MARKETING AUTOMATION AND DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

[Pages:11]MARKETING AUTOMATION AND DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

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MARKETING AUTOMATION AND DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

Two things that, when done right, can help increase your customer engagement, bring you better leads and more sales, and help you establish your business as strong and profitable for years to come. The world is becoming more digital and instant than ever, making now the ideal time to start looking at marketing automation and digital communications for your business.

Let's take a look at each in turn and find out what they can do for your business and how you can use them for the best results. In this white paper we'll focus on how you can use marketing automation both to further your own campaigns and those of your customers, and how you can in turn use digital communications to offer them better and more effective tools for their own campaigns.

PART ONE: MARKETING AUTOMATION

What Exactly Is Marketing Automation? Marketing automation can seem like a large, diverse area but in fact it can be summed up simply. Marketing automation means using software to streamline certain marketing tasks and workflows in order to generate better leads and close deals faster. Marketing automation can help increase the accuracy of your marketing, which can make it more relevant and more likely to bring you the kind of results you are looking for. It can also speed up the marketing process, saving you time and money.

There are many ways to harness marketing automation. Some examples might include:

? S ending out appropriate promotional emails to interested customers who have downloaded an eBook.

? C ross-selling appropriate items and services to customers who have recently made a purchase.

? A sking for customer feedback.

? R eaching out to customers who haven't made a purchase in a certain time frame.

? A utomating messages to generate buzz ahead of an event such as a sale or conference.

? G enerating post-purchase follow-ups.

? T riggering alerts to get the next stage of a workflow started or let another team member know that they need to take action such as calling a customer.

? F ollowing up with customers who've abandoned a shopping cart to prompt a purchase.

? S coring leads and sending out relevant content to those identified as likely to buy.

How Has Marketing Automation Changed Over The Years?

Go back twenty or even ten years, and marketing automation was still in its infancy. Marketing automation started finding its feet as part of CRM software, alerting sales people before they made a call, and making it easier to track a customer's history with a company.

What really pushed marketing automation to evolve into the tool it is today was the advent of email and social media, and later the growth of mobile browsing. Suddenly, sales people found they had a plethora of new ways to reach out to potential leads using the internet instead of more traditional marketing methods.

As marketers began to realize that email and social media offered a brand new way to reach customers, the need for automation became clear. Now, instead of merely triggering a reminder, marketing automation software was called upon to organize and group leads, and keep customer groups neatly segmented for the purpose of more highly targeted marketing.

The need for greater integration became apparent, and marketing automation started to be integrated with sales and social media software as a whole, making the entire marketing process more cohesive.

As marketing automation has become more popular and more effective, different industries have started to see the benefits to be gained from using marketing automation. More and more businesses are becoming aware of the importance of digital communications and the ways in which marketing automation can make that simpler and much more effective.

Marketing automation is becoming a must for any business that wants to reach the right people through a digital medium.

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The rise of marketing automation offers printers more chances to boost profits and form more meaningful and useful connections with their customers. Marketing automation absolutely has a place in the print industry. Let's take a look at what the rise of marketing automation means to printers.

What Does The Rise Of Marketing Automation Mean To Printers?

Marketing automation has a lot of potential as a tool for printers. With marketing automation, printers can build good relationships with the best qualified leads, and better target their marketing to reach the right people. It all adds up to better revenue for printers. Let's take a look at some key questions:

1. How does marketing automation affect the existing services printers provide?

Marketing automation can affect the existing services printers provide, especially those printers who are using digital printing or online ordering, and those who have already embraced social media.

Marketing automation also can affect workflows. That means that any printer who makes use of workflow software could find that marketing automation has a natural place in their processes.

Because marketing automation puts the emphasis on nurturing the right leads and targeting marketing messages, it affects printers' existing services by changing the way they handle customer communications at every stage of the sales process.

Printers can also choose to offering marketing automation services to their customers as part of their overall service package, in turn helping those customers to reap their own rewards.

2. C an print and mail be part of the marketing automation process?

The answer to this is a resounding yes. Printers and mailers are service providers, and as such finding and cultivating the right leads is vital for their success. Marketing automation can assist with that by helping printers and mailers to hone their marketing campaigns to better speak to their target audience.

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Printers can also link marketing automation with print and mail for their clients, helping them to run and track successful multi-channel campaigns.

3. Can marketing automation bring printers more revenue?

Marketing automation definitely has the potential to bring printers more revenue in two ways:

? B etter management of marketing tasks makes it easier to plan out customer interactions to be as relevant and timely as possible, thus helping increase the chances of making sales and building profitable long term relationships.

? A dding marketing automation services to their repertoire can give them a value added service that their customers will love and can use to their own benefit.

4. C an marketing automation change a printer's value proposition?

Absolutely. Printers can add in marketing automated services, adding value to what they do and offering their customers a more comprehensive range of services.

Marketing automation can change a printer's value proposition in another key way, too. Because marketing automation makes it easy for printers to reach out to different customers at different times, it assists them in more accurately targeting their messages. That means they can more accurately express their value proposition to each customer and connect in a way that syncs up with those customers' wants and needs.

