In this particular year, the entire Webmecanik team was delighted to be able to participate in the organization of the online version of AutomationDay, the most important conference dedicated to marketing automation in France. The 2020 edition, the one of all records, had as its theme the customer experience. High-profile speakers came to share their experiences and 950 participants attended the conferences, workshops, and networking sessions. Let’s look back at the two workshops led by our dear collaborators, Stéphane Couleaud and Carol Correia. Our CEO was accompanied by Hervé Guillaud, Marketing Director of Dimo Software, to present the key campaigns to engage and re-engage your customers. Carol, our International Manager, took part in the international program to provide us with the key marketing automation campaigns to transform the customer experience.
Engage and re-engage your customers with Marketing Automation
Stéphane Couleaud, CEO of Webmecanik and Hervé Guillaud, Marketing Director of Dimo Software agreed to share their experiences around customer experience and marketing automation best practices to engage and re-engage their customers.
For Stéphane, marketing automation is always necessary to engage contacts. Whether it is for your employees, your prospects or your customers, for each and every one and at every stage there is a campaign. The idea is to track behaviors to get to know your target and react at the right time. This is where the CRM side is essential: to segment your database, it is essential to record all the information of your contacts.
After thinking about your customers’ journey, you need to identify the key moments to give your contacts the right content at the right time.
The homogeneity of the content is important, a coherent universe and discourse is one of the keys to reassure them before buying. Then, personalization is allowed by this CRM and automation alliance: you have the data of your contacts, so use it! You have here, according to Hervé, the bases to make simple itineraries and campaigns that already bring very good returns.
To go further, Stéphane showed us this diagram, which allows you to understand the different objectives and contents to classify in order to successfully engage your customers.
Then, Hervé explained the importance of preparing his campaign well in advance. For example, identifying key dates to optimize addselling and having quality data are essential to deploy the right campaigns at the right time. Indeed, sending a post-sale satisfaction e-mail if the product has not been purchased would have the opposite effect than expected.
Stéphane then presented three campaigns: the first one aims at nurturing (feeding), then proposing a demo; the second one leads to a webinar and the last one aims at segmenting the base according to your personas. Generally speaking, he doesn’t hesitate program reminders. The opening rate is thus doubled. Another suggested good practice: your marketing automation emails are not only beautiful emails like newsletters, you can (and he advises it) send more institutional, hyperpersonalized emails.
These were the tips shared by these two experts to get started in marketing automation, understand the link between CRM and marketing automation and thus engage and re-engage your customers!
The key marketing automation campaigns to transform your customer experience
Carol Correia presented three campaigns to improve the customer experience. According to her, the customer experience is not just about the relationship with your product and the act of buying, but also includes a before and an after.
She goes back over a few key figures: 50% of customers on average leave directly after entering your site, and only 1% enter your CRM and become hot prospects. The idea here is to increase the transformation rate by working with the 49% who are interested in the product but not ready to make a purchase. For this 3 steps are necessary:
- Segmentation
- Nurturing
- Engagement
To achieve this, it is necessary to put yourself in the customers’ shoes, to understand their expectations and find the right content, anticipate their needs and thus create an ideal path to the “Buy” button.
Multiple teams have to intervene for this. The support team must be able to react at any time in case of questions or problems. The marketing team is then there proactively, to accompany the customer, from the moment he enters the site, to the sale, and even afterwards!
Carol then presented her three campaign workflows:
1- Database segmentation
The idea is to send an email with 3 topics, for example. Depending on the subject clicked by the prospect, he then enters one of the three segments related to this subject. You can then address to this prospect only with the subject(s) that interests him/her.
If the prospect doesn’t click on the email, you can send him a reminder email or even plenty if you wish. If he doesn’t engage, he can continue to receive the general emailings.
2- Nurturing campaign
The goal of this campaign is to get the prospect to make an appointment, in a B2B approach.
After downloading a resource (a white paper, a webinar replay, a benchmark, etc.) the prospect enters into the nurturing campaign. If he already has the ‘nurturing’ tag, he has certainly already received these emails, so he should be removed immediately. Otherwise, he should start receiving nurturing emails: one to thank him and suggest new content, and another to suggest an appointment.
If, following this email, the prospect has made an appointment, he leaves this campaign and enters a different campaign, now dedicated to those who booked an appointment. Otherwise, Carol recommends sending him a reminder, and then, if he still hasn’t made an appointment, sending him to a second nurturing campaign, with more informative content for example, until he is mature enough to have a call with a Sales representative.
3- Customer Onboarding
Purpose: To give all the necessary information so that the customer is satisfied with his purchase, to inform him of the new features and eventually to push him to buy more. The idea is to send several emails, each time with important information for the customer. This makes sure that the information is not drowned in other information and to keep a close contact with the customer during his first days as a customer. To check the engagement rate with your content and intervene at the right time, you can set up a scoring system.
During this exciting day, I also discovered the vision of Angélique Gérard (Customer Experience Directot at Iliad group) on the impact of the collaborative experience on a brand, learned from the experience of Grégoire Gambatto (CEO and co-founder of Germinal) on Growthhacking and its sometimes negative impact on the customer experience, listened to Alix Gauthier (COO and co-founder of Explora project) speak passionately about community experience and reflected on Acquisition Strategy Design with Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel (founder of 1min30 agency).
The workshops were rich and numerous and I also enjoyed seeing how marketing automation is used in recruitment by Gregory Saccomani, as well as in the practical case of real estate with Laurence Hermelin. At the end of this fruitful, intense and rewarding day, I am more motivated than ever to work and improve our customer experience!
We’re already looking forward to the 2021 edition. See you there next year?
