Sponsored

How to use marketing automation to boost customer experiences

When you hear the term “marketing automation,” what comes to mind? Probably something technical involving some code. 

Automating your marketing isn’t as scary as you might think. 

Across the globe, retail brands use software products to automate repetitive tasks so they can deliver personalised experiences to their customers without reinventing the wheel every time. 

What are some of these tasks? 

• Sending out emails.
• Scheduling social media.
• Managing ad campaigns.

Marketers can automate these tasks to improve the efficiency of their marketing team. Unfortunately, too often, companies confuse marketing automation with personalisation. 

Using marketing automation to improve customer experience 

Here are a few ways retailers can use marketing automation to improve their customer experience. 

Marketing automation has a wide range of applications. For example, if your company has a sale at the end of the year, you could automate your campaigns. 

Automated messaging may be great for mass-blasting content, but how can you automate a specific reminder for replenishment?

Imagine you have a customer named Lucy who loves your Poppy Pink lipstick. Based on her historical purchase history, she goes through a tube every two months. 

Using marketing automation, you can automate this replenishment reminder email or SMS frequency, but personalisation is what makes Lucy relate to your brand. 

As you get to know Lucy better, you can adjust your tone, your images and include her favourite emoji if that’s her thing. The process of personalisation takes something repetitive and gives it a unique feeling. 

Marketing automation tools try to add personalisation to the mix with extensions, but they aren’t really for that purpose. Personalisation goes far beyond that.

In marketing automation, you can get carried away with magical thinking. For example, many people think you can “set it and forget it,” and that relevant content will automatically reach the right prospects and convert them into leads. It sounds good on paper, but it’s a myth. 

Retailers (and other verticals) should dig deeper into the martech vendors’ capabilities. But, sadly, marketing automation tools won’t close the personalisation gap or provide a sustainable solution for a winning customer experience. 

Automated emails represent only a tiny part of the personalised customer experience pie, despite being a tried and tested marketing channel for many marketers. 

Insider is an all-in-one marketing platform with tools to predict, test, and optimise revenue. Some of the top retailers in Australia choose Insider to turbo-charge their marketing strategy, such as Booktopia, CUE, T2, Chemist Warehouse & countless others. 

We begin by mapping each customer journey with lifecycle milestones, immediate conversion funnels, and a data-backed roadmap. Then, we use these metrics to understand and optimise each channel individually to drive meaningful cross-channel experiences. 

As part of this process, we apply pre-built artificial intelligence insights and provide advanced yet easy-to-use personalisation, testing, and optimisation to maximise revenue and customer retention. 

Would you like to learn more about how we level up marketing automation with personalisation? 

Get in touch to learn how we’ve helped Australian retailers become more efficient and connected to their customers. Book a demo today.