The more personal customer communications become, the more detailed work marketing requires. You can hire more and more marketers to help your business grow, but at some point, scaling becomes impossible without automating repetitive tasks.

But where and how do you start? Here are the essential terms, key steps, and tools for marketing automation. 

Customer Communications Automation

Typically, your customer communication channels will include some from both online and offline marketing:

• online (email marketing, messengers, chat software, etc.),
• offline (direct mail marketing, gifting campaigns, phone calls, etc.).
  

Email marketing campaign automation is the most well-known and common type of marketing automation. But, in fact, any of these communication channels can be fully or partially automated.

There are several factors for successful customer communication automation, and the main ones are:

• clean and accurate customer address list,
• relevant messaging,
• well-selected automation tools. 
  

Of course, each campaign starts with thorough research and planning. You should know exactly who your target customer is, what message to send, and what’s the best timing for this type of communication. And then only automate repetitive tasks.

You can start by understanding what website sections your target audience likes most. Use website snippets to track visitors’ activity and formulate the first message. Segmentation of the target audience is also helpful. Use as many parameters as you can to distinguish segments and groups.

Segment Triggered Campaign

After creating separate segments and groups, you can launch a segment-triggered campaign. It enables a new level of personalization and the new level of efficiency as a result.

Compared to the campaigns targeting the whole database at the same time, segment triggered campaigns have significant benefits:

• customers are more likely to engage,
• segment triggered campaigns result in more conversions,
• better relevancy leads to advanced customer acquisition and retention,
• further data gathering for more email marketing opportunities.
  

Use segment-triggered campaigns for more substantial lifecycle marketing of your business.

The Power of Cross-Channel / Multiсhannel Marketing

It would not be wise to deliver your message via the same channels over and over again, even if the channel is the most effective one. It’s a must to ensure your company’s presence on every platform, which your target audience frequents. 

Monitoring the visitors’ activity and gathering customer data from all these resources gives a comprehensive picture for launching multi-touch marketing campaigns. 

Cross-channel marketing (or multi-channel marketing) enhances the customer experience. But it also requires the brand to go beyond commerce. You should develop a communication strategy for social networks, forums or blogs, and other mediums to ensure consistent and quality interaction with your customers.

For successful multichannel marketing strategies, you should:

• pull the customer data from all the available online and offline communication channels to ensure a single customer view,
• analyze the data,
• A/B test and track the performance.
  

Cross-channel strategies also include remarketing: showing customized ads to people who have already interacted with your website or other resources. 

Tools You Need for Marketing Automation

Since your marketing success heavily relies on the quality of data you’ve collected, we recommend starting with data enrichment and data verification tools for your CRM. 

For example, Inkit Verify will help keep your shipping address database clean, well-formatted, and up-to-date. This is an excellent cost-saving solution to prevent the hassle of wrong deliveries. 

Inkit Render is an HTML info PDF converter for well-balanced paper and paperless document management, with Inkit Send ensuring seamless integration of direct mailings into your automated multichannel campaigns.

For a comprehensive overview of 2021 best automation tools for Marketing and Sales, read our top 10 list here.