What Tools Can Be Used To Capitalize On Marketing Automation?

Once marketing automation software is in place, it only makes good sense to make best use of it, and embrace marketing tools that fit well with it. Here are five tools that can be used to capitalize on the power of marketing automation:

? E mail blast engines ? marketing automation means sending out email blasts at the most appropriate times to get a response.

? T riggered events ? marketing automation can help

promote triggered events. For example if a customer downloads an eBook, that could trigger a series of emails telling them about services relevant to their topic of interest.

? A utomatic outbound communications platforms ? marketing automation software can be used seamlessly alongside automatic outbound communications platforms to time outbound communications and set reminders for staff.

? S ocial media publishing software ? social media publishing software enables businesses to publish the right content in the right place at the right time. This fits well with marketing automation, ensuring both perfect timing and less time and energy spent sending messages.

? S cheduling software ? marketing automation and scheduling software work well together. Both can be used to trigger reminders that keep the flow of work smooth and effortless. Using marketing automation to schedule tasks can help increase the efficiency of the marketing and keep prospects moving through the sales funnel.

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How Can Print and Mail Companies Utilize Marketing Automation In Their Everyday Campaigns? Marketing automation is a useful tool for printers and mailers because it has a place in every day marketing campaigns. Say for instance a printer or their client needs to: ? R each out to new clients

? L ook for prospects on social media

? R aise awareness of a new product ? R emind clients about an upcoming event

? F ollow up on a purchase ? C ontact a client who hasn't been in touch

for some time ? Schedule a call to discuss a project with a client

They can make use of marketing automation. Using marketing automation software also assists with pulling all marketing tasks together into one central place. That means tasks are less likely to be forgotten or repeated, which makes the daily life of a business that much easier and more efficient.

Marketing automation isn't a one-off event or something that is only taken out of the box for certain tasks. It's an integrated and useful way of approaching everyday marketing tasks in order to streamline them and help bring a business better leads and increased profits.

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PART TWO: DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS

What Is Meant By Digital Communications?

To put it simply, digital communications means communicating via an electronic medium. Digital communications are becoming an increasingly large part of the way businesses communicate with their customers. This poses unique challenges for the print and mail industries who have, of course, previously been largely reliant on paper-based communications since their inception.

Before looking at the place of digital in the world of print ? or the place of print in an increasingly digital world ? let's take a look at some examples of digital communications.

A good example of digital communication is Facebook. Every time you see a well-known brand's Facebook page, packed with content and asking followers to like or share, you're seeing digital communications in action. Another example would be a brand running its own YouTube page, demonstrating its products to its audience, or sharing videos that give a sense of the personality behind the brand.

Some of the most common digital communication channels include: ? S ocial media ? B usiness websites ? M icrosoft or specific product websites ? B logs ? E mail

? S MS messaging

Digital communications also include: ? Instant messaging ? R SS feeds ? O nline games

A Quick History Lesson On Digital Communications There was a time when marketing meant print ads in newspapers, and maybe a TV or radio spot, or a billboard. The idea of marketing mostly online would have seemed foreign. These days, digital communications are becoming the norm.

The very first steps towards digital communications can be traced to the 1980s, with the advent of the personal computer, though of course digital communications as we know them were a long way off at that time.

By the 1990s, the internet was becoming more popular, though its static content was nothing like the communication we see on it today. It was during the 1990s that the internet saw its first clickable banners, and its potential as a marketing tool became clear.

By the middle of the 2000s, things had shifted dramatically. That decade saw the rise of sites we know and use regularly today, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and of course, Google. By the end of the decade, Instagram and Pinterest had joined the mix.

Businesses began to make use of these sites for marketing purposes. In addition, the use of Quick Response (QR) codes and personalized URLs became more commonplace, starting to build a link between traditional and digital marketing methods.

These days, it's widely accepted that a multi-channel approach can bring many benefits to a business.

DIGITAL COMMUNICATION

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What Do Digital Communications Mean To The Print and Mail Industry?

There's no doubt that the rise of digital communications has a direct effect on the print and mail industry. As more and more businesses tap into digital as a more cost effective way of communicating with customers, the demand for printing services has decreased.

That means that print and mail companies who want to survive need to embrace and work with digital communications, not struggle against it. Print and mail customers want services that meet today's demand for multi-channel campaigns, and service providers who don't keep up risk losing out to the competition. However, this isn't necessarily bad news. We're living in

a multi-channel world, with rich, inclusive advertising campaigns. Print absolutely has a role in that ? the key is to truly connect print and mail with digital. Properly targeted print campaigns still have a lot of power. Adding digital into that mix makes them more interactive, and therefore more engaging. It also makes it easier to track their success, which is good news for any printer's customers.

To truly embrace multi-channel campaigns and ensure customers keep choosing them, printers and mailers need to offer digital communications services as part of their overall package. Digital communications services can include:

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