation lets you quickly onboard new and existing customers by providing information about your store and products. It allows you to communicate with customers on a broad scale while maintaining a personal touch with each customer.

Increased Profits

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Well-nurtured potential customers through marketing automation will likely convert into customers who purchase your product, remain loyal to your brand, and thus drive sales. Since you measured leads’ interest level, you can focus on the right prospects at the right time. 

Marketing automation saves time, improves engagement, and optimizes your marketing efforts. With personalized and authentic messages, it strengthens customer relationships. Whether you have a small or large customer base, marketing automation helps you deliver targeted communication and seize critical opportunities.

Best Practices for Marketing Automation

Regardless of the system you feel suits your business or the platform you use, here are some tips that can contribute to the success of your marketing automation process.

Know Your Audience

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You must know the pain points of your target audience and how to address them to create personalized marketing. Constant communication and knowing more about your leads will allow you close deals faster. 

Understand the Customer Journey

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You should work on automating most, if not all, customer journey stages, not just cart abandonment. First, familiarize yourself with the customer journey on your website and the actions of potential customers, then create a marketing automation plan that aligns with that journey.

Regularly Review the Automation Process

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Marketing automation is not a static process; it evolves with changes in your business, products, and customers. Review your marketing automation workflow monthly, quarterly, and yearly.

Marketing automation platforms

Social Media messaging apps

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You can automatically add quick responses to frequently asked questions on Messenger and Instagram, for instance, so that people who interact with your pages don't have to wait too long, which could lead to losing interest in your product.

However, these messaging apps are limited in the number of questions you can program and offer only FAQs. 

Email Marketing

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In addition to broadcasting marketing messages on a broad scale, email allows for sending automated notifications to nurture customer relationships and keep them informed about order status, for example.

Automated email messages can be triggered based on time or the actions of website visitors and customers. For example, the first category of messages often includes congratulatory emails for the customer's birthday, offering a particular discount or deals related to important occasions, holidays, Black Friday, national holidays, and more.

The second category of messages is triggered based on the customer's journey with the brand. For example, a welcome email when a customer subscribes to the service or reminder emails for abandoned carts and order status updates.

SMS Marketing

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SMS marketing works in a similar way to email marketing. It is another method for marketing automation by sending short messages to inform customers about order confirmation, shipping updates, and delivery to the specified location. 

You can also send SMS messages to remind customers of abandoned carts and set other automated flows. 

It is a great way to provide convenience to customers and reduce the workload on the customer service team. However, the SMS open rate is declining. 

WhatsApp

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WhatsApp has established itself as the leading messaging platform in numerous countries today, making it a crucial tool for businesses to capitalize on for customer service, marketing campaigns, and automation.

The WhatsApp Business platform offers seamless integration with various systems, enabling businesses to automate their marketing processes effectively. One key integration is with customer relationship management (CRM) systems, which help streamline the database and enable personalized customer communication.

By integrating WhatsApp with a CRM system, businesses can efficiently manage customer information, ensuring that every interaction is tailored to the individual's preferences and needs. 

By leveraging WhatsApp's capabilities, businesses can proactively engage with customers based on their actions. For instance, messages can be sent to provide details on the order status or reminders for customers with abandoned carts, increasing conversion chances and minimizing potential revenue loss.

Additionally, businesses can leverage WhatsApp's automated notification feature to keep customers informed about various updates and events. This includes sending automated messages for pre-booked appointments, order confirmations, updates on delivery statuses, problem resolutions, and more. These notifications enhance customer satisfaction by providing timely and relevant information, contributing to a positive brand experience.

Furthermore, by incorporating a chatbot into the WhatsApp platform, the marketing team can streamline their workflow and improve customer satisfaction. The chatbot can handle various tasks, such as answering frequently asked questions, providing product recommendations, and assisting with order tracking. 

The chatbot can revolutionize the shopping experience by automating the entire process, from sharing the product catalog to guiding customers through payment.

With the integration of a chatbot on the WhatsApp platform, you can provide customers with a seamless and interactive shopping experience. The chatbot can showcase the product catalog, allowing customers to browse various offerings and access detailed information about each item.

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