Marketing automation is a versatile tool that can be used to improve the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, save a lot of time, and improve user experience (UX). What’s more, marketing automation can easily be used in almost all sectors and industries!
Our platform is used by companies from dozens of different market sectors, but for the sake of this post, we want to show you five major industries that can benefit from marketing automation. What are the best practices you should follow when automating marketing in those sectors?
If you’re familiar with our platform, you know that we have special versions of iPresso for six industries:
- E-commerce
- Finance
- FMCG
- Media & Entertainment
- Travel
- And education
And we took these industries to show you some of the best practices you ought to follow in order to achieve max efficiency. Let’s have a look at them!
E-commerce
It’s undoubtedly one of the busiest market sectors out there. E-commerce companies use marketing automation to enhance customer experience, conduct more effective marketing campaigns, and drive more sales.
- Personalized email campaigns: Use marketing automation to send personalized emails based on user behavior and previous purchases. This way, you can distribute remarketing emails (e.g., about cart abandonment) as well as personalized product recommendations and special offers for your clients. Email marketing can be a great tool to increase sales, but don’t send those emails too often – you don’t want to irritate your customers.
- Start customer segmentation: Different customer segments require different offers and messaging. Segment your audience based on their behavior, purchasing history, and characteristics, and tailor marketing activities to each segment. The efficiency of your marketing will go up!
- Personalize product recommendations: You can do so both in the emails you send as well as on your website. The more personalization you have in your store, the more tailored is your offer to the needs of your customers, which means they will be more willing to spend more money at your store.
- Start a loyalty program: You can use marketing automation to track customer purchases and offer them vouchers and other rewards for their shopping activities. Loyalty programs are frequently utilized by e-commerce companies because they help them build stable and profitable online stores.
Finance
Financial companies are heavily based on building good, long-term relationships with their clients. If you want your clients to entrust you with your money, you need to earn their trust. Follow these best practices to achieve this goal:
- Lead nurturing: This strategy is mostly based on sending your clients relevant content and offers at the right time. For example, if a user downloads an investing guide, they can be sent follow-up emails with more information on financial services.
- Personalized communication: Just like in the e-commerce sector, you should personalize your communication and tailor it to a given customer’s characteristics and financial situation. This way, you can earn their trust and show them that you understand their situation and have offers that meet their specific needs.
- Introduce multichannel communication: You can’t expect your customers to sign up with you just because they’ve seen one ad. You need multichannel communication to find your customers exactly where they are – on social media, on other websites/search engines, and on their mobile devices (think mobile app).
- Ensure security and privacy: This question is crucial in this sector! iPresso comes with high-security standards and encrypted connections, processes, and security procedures confirmed by cyclical audits and ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 recertified annually. Plus, our platform is fully GDPR compliant.
FMCG
FMCG companies communicate with customers both online and offline, e.g., directly in stores. This sector is highly competitive; how can you use marketing automation to increase the effectiveness of your marketing?
- Tailor messaging to each customer’s location: With iPresso, you can send out messages that are differentiated based on the given customer’s location (e.g., regarding the closest store where they can buy your products). This makes your communication more personalized and, therefore, effective.
- Use contextual marketing: Your communication can differ based on external factors, such as the weather or inflation rate. The storm is coming? Tell your customers to hide in the nearest store and try the new version of your candy bar while they’re waiting for the storm to pass! With contextual marketing, you can come up with dozens of such scenarios.
- Combine online and offline: With iPresso, you can not only combine digital strategies with trade-marketing and pro shopper activities. You can also combine physical products with online presence, e.g., by printing promotional QR codes or promo codes on your products.
- Engage your vendors: FMCG companies can use automation to engage with retailers by sending them timely product updates, promotional materials, and reorder reminders.
Media & Entertainment
This sector may be less crowded compared to e.g., e-commerce, but the competition is fierce and you’re fighting for something scarce – customer time. What can media and entertainment companies do to encourage customers to “spend more time with them”?
- Content personalization: iPresso allows you to personalize content recommendations (e.g., movies or shows) based on user preferences and behavior. For example, streaming services can suggest movies based on what a user has previously watched.
- Event promotion: If you organize live events and shows, marketing automation will help you in promoting events through targeted email campaigns, social media posts, and retargeting.
- Audience segmentation: As always, your audience needs to be segmented based on characteristics, viewing habits, and engagement levels.
- Store customer data: Lastly, M&E companies should continually gather knowledge and insights about their customers. Next, you can use this knowledge as a market advantage and a starting point for further, even better and more effective communication activities.
Travel
Travel agencies, airlines, and hotels use marketing automation to drive more bookings/flights and increase customers’ experiences before their board a plane or jump on a train. How can you use marketing automation here?
- Personalized offers: Travel companies use automation to send personalized travel offers based on user preferences and past bookings. For instance, if a user frequently books trips to Greece, they can be targeted with similar offers, thus increasing the chances of booking more travel services.
- Retargeting: Travel companies can use remarketing to restore abandoned searches and bookings in order to increase sales. iPresso enables the identification of abandoned intentions of users according to specific sequences of behavior.
- Travel updates: Use marketing automation to keep your customers in the loop and send them regular travel updates, e.g., via email or WhatsApp (remember that every airport offers free wi-fi!). They will value your ongoing support!
- Content automation: Lastly, travel companies can use content automation in their communications to show real-time information such as weather updates, travel advisories, and special offers. Such communication can also be tailored to other factors, such as the used device.
Education
Educational companies and institutions use marketing automation to attract and retain students. Let’s see how marketing automation can help!
- Lead nurturing: Educational institutions can nurture leads by sending automated emails with relevant information about their current programs, admissions, and even campus life.
- Application process automation: Use marketing automation to streamline the application process. For example, you can send reminders about deadlines, required documents, and interview schedules.
- Personalized educational materials: You can send personalized content based on a given student’s interests and previous academic background. This way, you can increase chances of enrollment and increase customer experience.
- Alumni engagement: Don’t abandon your students once the program is finished! With iPresso, you can keep alumni engaged by sending them updates about the institution, invitations to events, and opportunities for contributions. Who knows, perhaps they will decide to enroll with you again!
Give marketing automation a shot!
As you can see, marketing automation is a helpful and flexible tool! With our help, you can grow your business on auto-pilot. If you want to see how we invite you to try our platform for 30 days entirely for free (no credit card needed!). All you need to do is send this short contact form; our team will take it from there!
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