Archive for category: General

In the content overwhelming world we live in, successful marketing becomes a tricky business. In order to manage the incredible amount of content and reach your clients in the most successful and effortless way, this smart solution was invented: marketing automation.

What is marketing automation?

You know when you enter a certain type of service you receive a “Welcome” email? And one week after having opened the email you get another email offering you a unique discount? And then two days later a text message reminding you about that special discount? Marketing automation is the “behind-the-scenes” of this mechanism.
Marketing automation allows you to preset actions that will take place automatically as a reaction for different scenarios. The automatic process begins with a trigger which is in fact the act of the contact (clicking on a link or opening an email for example), which leads to a sequence of predefined actions. The automation allows a preset destination that you would like your contacts to reach while creating action-based courses that will lead them straight to it.

The advantages of marketing automation

Saving time: we apologize in advance for quoting the cliché “Time is Money״, but it’s true, especially when talking about your business. Using the automation process will save the marketing and client service team precious time from dealing with repetitive manual actions (such as data collection and segmentation) since it just performs those actions on their behalf.

Personalization: personalization has been the serious buzzword over the past several years, and rightfully so – within the ocean that floods us, all we need is personal attention in the form of content that is personalized for us. Automation is based on your contact’s behavior and actions and it allows you to send the right sequence of messages for each contact according to the actions they performed.
For example – using information such as date of birth will allow you to send your contacts a personalized coupon on their birthday. A client didn’t open their email? In that case, the system will identify that as a trigger to send them a second message reminding them of the special offer code.

User audience segmentation: it used to be common to see the target audience of business as one straw, however, today it is clear that segmentation is the way to go. Using marketing automation, we are able to send different messages to different segments based on various settings such as age, gender, living area, and fields of interest, which will make your entire marketing array smarter, more effective and precisely adapted to each segment.

Automatic timing: timing is everything, and when the sending times of certain messages can be preset in the system, it creates a significant advantage. Imagine the following scenario: a new contact joined your new customers’ club. Using the automation, you can predefine a sequence of content messages that will be sent to them in predefined times to keep them active and interested; promotions, discounts, informative texts, anything you want! And combined with the automated timing, you can provide the best marketing course for that user.

5 steps for building an automated marketing plan

Define a goal: successful marketing will always be based on a super-goal, whether it is expanding the client circle, increasing the sales of a certain product, or a new market breakthrough – predefine your goal and let it lead you.

Segment audiences: each audience is unique, and correct segmentation while sending relevant content series to each group will make your marketing more efficient and cost-effective. Need an example? Considering your business operates all throughout Europe, sending messages based on a living area will enable you to efficiently create relevant content for the residents of each area.

Create personal relations: information that you have about your clients such as names, dates of birth, and place of residency become fertile ground for creating personal and close relations. Just think how nice it is to receive an email that addresses you by your first name rather than using a generic title that was clearly written for all users. By using personal relation elements, you can enlarge the chances of clicking, call for action and a sense of positivity towards your business.

Prepare content in advance: tight and precise content is crucial for the success of the campaign and preparing it in advance (rather than a last-minute rush) increases its chances of it actually being successful. Prepare the content for the emails and text messages of your campaigns so that it is high-quality content.

Analyze data: after succeeding in all the steps, it’s time to check your data. Analyze your campaign data to see what worked better and what didn’t work in order to improve for your next campaign.

Need any ideas for use of automation?

Special events: birthdays, anniversaries, date of joining the club – use data your contacts gave you to make them feel special on those dates which are important for them. If your business is a shop, you can send a special discount code for those celebrating their birthday at the beginning of the month, and in case they didn’t use their discount code, send them a reminder several days later with a unique SMS to use the discount.

Opinion: following a purchase of a service, send your clients a survey to keep in contact with them and allow them to give you feedback. A client gave you a good rating? Thank them in a personal email with a unique discount. Got negative feedback? Send the rater a text message saying you’re sorry to hear about it with a request for suggestions to improve the experience.

Abandoned cart: the client didn’t complete the purchase? You can remind them using a personal email about the items after a certain preset amount of time, or even add a discount code that will encourage them to come back and complete their purchase.

Message sequence: a message sequence is when you send your clients after a certain action to keep active and continuous contact with them. For example, a new user joining the member’s club – start with an email congratulating them for joining and offering a discount code upon their first purchase. Continue with a text message three days later reminding them about the new membership discount and two weeks later send an email with fun and interesting information about the products and your business.

Now that you are (virtually) possessing the knowledge and the tools – it is now the time to hit the road and automate your business!

