Marketing Automation Trends Strengthening Brand-Customer Relationship

The Coronavirus pandemic, in 2020, led to a nationwide lockdown bringing the economy to a standstill. It caused disruptions across industry verticals. With business models unsettled, brands needed to find newer and innovative marketing methods to keep their customers engaged. This led to marketing automation coming to the forefront of a brand’s marketing strategy.

Emailmonday’s “The Ultimate Marketing Automation stats” found that 51% of companies on average already use marketing automation. Further, more than half of the B2B companies (58%) are planning to adopt the technology. Considering the same, the Marketing Automation Software market may continue growing at 8.55% through the year 2021. This could lead to a market capitalization of USD 6.4 billion by 2024.

Today, there are a few trends that are dominating the industry.

The Success of personalized content

As more and more brands reach out to a customer with various content, the way to create a lasting impression is through personalizing the messaging. Using social listening, user attributes, on-site behavioural attributes, and past purchase data allow marketers to develop customer profiles accurately. This further makes way for hyper-personalization and predictive recommendations.

Today, brands like Netflix and Starbucks are successfully utilizing AI-ML to create hyper-personalized experiences for brand loyalists. Their consistent growth paves the way for other brands to replicate this predictive personalization within their marketing strategy.

The importance of Social Media Marketing cannot be undervalued

A Nielsen report found social media volume increased by a whopping 50X surge in the first week of March 2020 in India. Further, as people spend more time at home with reduced socializing and physical activity, many turn towards various social media platforms as a means of news and social interaction. Further, the Gen Z and millennial population continue to enter the workforce. Thus, their purchasing power grows as well.

Building a strong customer base with this population requires engaging with them on relatable platforms. Brands, recognizing this, have been focussing dedicatedly to ensure continued engagement on social media. In fact, 2020 witnessed a 20% increase in the social media budget of brands.

Growing demand for Chatbots

The use of Chatbots continues to gain momentum. This software application that conducts online chat services with customers allows brands to gain necessary customer preferences, grievances and other such details. As the technology matures, chatbots are expected to be developed further to become smarter and be able to make behavioural recommendations.

Facebook Messenger is a great example of the success of chatbots. The research found that over 60% of users engaged when a chatbot pinged them on Messenger. Soon, brands may integrate chatbots with their API on WhatsApp which also carries a huge potential for brand engagement for all companies.

The use of Integrated Cross-Channel Marketing continues

Another very prevalent trend is the use of an integrated multi-channel marketing strategy. Today, for an effective campaign, a brand must deploy the use of multiple marketing mediums while running multiple campaigns. Engaging customers across multiple touchpoints leads to a stronger brand recall. A recent Deloitte research titled “Future of experience” found that as compared to a single-channel outreach model, employing 2 or more communication channels grows engagement levels by over 166%. As marketers design, an integrated marketing strategy, the tools of marketing automation help create and distribute the content at scale.

Designing a Mobile 1st approach

The mobile is one of the primary devices used for communication. In 2020, Indians spent 39% more time on mobile phones as per the App Annie's 'State of Mobile 2021 Report'. Brands have now started to create elaborate mobile engagement strategies within their marketing plans. Tools such as push and web notifications, SMS, mobile wallet, and in-app notifications continue to generate good results. Marketing Automation helps understand and plan the use of these tools effectively, weaving all various campaigns cohesively. The mobile-first index released in 2020 by Google are leading brands to revisit their websites for mobiles.

With the use of marketing automation, marketers today can deliver a meaningful customer experience through consistent content across multiple channels. Thus, the demand for marketing automation remains undisturbed and strong as it continues to nurture the brand-customer relationship through these tough times.

The author of the article is Priyam Jha, AVP, Brand Marketing, WebEngage