Automation is becoming increasingly important for businesses of all sizes. Automation can be used to streamline processes, reduce manual labor, reduce errors, and increase efficiency. It can also help businesses stay competitive by providing customers with faster service and better products.
By automating processes, businesses can focus on what matters most – delivering the best customer experience possible which will increase overall customer satisfaction that ultimately increases loyalty and keeps the customer coming back for more.
There are three areas where any business can leverage marketing automation to improve customer experience, regardless of what industry they are in.
Automated Feedback Collection
No matter the type, every business needs feedback. Feedback is essential because you need to hear directly from customers about their experience interacting with your company in order for you to know what they liked and did not, which subsequently helps identify areas for improvement.
After a customer patronizes your company, you can send an automated request for feedback. This could be by email or even text message and both methods only take customers a few minutes to respond.
By automating customer feedback requests, businesses can easily collect and analyze customer feedback at scale. Automation also helps to ensure that the data collected is consistently collected, accurate, and reliable. This can provide a more comprehensive view of customers and their needs, leading to better decisions about products and services. Automated customer feedback requests also save time for both customers and businesses, as it eliminates the need for manual data entry that would otherwise be required.
Bonus: Taking this a step further, many of our community members integrate their feedback software with AirTable to be able to see trends more easily across all feedback given.
Automated Messages Around Important Dates
Birthdays, anniversaries, or special occasions like first purchase or client milestones are a quick win to automate within a business. In your CRM, you can start with capturing your customers birthdays and anniversaries. Once that is done, you can start to send personalized emails which provide a nice personal touch that not only allows you to be on top of your customers mind and but also provides an opportunity to increase revenue.There are many different ways you can show your appreciation towards your for example by giving a discount or even just a nice inspirational uplifting message.
If you had to do this manually, it would take hours per month depending on your database size, but with automation you can set it up once and then it’ll run automatically month after month, year after year.
Bonus: This type of automated workflow works well for e-Commerce businesses. Our founder, Chris, likes to use “Last Purchase” as a date captured with every transaction and automate messages and track the amount of time between purchases.
Automated Reminders
Reminders are imperative. If there is one constant you can rely on it is the fact that people will forget something. Reminders help strengthen memory. These can be to remind them of upcoming events or meetings. Additionally, you can set up an automation flow to send reminders to past customers when it’s time to buy again or when a newer version of a previously purchased product is released. For example, automated emails or text messages can be sent as refill reminders for products such medications when they are due or even when it’s time to service your car again.
What makes these types of reminders so powerful is that they take into account if a lead does NOT take the anticipated action within a certain window of time. Instead of their interest and engagement dwindling away, reminders help keep them engaged and your company on top of mind.
Bonus: Each month in the community we share a new automation. Recently, we shared an opt-in workflow with the ability to send a reminder to download the requested lead magnet.
Conclusion
Marketing automation allows customers to get the information they need quickly and accurately, provide feedback, and more which can make a huge difference in their overall experience with a company.
On the other hand, it helps businesses save time and money by streamlining processes and eliminating manual tasks that take up the most valuable resource of time. Marketing automation provides insights into customers’ needs and allows for a more tailored personalized experience.
If you’d like to continue your learning and explore more use cases for automation we invite you to join the Automation Bridge Community to connect with other like minded automated marketers committed to helping one another.
