Nowadays many of us have heard a lot about MA (Marketing Automation) in passing; however the details of how MA will benefit marketers today and in the future are often left unanswered and unspecified which can help in creating a cohesive customer experience and drastically change the role and scope of marketing to better understand consumers’ buying habits and intentions to influence their decision making processes.
Therefore, here are six MA trends you can expect to see in the near future, in the days to come:
1. Chatbots will become essential in MA (Not just optional)
Chatbots are certainly gaining a lot of grounds in marketing automation; however, there are several marketers those that still consider them an optional functionality and not an essential functionality.
Now this will likely change very soon, as we will soon notice a shift occurring where the brands that do not have Chatbots will find significant difficulty in engagement compared to those that use them.
Actually, still date MA is in a nascent stage but marketers are gradually realizing the benefits of automation and its application in the field of marketing, as it is predicted that personalization, AI, and Chatbots will be the greatest MA trends in the days to come.
This is because, Chatbots assists in several ways in any company’s marketing plans, whether by answering leads of questions that people ask beyond regular business hours or by nurturing them as research illustrates that consumers prefer chatting if asked how they like to communicate with brands.
Therefore, if you have not started using Chatbots, or have not integrated it with your CRM yet, now is the right time to think seriously about making changes.
Hence, think beyond the initial investments and better realize that Chatbots can actually save your business a considerable amount of time and money while keeping your customers happy and reduce churn over time.
2. More Job Will Need MA Skills
As a growing number of businesses add to their reliance on MA, you will most likely view more job postings this year that are listing Marketing Automation as an essential skill.
Therefore, if you as a marketer you are eager to enter the marketing career in the next couple of years, you need to have a good knowledge of MA for these three key reasons that include:
• The consumer journey is not just happening in one single channel, and your customers are expected to pause and thereafter pick up the interaction they had with your brand irrespective of where they started it.
• You hardly run a campaign on any single channel nowadays. Therefore, email, Chatbots, and social media should reinforce each other and carry through the same message.
• The tools that offer MA capabilities like easy to use CRM software systems have become more affordable to SMBs, with sporadic growth of Salesforce Alternative CRM platforms, which are price-performance leaders in the cloud-based CRM space.
Hence marketers in the present marketing landscape those who want to set themselves apart and are looking for new and better opportunities, they should soon start looking at ways to enhance their knowledge in Marketing Automation to remain competitive.
3. Generic Content Will Become Practically Non-Existent
Marketing automation when integrated within easy to use CRM helps organizations with relevant content creation by making it easier for businesses to deliver the most needed materials to keep their customers interested during each stage in the buying process.
Hence, marketing is going to become even more customer-centric in the coming days as consumers will expect businesses to provide them personalized contents.
Implying that if brands distribute generic contents in the days to come, they will fall short as customers will become bored and fed-up if they continue to see non-personalized contents and may soon decide to shop elsewhere and do business with brands that are more in tune with the specific requirements of their customers.
4. Marketers Must Remain Updated With Email Automation to Find Optimal ROIs
Despite several marketing professionals realizing and understanding that automation is the only way to move forward in this competitive marketplace, many marketers lack advanced MA skills that they can use to boost their ROI.
In a poll conducted by GetResponse and according to Marketing & Marketing Automation Excellence 2018 report it was found that only 5 percent of marketers considered themselves experts in email automation skills, since most of the respondents admitted that they can only use a limited number of features of their MA suites, or want to boost their knowledge of the available MA tools within their easy to use CRM platforms.
Even though email marketing is just one facet of MA, nevertheless it is a crucial functionality since email is a widely used campaigning method that provides businesses clear link to the consumers they want to reach out for business growth.
One of the ways that businesses can boost the ROI of their email marketing efforts is by using messages that automatically arrives once the consumer does certain things.
For example, submits a form, finishes a tech support phone call, or leaves items in the shopping cart without executing the purchase.
5. More Opportunities to Connect CRM Software to Other Tools
Business analysts assumes an increasing push from marketing companies to the vendors of easy to use CRM solutions to create and offer products enabling the customers to integrate many more new software they already use with their CRM systems, which highlights the ongoing process of integration and consolidation of technologies, so that marketing professionals can accomplish their objectives without having to switch between numerous interfaces.
Therefore many leading CRM provides to justify their aim in making things, as streamlined as possible for their current potential customers, are even integrating accounting software solutions with the CRM tools like QuickBooks CRM software, that simplifies the process of creating invoices, or looking into the customer’s purchase histories, without having to leave the CRM platform.
Therefore, it is likely that most success easy to use CRM brands will continue to attract new customers while keeping their present customers happy by increasing the integration capabilities of their Salesforce Alternative CRM software solutions and call out those offerings while advertising their products and thereby sustain business growth in the days to come.
6. Predictive Lead Scoring Will Gain More Popularity
You must have observed by now that marketers swear by predictive lead scoring in their CRM software platforms more frequently nowadays than they used to do in the past.
This is because, while modern lead scoring boosts conversion rates by targeting the most qualified leads in the CRM database, traditional lead scoring practices often highlighted lead that is not likely to convert, which is not a prevalent practice anymore.
Therefore, as MA gets more advanced, you will see more businesses using modern-day predictive lead scoring techniques within their respective CRM platforms for harboring greater favorable outcomes.
Takeaway
Hence to conclude, irrespective of whether your business is using automation daily nowadays in your easy to use CRM or has not yet started incorporating it in your business workflow, these trends on marketing automation can serve as your guide as you map out action plans for faster business growth.
This article was originally published at Customerthink.com, by author Patricia Jones. Original article >>
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