Every retailer is focused on developing loyal customers so that it results in enhanced brand awareness and, finally, in an improved bottom-line. Marketing automation is the strategy adopted by retailers to garner a loyal customer base.
Today’s customers expect personalised and relevant brand interactions every single time, and this is made easier with marketing automation. The following are some tips for marketing automation solutions:
Loyalty enhancing emails
Email automation is an excellent way to engage personally with all customers. One can use POS tools and in-store wi-fi to capture email addresses of customers. Then email automation may be used to categorize and interact personally with every customer. By sending special welcome offers or welcome emails tailor-made to customers, one can create relevance and value for customers and contribute to enhanced engagement and loyalty over time. One can also forward automatic requests to invite customer reviews following a visit or purchase to the store apart from personalized recommendations to encourage upselling.
Social platforms
Social media may be vital for retailers concerning engagement. Ultimately, customers purchase brands, and not products. Hence, it is vital to promote and package the retail brand via excellent storytelling. Therefore, make it a priority to interact with customers through social media such as Facebook or Instagram.
Marketing automation solutions make simple, social media of retail, working to boost as well as include one’s brand details inside other campaigns of retail marketing.
Marketing via social media will help one to:
- Analyse automatically content that succeeds, providing tools for dynamically changing campaigns if needed.
- Send automatically any welcome messages. These may include advertisements for promotions in-store or links to the website.
- Schedule content before across platforms.
Omni-channel retailing
The experience of a customer with a retail brand may not be likely to follow a straightway. Today, an important factor is omnichannel retailing and impact from channels like social media. As a result, it may be tough to monitor the journey of a customer effectively, leaving one unaware of what works well for the retail brand. The technology of marketing automation renders it easy for tracking the journey of a customer online or in-store with the brand in a proper fashion from the first dealing to loyal repeat purchases. One can also identify aspects where customers stop engaging with the brand so that efforts for getting them back can be started.
Proximity tracking
Wi-Fi proximity tracking, mixed with automation, serves as an excellent way for retailers to drive loyalty. The latest technology on smartphones will help provide tools for communicating with customers on time by sending SMS communications, advertising pop-ups, and app notifications. Customers who may be browsing the e-store for certain items can be better targeted automatically and be encouraged to spend money on the website’s products. Promotional messages may also be forwarded to customers when they are located near one’s store and thus help to boost footfall.
Track loyalty
Undoubtedly, online retailing happens to be an important ingredient of the experience of customers. Automation of web customisation permits one to personalize the retail website as per customers, even before they have shared their details. Because of the technology of website ID, it is possible to make use of browsing location and data to enable your website experience to be useful to all customers. By providing customers a highly relevant experience always, will contribute significantly to the experience, boosting levels of engagement and loyalty.
Chatbots and AI
One vital tool emerging in marketing automation is that of Chatbots. They help in making customised recommendations, send emails for cart abandonments, and to help in improving customer service. In case customers require help after making sales like product returns or questions, this whole process is made easy by chatbots. Designing and providing a retail experience via chatbot automation, either online or in-store, will aid in creating long-enduring customer loyalty, which puts your brand first ahead of all competition.
Conversational marketing
Soon, companies will need to pay much attention to the mode of their communication with customers. The process of automation need not be emotionless and impersonal interactions since customers do not like it. But a huge percentage of customers today like the use of chatbots. The crucial part of effective automation is conversational marketing. In 2020, focus on 2-way communication by engaging with customers and listening to their needs, in a quick and caring way. One must make the most out of AI-powered tools that use machine learning and natural processing of language to enhance the customer experience.
In sum, retailers require loyal customers. Such customers are highly profitable and valuable to any brand; hence it is vital to invest in creating lifetime loyalty. Such a process begins with authentic customer engagement, and the technology of marketing automation solutions will help make this easy for the brand. Make use of this technology to target, segment, and engage with customers, and the company will be assured of many loyal customers.
