For its seventh edition, the AutomationDay 2023 event took place on Tuesday, October 3, 2023 and brought together nearly 300 people throughout the day. Two conferences and three workshops, around the themes of Marketing Automation and Sales, punctuated this day full of insights, which took place on the Livestorm platform.
From 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., renowned speakers followed one another during five remote webinars to share the latest trends in digital marketing and customer experience. Stéphane Couleaud, President of Webmecanik, and Norman Pracht, its CEO, led the discussions throughout this day, also supported by our three sponsors: Webmecanik, Winbound, and EMDay.
A look back at these five sessions that opened up new perspectives for 2024?
Emotional marketing and AI in the morning
Led by Stéphane Couleaud, the morning of AutomationDay 2023 allowed our two speakers, Patrice Laubignat and Emilie Marquois, to present the hot topics of emotional marketing and artificial intelligence in content creation. Let’s get started!
Conference 1: is it possible to automate emotional marketing?
Patrice Laubignat, founder of EforBrands and author of the book Marketing ZERO, kicked things off and
offered a reflection on the automation of emotional marketing. Or how to stay close to your customers while showcasing your products. He recommends three strategies that are absolutely essential to remember:
- Do less but better by focusing on effective tools and ensuring that actions are aligned with the brand’s mission.
Fewer actions = more value created for customers, for the community, and for the brand.
- Respect for the brand, employees, partners, and the planet, in accordance with regulations and performance measured by customer love.
- Prospect recognition and email personalization, emphasizing personalization as a way to establish strong emotional relationships with customers by adopting a generous, intuitive, and reciprocal approach. In short, Patrice Laubignat encourages sales and marketing teams to learn more about the customer in order to engage in a human, respectful, and personalized conversation. The consultant sums up his presentation as follows: “Nothing is more emotional than a postcard. Creating emotions, offering personal touches, showing a certain humility in your posture, asking questions, listening, and being available are strong assets for getting a follow-up in your exchange with your contact. Every message must be a postcard!” ?
> Watch the session replay here.
Conference 2: AI and marketing automation: what strategy should you adopt for creating high-performing content?
A Social Media Consultant and freelance Community Manager based in the Paris region, Emilie Marquois is also part of La Brigade du Web, the platform that brings together digital economy events in the main digital sectors.
The expert shared her feelings about generative artificial intelligence and explained that she went through 4 stages when this new technology arrived:
- Stage 1 – NOVELTY: “In November 2022: OpenAI launches ChatGPT”.
- Stage 2 – OVERLOAD: “Why is everyone talking about ChatGPT?”
- Stage 3 – QUESTIONING: “I have a ‘vintage’ approach to social media, so generative AI…”
- Stage 4 – CURIOSITY / CONSTRAINT: “It’s time to investigate.”
During 30 minutes of discussion, Emilie Marquois offered thoughtful insight and pragmatic advice without getting lost in the technical details. She notably explained that generative AI is defined as AI systems capable of creating various types of content indistinguishable from real data, offering real potential in marketing automation despite sometimes exaggerated expectations.
She clarified that marketers are becoming increasingly comfortable with this technology and consider it an essential tool, one that presents both benefits and concerns related to its use. Her advice? Don’t miss out on AI, but clearly understand your objectives, choose the right tools, and maintain creative collaboration between AI and humans to succeed in creating high-performing content
Watch the session replay here.
And you, how do you feel about generative artificial intelligence? Are you going to use it to run your marketing automation campaigns or create your content? Reply to us here!
At midday, Stéphane Couleaud concluded the morning presentations to make way for Norman Pracht starting at 1:30 p.m. On the afternoon agenda? The AutomationDay sponsors: Webmecanik, Winbound, and EMDay! A look back at these three practical workshops:
Marketing Automation, CRM and UX in the afternoon
Our sponsors joined us throughout the afternoon of October 3 to offer participants practical workshops. The goal: make their marketing and sales strategy a reality. From email UX, to the combined use of a CRM and Marketing Automation software, to the best tips for engaging B2B customers over the long term… These experts were by our side from 2 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Here is our recap:
Workshop 1: how to move to the next level with marketing automation? Discover 4 advanced campaigns.
