Since the January rush can be a busy time for business, we’re noting down 4 automation-based marketing trends in 2022 we think will continue to grow!
The New Year always looks like a good starting point for implementing a fresh, well rounded marketing strategy.
While a change can sometimes be as good as (or better than) a rest, it’s also important to keep on top of changing market conditions and customer behaviours rather than closing the stable door after the horse has bolted!
If you’re not 100% sure what marketing automation is, you might want to give our guide ‘WTF is Automation?’ a read first.
Hyper-personalisation
In a survey conducted by BusinessWire they found that 6 out of 10 Millennials (born between 1981 – 1996) feel a personalised service is more important than keeping their anonymity when browsing online.
Furthermore, over 70% of Millennials are happy to provide access to their mobile data in exchange for a more personalised experience.
By now most businesses are already sending personalised content and communications to their customers, but how do you stand out from the crowd?
Learning your customers behaviours through audience segmentation is the main tried and tested method to help achieve this.
Unfortunately adding in a “Hello *FIRSTNAME*” at the start of an email doesn’t quite cut it anymore. (Although you should be doing this too).
Consumers are actively seeking a positive buying experience from businesses and the ones who lean into their customer’s requests are often the most successful ones.
According to Encharge, two hyper-personalised strategies to try in 2022 include account-based marketing (ABM) and behaviour-based emails.
To give an overview of these, according to B2B Marketing, account-based marketing is a strategic marketing approach jointly implemented by sales and marketing that focuses on targeting key, high-value accounts, whether or not they are existing customers.
Behaviour-based marketing emails adopt a similar approach, but you would target leads or customers who have reached certain milestones in their customer journey such as completing a sign up or opting for a paid plan over a free version of your service.
Omnichannel marketing strategies
So, you’ve got various owned channels for your business, a bright new website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages, maybe even a YouTube channel.
How do you make them all work together while still being able to produce unique content across each channel?
…through omnichannel marketing!
According to Marketing Evolution, as the name suggests, omnichannel marketing is the seamless integration of a business’ various channels through branding, messaging and online and offline touchpoints to help consumers move through the sales funnel.
There are some worthwhile benefits to adopting an omnichannel strategy, as well as it being one of our top marketing trends!
The obvious one is the cohesion between your business channels in terms of the brand strategy and identity.
On top of this businesses can also see better attribution data collected across all channels which will be beneficial for future segmentation and optimising their media spending.
The take home point is that these benefits can lead to higher revenue, which is why you got into business, right?
According to research, customers that engage with businesses across multiple platforms can be up to 30% more valuable than those who don’t.
Mobile-first automation
Did you know that 25% of internet users surf the web exclusively on their mobile devices?
The surge towards online mobile usage doesn’t look like it will be stopping anytime soon either.
According to G2, around 59% of consumers surveyed state that the ability to shop and complete purchases on their mobile devices as an important factor when choosing who to buy from.
With all this in mind it seems fairly obvious that mobile-friendly and mobile-first strategies will be high up on the marketing agenda.
Making sure your website is mobile and tablet accessible is just the first step.
Businesses wanting to take full advantage of these kinds of marketing trends will need to utilise in-app advertisements, push notifications, SMS messages and accelerated mobile pages (AMP) to name but a few.
Statisca thinks that by 2022 around half of website traffic in the US will reach their destination websites through mobile browsing, following the increase of the past 4 years.
With the perceived willingness of consumers to give access to their mobile data in exchange for further personalisation you’d be foolish not to oblige, right?
Conversational marketing and chatbots
According to Forbes, “conversational marketing is the new direct marketing.”
Businesses have come to the realisation that one-way communication with their customers may not be the best approach and have begun changing their ways, in keeping with recent marketing trends.
How do we utilise conversational marketing in our strategy?
What do we do when consumers message us outside of working hours?
This might seem obvious coming from a marketing automation agency, but with automation…that’s how!
More specifically, a lot of businesses are turning to chatbots to handle customer questions ranging from simple inquiries to more complex issues.
The beauty of chatbots is that they don’t have to be completely automatic and exclude the human touch people often feel they’ll lose delving into automation.
For more frequent requests with simpler answers, automated responses can be set to appear almost immediately following a customer question.
If the request is more complex and the chatbot cannot satisfy the customer with an answer, then the issue can be forwarded to a staff member to offer that human touch.
Conclusion
So there you have it, 4 automation-based marketing trends we think will be a hit this year!
This isn’t to say a dark horse won’t come flying out the pack to steal the crown, but based on the way things are moving it does seem like these will be highly important to most marketing teams.
If you’re curious about the services we offer at Airbase, why not visit our services page to find out more.
