B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION TRENDS TO FOLLOW IN 2020-PART 2

5 Ways of Evolving Marketing Automation…and Why You Need to Get on Board!

Hope you have read my previous blog post on marketing automation trends. This analytical blog post discussing B2B Marketing trends will hopefully be useful, too. So, let’s continue our journey!

With B2B marketing automation trends, we have to understand where we are going. Previous blog post vividly showed where marketing automation was and where it is heading now. We have traced the ways marketing automation has been evolving towards 2020 and analyzed what is happening in marketing these days.

In brief, the first point discussed in my previous blog post was the changing nature of marketing. Just as modern-day marketing is constantly developing and changing in its nature, with the discovery of marketing automation, these changes are becoming more and more rapid and all-encompassing.

For a long time, marketing automation has looked like a rule base or click base. Practically, it meant that if a person clicked on this or that place, they were directed to that place. So, if a person clicked on a message, they were directed to that message. Similarly, if the customer bought this thing, he was directed to another thing, and so on. Seriously, not so long-ago marketing automation did look like that. B2B Marketing Automation Trends really work.

Things have changed, however. Lately, marketing automation has become a far deeper and wider concept. For example, nowadays, marketing automation is becoming increasingly predictive. In other words, it ceased being just about email messaging or something like that. These days, marketing automation is going far beyond, and I would characterize this system as a trigger-based one. Let’s analyze its major trends.

Right now, marketing automation is becoming increasingly predictive

Marketing automation is not merely about emails. Have you ever been in a store? Definitely, you have. And if now you look into your Facebook and all of a sudden you see that store’s ad popping up in your timeline, that’s marketing automation. At any rate, if there is a person in a store and there are social media, one can say there’s a good chance we will be able to market something. As I have told before, marketing is becoming more predictive than ever. It goes way beyond the traditional forecasting of your behavior based on your reactions. Today customers expect brands to know them and to deliver the right knowledge in the form of personalized messages. To put it simply, they want interaction. If you are on it, B2B Marketing Automation Trends will be the clear path to get it.

Marketing automation is becoming very personal

Hubspot

Hubspot has identified 9 brands that take personalized marketing to a new level. These are Shutterfly, Snapchat’s Bitmoji, Target, Vidyard, Coca Cola, Amazon, Spotify, Iberia Airlines, and Twiddy. These companies took time and analyzed their customers’ habits and have managed to find a balance between knowing their customers and building their marketing camping with careful consideration of their customers’ needs. Here also B2B Marketing Automation Trends need to predict.

Shutterfly

Shutterfly is a website and application that allows you to create all kinds of image products like canvases, photo books, and calendars. The place is ideal for those who want to create their photo books or access their projects. Now, the main advantage of the company is its creative approach to the issue of personalized e-mail and topics related to it. The team has demonstrated it with their unique Shutterfly application. If you download this app from your phone, you automatically get an account, and then you have your personal photos automatically identified and inserted by Shutterfly.

The app can put photos on items including mugs, holiday cards, and calendars. In the case with Shutterfly, the company has created the app that shows the customer a whole list of products and how they look like before an actual sale. Also, the company shows that the words related to customers’ private life would look great on the product. In return, customers must give the company their explicit permission to go through their private information as well as the permission to extract appropriate personalization data. The Shutterfly case is an example of high-level personalization in marketing where the customer is sharing personal information with the customer.

Snapchat’s Bitmoji

Snapchat’s Bitmoji is another example of how personalization can bring traffic from one area within the app to another. The Bitmoji app was launched in 2016. Its design allows users to design cartoonish avatars of themselves. These avatars are then featured as the Snapchat profile pictures of the customers. Interestingly, most images have a comic style. The tricky thing about Snapchat’s Bitmoji is how it uses the personalization approach. If you had a chance to speak to a friend who uses the Bitmoji app, then you probably saw his image constantly popping up in his daily story. So, the Bitmoji app is another example of how personalization can help bring traffic from one area of an app to another.

Target Marketing

Another no less impressive example of personalization in marketing is Target. This company went so far as to study the individual habits of every single customer. They have managed to do this with the help of a Guest ID that traces all interactions of the customer with the brand. Next, the store collects all personal information about each customer, including demographic information, job history, and buying behavior. The data gets then stored in the database and is later used by the store analytics. By tracking customer purchasing patterns, the stores become capable of identifying those customers who are expecting a baby, for example, and then suggest some good offers to this particular group of customers. The Target case is another example of a successful personalization approach. Target’s tale is a vivid example of personalization in marketing and how deep and intimate it can be if approached from the right angle. 

