Life is full of challenges. Fortunately, life is also now full of technologies that can often help us overcome those challenges and make our lives a little easier. Campaign automation, also known as nurture marketing or drip marketing, is one such technology – and with ClickDimensions, it’s a technology that is natively embedded inside Dynamics 365. By helping you send the right communications at the right time, here are five challenges campaign automation can help marketers, salespeople, customer service personnel and entire organizations overcome:
- Not enough time in the day. You get to work with the best laid plans for what you're going to cross off your to-do list that day, only to get sidetracked by fires that need to be put out, meetings that run too long and routine emails that need to be sent. While campaign automation can't help you with those long meetings or unexpected projects, it is perfect for reducing the time spent creating, scheduling and sending many types of emails. For example, rather than individually scheduling service appointment reminders every three months, an equipment manufacturer could create a campaign automation to send these reminders automatically and on time. That means less time devoted to routine tasks and more time devoted to marketing, selling or engaging customers.
- Neglected leads. Much as we would like for every lead to be sales-ready, that just isn't the case. In fact, according to Aberdeen Group, it takes an average of 10 marketing-driven "touches" to progress a lead from the top of the funnel to revenue generating. The challenge here is that sales teams need to devote much of their energy to closing the deals that are ready to close now, which means those that aren't ready to buy often don't get the attention they need to stay interested in your company. Automated lead nurturing campaigns allow you to keep leads warm and keep your company top of mind until these individuals are ready to buy. You can also use the messaging in a lead nurturing campaign automation to overcome common sales objections and educate prospects about your product, service or industry.
- Lack of a customer onboarding process. You never get a second chance to make a good first impression on a new customer. If that current first impression leaves new customers unsure of next steps or how to use your product or service, campaign automation can help your organization overcome that challenge. Using campaign automation, you can send new customers a series of messages regarding training opportunities or other helpful information they will want to know as a new customer, and even discover which new customers may need additional personal attention based on their interactions with messages.
- Low customer retention. According to Forrester, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. That means low customer retention is a challenge that it pays to overcome. An automated customer retention campaign helps customers stay connected with your organization and builds trust with your brand. The messaging, structure and timing within this campaign automation will vary greatly according to your industry. For example, an organization that relies on annual renewals may only run this nurture campaign yearly, while a business that sells to customers throughout the year may rely on retention campaigns more frequently to keep customers engaged.
- Generic messaging. One-size-fits-all messaging is no longer an effective marketing approach. Consumers today expect customized messages from the brands they interact and do business with, and campaign automation can help organizations meet those expectations. Not only are they segmented to suit a specific audience, these automated campaigns respond to the recipients' actions, thus creating a more personalized experience. For example, if a prospect that you're nurturing within a campaign automation does not click a certain link in an email, you might send them a follow up email. On the other hand, if they do click on that link, you might send them a different email or even notify a salesperson to call the individual.
Interested in learning more about the benefits and best practices related to campaign automation and seeing example campaigns in action? Download your free copy of the ClickDimensions eBook, The Campaign Automation Playbook: Scoring Big with Customer and Lead Nurturing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM today.
Posted by ClickDimensions.
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