Sophie Panot, Marketing Director at the software vendor of marketing automation and CRM, Webmecanik, spoke to teams looking to optimize their strategy. Through four campaigns, she gave participants the keys to convert even faster!
First case: synchronize data between marketing automation and CRM, from:
- A campaign, following an action.
- A form, after it is submitted: it is sent to the CRM so that the sales team can follow up and take action.
- Scoring, when a contact reaches a point threshold, it can be pushed into the integration.
> Business case: the advantages of a perfectly connected marketing and sales environment
Second case: focus on optimizing an event by creating an online post-event campaign. To do this, you must:
- segment participants
- prepare relevant messages
- integrate the data into the CRM
Example of a post-event campaign
Do you want this template for your future marketing automation campaigns? Go here:
Download the template to create your marketing automation campaigns
Third case: use multi-scoring to qualify and prioritize leads by assigning points to various actions, such as clicks in emails or participation in events.
Fourth case: discover all the advantages of A/B testing for effective campaigns, highlighting the key steps to follow for meaningful tests. Sophie Panot insists on the need to test one variable at a time for precise analysis and iterative improvements.
Replay: discover the four campaigns in detail here
Workshop 2 – Winbound: the importance of CRM in your marketing and sales strategy
Laurence Darbonnel, Consulting Director in B2B digital strategy at Winbound –
Inbound Marketing & ABM shared the importance of CRM in marketing and sales strategy.
- Why and how should marketing and sales be aligned?
- What difference does a CRM make?
- Real-life cases
First of all, she emphasizes the need to align a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution with marketing and sales strategies. By integrating the best practices of “Smarketing” (Sales + Marketing), this synergy greatly helps achieve the company’s objectives and maximizes the efficiency of actions and growth. The key benefits are:
- Common and shared objectives
- Better management and sharing of data (scoring…)
- More relevant campaigns (inbound marketing/inbound sales)
- Greater consideration of on-the-ground reality (content relevance)
Regarding CRM, she explains that equipping yourself with a good CRM enables data centralization, better knowledge of your contacts, process automation, customer segmentation, and data-driven decision-making. Well-equipped companies can therefore transform themselves and achieve their objectives effectively. Indeed, the expert reports that 92% of companies say CRM played an important role in achieving their revenue goals. ?
Discover the two customer cases highlighted during her webinar here?
Watch Laurence Darbonnel’s session replay
Workshop 3 – EMDay: Email UX at the service of your click-through rates: boost the performance of your Marketing Automation
To conclude this great day, Norman Pracht gave the floor to Gabriel Gastaud, founder of the agency Viaretina and speaker at our partner Email Marketing Day.
- Understand and act on user experience to improve your click-through rates
In this workshop, Gabriel Gastaud enables participants to understand and act on user experience to improve the click-through rates of your emails. Through examples of existing emails, he shares his expertise and helps participants understand the best practices to adopt when you want to communicate with your customers. A look at the five essential steps your customers go through when opening your communication.
- Opening the email
- Load = the loading speed of your email and its accessibility are major factors in avoiding losing your customer. Indeed, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile site takes more than 3 seconds to load. (Google, Consumer Insights)
- Scan = do you create a good first impression? Because 94% of internet users base their first impression on the design of your email. (British Research)
- Act = support action: optimize your call to action (CTA) and your value proposition. Every internet user receives dozens of emails per day and must be guided by your message before deciding whether it is worth clicking. To do this, striking colors, an easy-to-read font, visible buttons, and a clean design can be great assets.
- CLICK! If the previous steps are respected, your customer should have no trouble clicking on your email and perhaps even buying into your offer!
This email from Apple achieved 83% clarity according to UX criteria….
…versus only 56% for Cdiscount, in an email sent in 2011.
In short, maximizing the effectiveness of emails in user engagement and the success of the marketing campaign comes down to a few details, but they should not be overlooked.
Key takeaways:
- Your customers’ attention is precious and limited.
- Your emails must be accessible, clear, concise, and action-oriented.
- The experience you offer is above all visual, so open your eyes and be pragmatic!
To conclude, Gabriel Gastaud quotes Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: ” Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. “
Watch the session replay here.
We would like to once again thank the AutomationDay organization, which allowed us to attend this day dedicated to Marketing Automation and Sales. We can’t wait for next year’s 2024 edition!
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