The business world is in a period of transition. We are experiencing the fourth industrial revolution – significant changes are happening in technology, industry, and day-to-day life in a rapid way. Companies across the globe started realizing that today’s customers are connected, informed, and technologically savvy and they expect that the companies and the brands will also be likewise.

Digital transformation — the process by which organizations modernize themselves to incorporate new digital technologies throughout their entire business — is becoming completely essential. Salesforce, widely recognized as one of the most innovative CRM in the world, helps companies in their digital transformation while making them more agile and increasing their ability to innovate.

In this article, we look into two important areas in a business that digital transformation most affected – Sales and Service. One brings in new customers and the other retains existing customers.

​Digital transformation in Customer Services

Customer expectations of how companies should interact with them have changed significantly.

Additionally, more than 70% of consumers say that customer service provided at any time has an influence on their loyalty. They want brands that can offer service and support them where they are, that offer a seamless experience across every channel.

Salesforce service cloud offers great tools that help the service agents work on the cases efficiently with the single customer view at their disposal. The community cloud with Knowledge center enabled is a great example. This offers features like self-logging of incidents, service tickets, and knowledge base articles that can be searched. Customers need to easily contact the Service team in the channel they most prefer be it Email, SMS, Phone, WhatsApp etc. To accomplish this, you may want to look at AppExchange apps that centralize all the communication channels, syncs the data with Salesforce seamlessly, with the option to access the information within SF at any time.

Digital transformation in Marketing

The aim of marketing is to increase your customer base and revenue while spending less money. Digital marketing helps in generating more quality leads and helps you to be in the same digital space as all of your customers.

In this age of customers, you’ll need to change your marketing strategy. Switch marketing print materials with digital materials, printed mail campaigns with personalized email campaigns and journeys, billboard advertising with social media advertising, brick and mortar storefronts with online websites and eCommerce sites, loyalty clubs with mobile apps, and loyalty gamification.

Using Salesforce you can build 1-1 personalized customer journeys spread across multiple channels be it Email, SMS, Mobile Apps, or Social Media, and reach the customers in the channels they are active and at the time they most prefer. The message you reach out to customers should be personalized and relevant to the customer based on their past transactions, their personal purchase preferences in their preferred channel of communication.

Another thing that is important to pay attention to is responsiveness. In a digital-first world, where every content you share, every email you send is opened via mobile, the content has to be mobile responsive. Therefore you must use default mobile responsive aligning with your strategy.

Digital transformation is a must if you as a business want to stay current in this period of revolution. Choose the right platform, app, and software that is best in the business and serves your customers well, help your company grow and transform into this digital world.

We watch series on streaming apps (Netflix) that adapt different content to our personal taste, listen to music according to playlists adapted for us. We live in a world in which everything is personalized. This is the consumer revolution of the new business world and that is what potential clients are expecting of you. The most personalized experience possible.

In an era of digital transformation in which we are all bombarded with content coming from all directions, making your contacts open the email or newsletter sent to them requires a precise adaptation of what interests them, and even more so – of the way they think.
Studies show that starting the moment a person comes across an email or a landing page, it takes them 3-5 seconds to decide whether they would like to continue reading or move on to the next thing.

A proven way to intrigue your client into staying and keep reading is by triggering the right marketing message to the right person. How is it done? Using segmentation.
Market segmentation is a division of audiences into groups according to common characters, out of the purpose of adapting campaigns and automatic processes to them. The more precisely you segment your contacts, the more personally you will be able to address them and increase the chances of the email you sent actually being opened, read, and eventually boosting your campaign as well as the conversion and purchase rates. Studies show that the opening rates of segmented campaigns increased by 14% and clicks by 62%.

So which tools can assist in market segmentation? according to which segmenting categories? And what can be done with all this information? All the answers are coming up…

Tips and ideas for your market segmentation

In order to send each person the content and information that fits them, we first need to locate the common characteristics of the target audience, and in fact, create sub-audiences out of them. Ideas for common characteristics:

• Biographic characteristics – age, gender, type and level of education, field of business.
  This category is particularly important for matching the service/product. The brand of yoga for pregnant women will usually address women. The way of addressing and way of writing (slang, professional) could change when addressing teenagers or adults and helps adapt the message to the target audience.
• Demographic data – living area, family status, etc.
  Helpful mainly in publications of local events and business for which the living environment is relevant.
• Shopping preferences – where your contacts usually shop: online or physical shops. What grabs their attention: offers and sales or being the first to purchase the latest update?
• Significant dates – birthdays and anniversaries, birth, sweet sixteen, etc.
  Relating to personal events and dates of your contacts will increase the engagement and personal contact, through sending a personal card with wishes together with the offer.
• Subscription rate – in order to strengthen the relations with the contacts that went a long way with you or increase new subscribers. For example, sending a card or discount for one year of the date they subscribed.

