Justin Nichols, Penrod’s Vice President of Product & Practice, believes that success is driven by process. He enjoys continuously evolving our process in order to keep up with technology innovations & economic shifts. Today’s focus will be on today’s automated marketing techniques through Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
In today’s digital world everyone is inundated with Marketing. Whether checking emails, scrolling Facebook or watching TV, at every turn there is heavy competition for a potential customer’s attention. The continual barrage of advertising can make it tough to get a message across. In an ideal world a message would be delivered to potential customers with relevant content, at the perfect time, leading to high conversion rates & ROI, with minimal waste in marketing dollars. Automated Tools like Salesforce.com & Marketing Cloud make this very achievable.
Salesforce is a powerful platform that will allow for the aggregation of contact & lead data that will be fluid based on interactions with Sales, Customer Service, a company’s website, ERP or any integrated system. Salesforce is often referred to as the “System of Engagement.” It’s the tool that is used to engage with your customers through every portion of the customer lifecycle.
Marketing Cloud
Marketing Cloud provides the functionality to enable marketing automation & social interactions in one tool. It allows marketers to take users on a journey across all channels, allowing for nimble and intelligent interactions that are meaningful to your customers & drive revenue. The native Salesforce connector enables a reliable & robust bi-directional integration.
You’re probably thinking “yeah, that’s great & all, but how does this affect my business?” Great Question. I will outline a few basic scenarios that I have seen drive revenue our clients using Salesforce Marketing automation.
Customer Re-Engagement
Company: ABC Sportings Goods Retailer
Marketing Need: ABC Sporting Goods would like to re-engage customers that haven’t purchased from them in 6 months. The engagement needs to be targeted & relevant for each customer.
Audience Example: Camping Gear, Footwear and Golf Customer Audiences
Solution: Use a multi-channel approach to reach each customer segment, using data from Salesforce. Since, we have the aggregated customer data we can break out each audience & create specific customer Journeys. The journey will encompass Facebook, Twitter & Email interactions, that change the message based on the customer’s behavior.
Wendy “The Camper”: ABC Sporting Goods sends Wendy an email with targeted messaging pertaining to camping and camping gear. Wendy opens the email but doesn’t click through. Wendy also receives a camping equipment ad from ABC Sporting Goods on her Facebook timeline & clicks through to the website but does not purchase. Wendy does not interact with the twitter ad. Since, ABC has built out the journey to be intelligent based on customer behavior we know Wendy is engaged with the brand but has not purchased. The journey tailors to her behavior and the next Facebook ad offers a discount for free shipping on purchases over $50. Wendy purchases from the discount offer, is moved out of the re-engagement journey & into a customer nurturing journey where she receives weekly camping emails from ABC Sporting goods.
Marketing Cloud Products:
- Journey Builder
- Email Studio
- Advertising Studio
Abandoned Cart
Company: ABC Sportings Goods Retailer
Marketing Need: ABC Sportings Goods would like to follow up with customers that visted abcsporting.com & left items in their cart. Initial, follow-up should happen 2 days after cart is abandoned, if no action is taken additional follow-up should happen every 3 days for 2 weeks. The interaction should happen via the customer’s preferred interaction method of email or SMS message. If the customer changes items in cart or makes a purchase the marketing interaction should react appropriately.
Audience Example: Current Customers
Solution: Use a dual-channel approach to reach the customer segment, using data from your website. Since, we have the abandoned cart data we can target our customer with relevant data. The journey will use both SMS and Email interactions, that change the message based on the customer’s behavior & preferences.
Adam “The Abandoner:” Adam adds new basketball shoes and shorts to his cart but never completes his purchase. His preference within the system is to be contacted via email.
• Scenario 1: 2 days pass without any interaction from Adam. ABC Sporting Goods & him a targeted reminder via email to come back and complete his cart, outlining his abandoned items. No action is taken, he receives another targeted abandon cart email 3 days later & returns to purchase. He returns to the site and purchases the shoes. He is removed from the journey & does not receive further abandoned cart messages.
• Scenario 2: Adam returns to the site the next day. He adds a new pair of shoes to his cart & changes his contact preference to SMS, then leaves without purchasing. Marketing Cloud recognizes both changes & he is re-entered in the abandoned cart journey wait time of two days. Two days pass & ABC Sporting Goods send him a targeted SMS message. Adam ignores it but returns to purchase the following day. He is removed from the journey & does not receive further abandoned cart messages.
Marketing Cloud Products:
- Journey Builder
- Email Studio
- Mobile Studio
The scenarios above are very simplistic examples of what can be achieved with Salesforce & Marketing Cloud. Getting targeted messaging to your customers where it matters, can be the difference between a purchase & a missed opportunity. With Marketing, every little bit helps & creating a customer journey that is both individually targeted & holistically branded delivers a message that creates actionable results.