Vidyard took the issue of personalization very seriously. They have made a personalized video for each customer. The persona speaking on the video personally addresses the recipient by his or her first name. Again, we see how personal marketing can actually be. B2B Marketing Automation Trends is a real prediction to predict the future.

Coca Cola 

Personalization Approach

Coca Cola company also did not stay aside from the personalization approach to marketing campaigns and launched it’s famous ?Share a Coke? set of initiatives. The campaign specifically targeted millennials. It used the most popular first names and, thus, emerged as something new in the marketing.

Amazon traces the life interests of each buyer and tries to suggest the products which are in line with the users’ preferences and likes. It seems they do know all about you, starting from your hobbies and finishing with your food preferences. Definitely, the best spying platform on the Internet.

So, it is getting extremely and increasingly important for computer interactions to feel like humans. We will never be able to wholly replace human interaction even if it feels like this. Still, it feels as if with marketing automation, we are becoming predictive, less responsive, and more understanding who the customer is. Here, we refer to personal research. In sum, knowing the customer can get us to the right track.

Case Study

Ford — Omnichannel — Case Study

As a brand, Ford is always looking for ways to build and strengthen relationships with its consumers. With people using various devices 24/7, the Ford Company had to meet the challenge of being always digitally present. So how does Ford get digital hooks in physical visitors to their dealerships? The answer is: through relevant targeted messages across all touchpoints throughout the consumer’s journey.

“We’ve set out to solve this challenge and deliver an immersive and relevant marketing effort. The results — they are amazing,” said the Ford’s Company representative.

Every year, the dealership invites their consolers to the New Year Event, where hundreds of visitors hopefully take a test drive and grab multiple other benefits. This event leaves Ford guessing if, where, and when the ultimate purchase of a car will have a place. To address this point, the company has designed a simple, yet effective strategy. When the day of the event came, Ford marketing group sent out its activation stuff, who collected hundreds of email addresses from five dealerships. For two days, the team kept sending out tailored e-mails based on Ford’s data collected during the event. The tailored e-mails included data gathered from different sources.

Advance Algorithm

Then Ford company created an advanced algorithm to make it possible to decide which single message would be the most reasonable to deliver. The results were amazing: the open rate was around 63 percent, and that was 16 percent higher than the industry average. Email click rates turned out to be awesome — around 38 percent.

Quite an impressive figure! It is 3 times higher than the industry average, proving that single-minded, relevant, and well-timed messages deliver high engagements and big audiences.

Results that Matter

Using up a propriety HG technology and live audience, the Ford Company has managed to translate its live audiences into tailored segments for banner placement. What the company did was the retargeting of its audience, using three search points: banners, searches, and Facebook. The company delivered a low-frequency targeting strategy to gently remind the audience to keep Ford in their mind while making their choice of a car. This was done in contrast to retargeting at a high frequency.

Omni-channel – An Ideal Algorithm

The Ford Company tried many algorithms. Some of them looked not enough good, so the corporation made an additional effort to find a perfect omni-channel algorithm. This time the algorithm was based on email-banner-website behavior. The company decided when and what message they would deliver in a follow-up email that would be delivered to a consumer to keep the Ford Company at the top of their mind.

Kristine Dam Jensend, the Ford’s Company representative, once said that she was entirely pleased with the results. She admitted, “We wanted to be relevant and gave our prospective customers the results and possible experience.”

The solution enabled Ford to promote its experience to a wholly new level, raise customer engagement, and show interest in the brand elegantly and deliberately while delivering excellent performance.

In this case, Ford’s main achievement was connecting offline to online. While doing this the company got a 48x performance lift. These tailored messages helped Ford achieve a 24x display performance lift and deliver the right message to the right user. The experience of the Ford Company demonstrates a 4x website engagement lift. In the outcome, the omni-channel experience has brought amazing results.

Results

The omni-channel experience has proved to bring positive results for the Ford Company’s customers, and it has delivered great results. Ford has managed to improve both online and offline performance. It would have been particularly beneficial if the company had mentioned the overall number of car sales (rather than merely digital engagement) in its case study to better see the effectiveness of omni-channel. Still, the above-mentioned statistics clearly indicates that Ford has managed to get far-reaching results with its omnichannel marketing practice.

