Personalization strategy is an integral part of traditional marketing. How does it integrate with the marketing automation tactic? What is the connection between them? And how did COVID-19 accelerate their use?
Let's Start... What is Automated Marketing?
Automated marketing / Marketing Automation is a field penetrating the consciousness of marketers and becoming commonplace in the marketing-technological environment in companies and organizations. The company Salesforce defined what marketing automation is: “Marketing automation refers to platforms and technologies designed to help marketing departments and organizations manage marketing efforts more effectively. Marketing automation uses a single platform to manage all aspects of the campaign from one place, including, but not limited to, email marketing, social media, mobile messaging (WhatsApp, SMS), and ad management. That is, marketing automation helps the marketing team automatically manage marketing activities and recurring tasks across multiple channels.
Why is Marketing Automation Good for Marketers?
Marketing tasks include manual, recurring actions in a world where marketing is multi-channel and digital. Automating these actions will free up time and resources for your marketing team, provide you with intelligence to deepen your knowledge of your customers, and help you manage targeted and efficient campaigns and even measure their performance. Therefore, it is not surprising that marketing automation has been adopted by many international brands for performing everyday tasks.
However, in a survey recently published by Social Media Today, it was found that although automation tools are widely used, they cause some concern among marketers:
Of marketing teams use automation tools for social media management
Are concerned about the lack of personalization resulting from automation.
In other words, marketers use automation tools, but fear harming the personal connection with consumers and customers, which is the heart of the marketing world. This issue was reinforced in a global study by PWC which found that as technology advances, most consumers want brands to use technology as a tool to increase personalized support. That is: every customer wants a customer experience tailored to their needs.
A Crisis of Opportunities – Digital Marketing During the COVID-19 Era
In many cases, technology advances faster than the business environment, creating a new, massive, data-driven marketing. The COVID-19 period clearly illustrated this trend: many companies chose or were forced to strengthen their digital marketing and service operations, and as a result, there was an increase in the volume of consumer data accumulated in companies. This created an opportunity to derive data-driven decisions from this information and realize the business potential inherent in it, through personalized marketing that provides consumers and customers with a complete response to their needs and a personal shopping experience.
Accelerated investment in digital and technology in the marketing field
Reported that marketing systems contributed significantly to growth in 2020
These changes require marketing managers to step forward and combine their marketing knowledge and experience accumulated over the years with the ability to read digital data, work with technology and data security teams, and rely on data when making decisions regarding marketing budgets, marketing messages, branding, and image.
What is the Difference Between Automated Marketing and Personalized Marketing?
Unlike traditional marketing that focuses on quantity over quality and relies primarily on broad media deployment to acquire a limited number of customers, personalized marketing (also known as customized marketing or 1:1 marketing) is a strategy that places the customer at the center of activities and requires you, as marketing managers, to examine every campaign, project, technology, or marketing message through the consumer’s eyes. The use of an automated marketing system is tactical – deploying campaigns that meet customer needs at that specific point in time within a dedicated system, based on the segments and dedicated value propositions you defined as part of the personalized marketing strategy.
Marketing Automation Campaign – How It Works for You
Have you decided to launch a new, multi-channel campaign to be released via email, Google, and Facebook?
In the manual process, you will need to export a customer list to an Excel file courtesy of the customer service department, pass through data security, transfer it to the media agency which will upload the Excel file to Google and/or Facebook’s advertising system, target the audience, and launch the campaign. Replicate this process for an email marketing and SMS or WhatsApp campaign.
In the automated process, the marketing system is connected to one or more of the company’s information systems, pulls customer data via a direct and secure connection (complying with regulatory requirements), feeds the audiences to Facebook and Google, and sends them email messages with personalized timing, according to the customer journey. During and at the end of the campaign, multi-channel data on customer activity is received, cross-referenced with additional data, and valuable insights are gained.
In other words, marketing automation enables the optimization of tasks around the customer across all communication channels and provides a variety of benefits:
- High operational efficiency and manpower savings
- Simultaneous management of a variety of tasks: campaign management, landing pages, websites, emails, forecasting, customer scoring, customer lifecycle management, and more
- Freeing up resources to promote customer loyalty and generate new revenue
- Aggregating all customer behavior data in a single system
How to Tailor Unique Personal Messages to Hundreds of Thousands of Consumers?
As mentioned, personalized marketing is capable of tailoring distinct and unique messages to each customer that interest them personally, and developing an exceptional personal experience for them, significantly impacting their attitude toward your brand. The secret to success lies in an in-depth understanding of customers, segmentation, and profiling based on demographics, location, interests, and consumer behavior. This data enables you to provide the customer with content, value propositions, and purchase recommendations, based on customer history, current or future needs, and consumer trends among customers.
And to Implementation. How to Choose a Marketing Automation System?
In the marketing world, dozens of marketing automation systems are offered, with various budgets and scopes of activity, ranging from global corporations to mid-sized companies and SMBs.
Systems for Corporations
Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, or Salesforce Marketing Cloud offer built-in solutions for automated management of a multi-channel customer journey, analytics, and data analysis
Systems for Mid-Sized Companies
HubSpot, designed for mid-sized companies, focuses on inbound marketing and personalized marketing strategy, with built-in CRM, project management, and automation systems
Systems for Small Businesses
Zoho or Israeli systems like Smoove, ActiveTrail, Flashy include CRM and marketing automation capabilities
The technologies exist in abundance. All you have to do is choose the system that perfectly meets your needs, and connect it to the enterprise CRM or ERP systems. This way, you will enjoy a complete marketing system operating optimally, both on a technical and a business level. The market offers a wide variety of marketing automation systems suitable for businesses and companies of all scales of operation.
Automated Marketing - Humans Will Prevail
In conclusion, the combination of personalized marketing strategy and automated marketing systems creates a dramatic impact on the digital-marketing landscape and offers high added value to both marketers and consumers. However, remember that automation is not intended to replace the human element, but to help the marketing team dedicate time and energy to creative thinking, trial and error, and decision-making. This frees them from operational and data transfer tasks, allowing them to provide personal attention and an excellent customer experience to every customer, thus continuing to grow.
Article Author
Sigal Van-Creveld, 33, founded a web development company at the age of 23, worked at the Atomic digital agency for 6 and a half years, and then as a digital manager at Harel Insurance. Sigal consults companies and corporations in automated marketing, digital strategy, and digital conversion areas.
