When you consider your marketing or sales process, where do you see the cracks? Is there room for improvement? Do you need to boost productivity in any particular area? Could you fill the gap with an automated experience to improve the customer experience?
If you answered yes, let’s nail down the type of tool(s) you should consider:
Marketing Automation:
Marketing is different from sales. And that’s the first thing you need to decipher when looking at automation tools – is it for marketing or sales. If it’s for marketing, it should produce another way for potential customers to hear about you and your story. Here’s what you might consider:
• Newsletter system for solicitation and subscriptions, which can also be customized/personalized
• Automatic thank you notes to subscribers and new inquiries
• Automatic follow-up emails
• CRM tools to track new inquiries and store into database as leads
• Tracking analytics tools to understand user behaviors online and better understand potential customers
Sales Automation:
When customers are in touch with the sales team, you want to give them the very best experience but that can be tricky. Salespeople are human and humans are the most unpredictable elements in our society. Automation tools can close any inconsistencies and help your best salesperson be more efficient in making the deal. Here’s more tools you might consider:
• Sales demonstration videos
• Automated follow-up emails
• CRM integration and reminders for leads
• Integrated sales calls
• Automated outbound emails
Some of your business processes can’t be automated because you may want to ensure different results, and that’s just fine. You know what’s best for your business, but now you have some ideas to research if you think automation can help any areas where business is slipping.