Start Now on Your Sales and Marketing Automation for a Brighter Tomorrow
We work in a fast-paced and ever-evolving world where client expectations are higher then ever before. Businesses have to be fast, personal and produce an experience to their customers that is like no other. In addition, businesses large and small have to keep up with customer needs while also reaching out to potential markets. Luckily, the age of automation has made these situations easier to deal with.
Automated sales, service and marketing tools allow companies to effectively market and sell on multiple channels while automating repetitive tasks. It allows business executives more time to focus on the big picture, and less on the day-to-day of their company. These tools have become so prevalent in the last few years that it’s become impossible to imagine working in a business without them.
As we look onto the horizon what can we expect from automation platforms?
Automation Will be More Predictive
The key to developing relationships with customers is letting them know they matter. Not just as a population, but individually. Companies will improve the utilization of segmented data to create market-specific messages for a more personalized experience. Although individual personalization is available the process of data gathering will improve dramatically. “Big data” is growing every year and individuals are providing much more data about themselves. As a results, automated marketing will start to become more predictive based on the information it gathers from customers. The software will be able to tell what to do in a certain situations, and will also be able to send out automated messages that are humanized and pertain to individual consumers.
The Future of Sales & Marketing Automation Platforms
Sales and marketing automation platforms of the future will be more intelligent and thinner. Smaller, specialized applications will be available, so modeling can be scaled to each individual company and will automatically adapt as your business evolves.
What does this mean for marketers? As automated marketing becomes more intelligent, it will produce more relevant data. Customer predictions will be fine-tuned, enabling automated systems to send out specifically tailored messages to customers. In addition, customers will have an individual experience across all channels including social, email, web and even face-to-face and in-person.
Continued Mobile Transition
In 2014, 45% of people researched products using their smartphones. 81% of these consumers researched at home or work before a shopping trip, while the other 19% researched during a shopping trip. Marketing automation of the future will encourage customers to purchase a product offline that they were previously researching online.
Marketing automation can build a picture of a customer based on the knowledge provided through apps, social and website visits, and tailor specific messages based on products or services they looked at. It can also be used in the mobile wallet as a personal marketing channel. Customers store all of the information they need to make a purchase in their mobile wallet. By mobilizing offers and loyalty cards in the wallet, companies can offer a convenient buying experience.
Increased Human Interaction
While sales and marketing automation can help small businesses grow, it can only go so far with customers. People enjoy face-to-face interaction and may feel uneasy about completely automated marketing materials. Companies can use video and picture advertising in the future to maintain a human feel.
The growing availability of big data is certainly going to have an impact on automated marketing, though there will always be a need for personalization. If you are looking to enhance marketing at your company, check out Pardot’s automated marketing services. They can help you generate high quality leads, develop targeted emails, and accelerate the sales pipeline.
Start Now
Technology is only getting better and the companies that will win tomorrow start today. Every part of the company communicates with the client and every engagement matters and when companies track their engagement data they are able to provide an experience to the customer that far exceeds the competition. So start now with creating an environment where everything becomes automated. Applications such as Salesforce and Pardot and the ideals places to start because of their flexibility to grow and expand as your company does.
Sources:
http://marketingland.com/report-45-percent-made-purchase-seeing-mobile-ad-100593
http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/23/the-future-of-marketing-automation/