It would have been very useful if they had included the number of car sales (not just digital engagement) from this strategy and compared it to control branches.

Final thoughts:

Statistically, 66 % of marketers rank higher-quality leads as being among their top three reasons for implementing automation.

#1 Thorough understanding of user behavior as well as personalization are necessary.

#2 Live video is incrementally trending, and its integration into automation is growing.

#3 End-to-end channel integration comes as a result of automation.

#4 Combining content marketing with automation creates a duo which is truly unstoppable.

#5 You can shape the experience of users through getting marketing automation and insights. 

Ford’s example shows how a seamless omnichannel experience can bring fabulous results to firms and businesses.                                                                 

The scope of marketing automation is evolving

Again, when marketing automation emerged, it was predominantly associated with lead generation, lead nurturing process, and some conversion (you may go further with the list). Now, it is far more important. You’re currently able to track and measure the outcomes of your marketing automation. Here one needs to note that your marketing automation needs to be predictive, i.e. not just about getting messages out there about your experiences with somebody and not about the basics.

In fact, just as it is evolving, it needs to be much more than you expect. Actually, you have to be in tune with customer experience. And here it is important to remember that there are clouds now. It means that you can create different platforms. Indeed, marketing automation is not just one suit of software. It is something that encompasses, yet it is also something that integrates.

B2B Marketing Automation

B2B Marketing Automation Trends help you in the real way.

And then the structure of the platform is evolving. I think this point is interesting too. Look, marketing automation used to be just one suit that you could use. You simply used one suit for that sort of marketing automation, then used another for your Internet, and still another one for your social media.

Anyway, you use one for your blogging or whatever. You have different packets of marketing automation for these suits of software. Now you can find a single platform that will cover all these things for you. Imagine, just one piece of software can cover all of your automation. And there are even software clouds that exist for you to be able to place different kinds of software and create different platforms that are really tailored to what you are doing.

In reality, marketing automation has become more than mere suits of software and is something that encompasses everything that you do out there. But it is also about integrating. You need to integrate your CRM, CDP, and JDP because in our time data itself and the tracking of this data are becoming more and more important than ever.

If you are going to be predictive then you have to operate the data enabling, you to make decisions before your customer starts responding. You can perfectly keep everything together because marketing automation suits are there right now and, as you have seen, they are doing a great job of integrating everything at one platform for you to avoid going over the place. 

Learn About Marketing Automation

So, as you see, there are a lot of things to learn about marketing automation. Try reading an article about marketing automation to get its major point and you will start seeing how it can help your company. Be sure, you do not need to be a huge company to take advantage of marketing automation. Small businesses so understand – they do not have a lot of time for making interactions with the customer, yet still need new customers, and an office to run. B2B Marketing Automation Trends is good for marketing prediction.

Marketing automation also covers software

#1 Know your audiences

Avoid posting everything in all places. Only automate content that is relevant and attractive for a particular audience on social media

#2 Be consistent, yet not robot-like

Avoid sharing the same material over and over again. Instead, te-post your evergreen content. Be smart enough to vary your comments.

#3 Apply the basic 5-3-2 rule

It means that out of your ten updates, you should share 5 pieces of curated, three pieces of your own, and two pieces of humanizing content.

#4 Schedule at perfect times

Plan to share your posts on specific days and at specific times for each particular network and each target audience.

#5 Avoid scheduling too far ahead

Keep track of the content that is scheduled. Make sure your posts get updated as well as leave space for ongoing events

#6 Customize to engage

Benefit from social media tools of automation allowing you to customize each post for a different audience.

#7. Engage

Benefit from social media automation to assist you with all routine tasks, yet engage in personal interaction with your audience 

Summary

Finally, in order to make marketing automation software experience better, opt for user-friendly interfaces. Just as the bugs have been developed that foster integration and make your customer think he or she is getting a sort of human experience, rest assured that marketing automation is embracing all these changes in the right way. At the same time, you have to know the essence of marketing automation to incorporate it into your strategy and keep track of what is coming along.

Indeed, in 2020, not so much human interaction will predictably happen, so you’d better look at how to incorporate marketing strategy into everyday life. Study marketing automation. You do not have to be a huge company to take advantage of marketing automation. Small businesses, too, benefit a lot. Marketing automation will make our life easier. Just learn more about recent B2B marketing automation trends! 

The article has been initially published at contentpersona.com