Today’s sellers are struggling to control the sales process, a phenomenon that gradually raised  the last years as buyers have become highly demanding. Buyers have access on the web, seeking for information before they take a purchasing decision and they expect sellers to follow them in all stages – where they have been, what they saw, how long they stayed and what channel they used.

Only 22% of consumers say the average retailer understands them as an individual, and only 21% say the communication they receive from the average retailer are “usually relevant”. Most companies understand how critical is to do better – 88% say their growth depends on personalising the customer experience – but lack the resources and expertise to design an improved customer journey. Only 37% believe they have the tools they need to deliver exceptional customer experience.

The customer journey is truly multichannel and marketers have to deliver an outstanding experience if they want customers to get a positive purchasing decision. Some of the accessible channels where customer has an interaction with a company/ brand include: 

  • Visiting a website
  • Reading an email
  • Communication with call centre
  • Like or sharing something on social media
  • Reading a blog post
  • Using a mobile application
  • Visiting a physical store
  • Watching a video

Marketers are seeking ways to enhance customer engagement in all processes and marketing automation has managed to “catch” the potential customer where he is active, provide him with “catchy” content and increase engagement. According to Forrester Consulting’s research (May 2013) in a sample of 157 marketing professional in the U.S., the majority of marketers simply uses marketing automation to scale and standardise marketing processes while a small amount of marketers is using marketing automation to transform marketing practices with a focus on consumer behaviour across the available channels. This small amount of marketers who adopted a behavioural marketing strategy managed to to realise from higher return on marketing investment to higher contribution to sales and revenue.

Some of the key findings of this research showcased that only 17% of the participants assessed themselves as mature practitioners of behavioural marketing, but early adopters perceive significant benefits to become more buyer-centric. Behavioural marketers managed to grew revenue faster (53% versus 41%) and contributed more than half of the sales pipeline (20% versus 11%).

“Mature practitioners” of behavioural marketing reported that they changed significantly their marketing approach and this drove them to run a higher quantity and range of campaigns and implemented marketing automation more in their marketing tactics.

Taken seriously a customer centric strategy and unifying all available channels, from physical to digital where customer moving across, you will manage to deliver an improved customer journey and propel your team to new levels of success.

Sources: Silverpop – IBM Company | Forrester Consulting Research (May 2013)