Low effort, high return – that’s the dream for most B2B buyers. They want a frictionless buying experience that results in making exactly the right purchase. Deliver ease of use to your customers, and you’ll keep them for life. Real-time marketing automation creates a more responsive interaction with buyers, smoothing the way for the easiest possible buying journey. Here’s why a real-time approach matters to your buyers.
Automated Communication
Many questions your leads have can be answered with an autoresponse or pre-set content. Although every buying journey’s different, some parts of the path are similar enough that you can entrust them to your MARKETING AI®. Onboarding new leads, for example, is fairly straightforward, and you can easily automate the welcome package to set up an account, sign up for your newsletter, and fill out preference pages. Leads’ journeys also overlap when they take specific actions such as attending a webinar or downloading a white paper, which can also be largely automated.
Real-Time Profiles
It’s good to collect behavioral data on your leads; it’s great to collect and respond to it in real time. Your marketing automation system is adaptive and can base future interactions on present ones. Social media channels use similar algorithms to suggest other accounts you might want to follow or associates you might have in common with people on your friends list. If your lead visits a series of related product pages, for example, your marketing automation software pays attention to that browsing behavior and takes it into account for current and future sessions.
Improved Testing
Testing is always valuable, but the results are more meaningful when they’re closely tied to the time of the testing. With real-time A/B split testing, you eliminate almost all the lead time between message and reaction. You know as soon as you send out an email how your audience is receiving it, and with automation, you’re able to send the winning message out to your full audience as soon as the data starts coming in. Testing in real time makes you more agile and responsive, which in turn gives your leads a customized user experience.
Cross-Sell and Upsell with Ease
The next time you’re in a supermarket, take a look at the end-caps on each aisle. Chances are you’ll see groups of items that naturally go together – peanut butter and jelly, for instance, or cocoa and marshmallows. Cross-selling and upselling promotions have a dramatic effect on supermarket sales, and they can do the same for you. As your leads look at one solution, they also get real-time notifications of other options and upgrades that are also relevant to their search.
Real-time marketing automation applications are more than a boon to your bottom line. They’re a great way to delight your customers by being more responsive to them at every step of the buying journey.
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