Which tools are at your disposal to create segmentation?

After defining the right characteristics for segmentation of the target audience to sub-groups, you must have asked yourselves how can we collect all this data… so here are a number of tools and ways to receive this information:

• Using signup forms embedded in your website and popups – the registrations testify to various fields of interest and allow segmentation of your contacts into groups.
  For ex., an interior design website will have a popup show for a webinar on the kitchen design page. The subscribers will be added to a group of people interested in kitchens. On the garden design page, the signup form for the mailing list regarding garden architecture will appear.
• Landing page – a concise and focused web page designated to call for action. This is another great opportunity to add, in the form, additional questions beyond basic contact info.
  For example, a traveling company can ask which kind of vacation you would be interested in: relaxing, hiking or extreme vacation.
• Mailing – did they open, click or share – here you can learn quite a bit about certain content that might interest your contacts – which mails do they tend to open more than others? Those elaborating about a certain content or updated on offers and sales? On which days and times did they open the email, and do they even react to the call for action.

How do we move forward 🙂

Once you’ve fulfilled your obligations and sent the subscribers the thing you committed to sending, it is time to send the same group further relevant offers – but make sure not to spam them. You can send all the subscribers a digital download menu about building websites, emails about opening a website building course in the summer and later on a newsletter with updates in the field.
Once you’ve obtained personal data such as date of birth, anniversary, you can send a happy birthday and gift code on January 1st to all of the people born in January.
This information is valuable to strengthening personal relations with the client.

How can we improve? Using analytics reports – following up on opening and clicking on links will reflect an image of the interest level and responsiveness of your client.
Any answer to any question can be a segment list to which additional mailing should be sent according to the action performed.

In conclusion, correct use of market segmentation and implementing the ideas listed above will assist you in sending your clients content that has relevant value for them, significantly increase the chances of the email you’ve sent being appropriately received, and create a loyal client community in the long term.

In the last decade, not to mention in the last year of 2020, the way people work and communicate within the organization has changed dramatically. Adapting to those changes and to the evolution of the organization and the people constructing it is as important as adapting to the market and consumer evolution.
Today we are focusing on the most recent trends in internal communications, and how you can easily and quickly adapt to them, optimizing essential elements as company culture, values, employees’ connection to the company and their engagement in its activities.

Remote work

One of the trends that were dramatically accelerated in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic and is still as evident in 2021 is remote work. Many organizations switched to a full-on remote work model, while others took on a mixed office/remote work model, and predictions suggest remote work will stick long after the market returns to “normal”. Working remotely has many benefits. At the same time, it also requires a shift in internal communications to keep employees focused, productive, up to date, and feeling connected.

Ever-changing world

We live in an ever-changing era thanks to its dynamic technological nature. Innovation, change, and rapid shifts are the constant in our lives today, work environment being no different. This dynamic nature is manifested in the experience of employers, employees, and candidates, forcing organizations to continuously monitor, adapt, and correspond with the never-ending stream of data and forces of change.

Transparency and clarity

Employees today want and ask for transparency, reliability, and clarity in their workplace. They want the ease and sense of security that comes from receiving data and info that is clear and reliable, allowing them to direct their attention and skills to their future. Employees today do not settle for a false sense of confidence that all will be ok. They wish to be part of an organization that tackles issues with accountability.

Update > Engage > motivate

A motivated employee today is an employee that is up to date with the organization’s doing, that feels connected to its values and significant to achieving its objectives.

Employees touchpoints

Well-being is an integral part of employees’ needs, and organizations’ need to deliver. Well-being is manifested in various ways, including the culture and after hours events and activities usually managed by the HR department; mental health and well-being support in personal and global times of difficulty as we could very well see during the Covid pandemic of 2020, and more.

How to optimize internal communications?

To deliver all we have mentioned above and more of the current trends and needs of employees these days, you need to assist in a system able to meet these aspects of internal communications, delivering as many of the following as possible:

• Easy and friendly to use
• Accessible across the board from the most to the least tech-savvy employee
• Available
• Allowing direct messaging communicating
• Avoiding the need to wait for IT, designers, and more
• Multi-channeled: Email, SMS, WhatsApp, chat, video.

Each organization and enterprise has their own language, voice, and colors. Understanding these elements is based on understanding the organizational culture, company values, human mix, and more. To deliver a good internal communication meeting current work trends, there is need to assist in the right system / tools for conveying the right messages in the right manner, time, and format. We hope that after reading this article you have a better sense of how to do that.