How To Effectively Use Marketing Automation During COVID-19 Pandemic

As we are nearing the middle of 2020, a lot has changed since the beginning of the year. People have isolated themselves, and jargons such as quarantine, social distancing, pandemic, & isolation have become a part of our daily conversations. The perception regarding shopping, ban on travelling, and the priorities of people have changed significantly.

Yet, all is not bad in these testing times. People are spending more time online, brands are creating helpful content related to their expertise, and marketers are adopting different digital marketing strategies to connect with their audience.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the demand for personalised customer experience. Irrespective of what communication channels you use, Our CORE Marketing Automation System helps you track the conversations with individual prospects from a single place to create tailored customer journeys. While the pandemic grips businesses globally, we highlight some ways to use Marketing Automation during the COVID-19 Pandemic effectively.

1. Implement Cross-Cloud Communication

Our CORE system has multiple products depending on the purpose and industry where it can be applied effectively. While the built-in marketing & CRM can help with collecting customer data, recording individual interactions, and creating custom marketing campaigns based on the processed data, it needs to communicate with other systems (like your website) to ensure smooth operations, especially during difficult times like now. The use cases of this type of cross-cloud communication are:

1. Anyone expressing displeasure on social media can be approached by a sales representative (Marketing Cloud to Sales Cloud)

2. Upcoming doctor appointments can be sent as reminder emails. (Health Cloud To Marketing Cloud)

3. A cart abandonment email can be sent when someone leaves mid-purchase (Commerce Cloud to Marketing Cloud)

2. Optimise Email Send Times

The system has a built-in content calendar that is AI-ready to suggest or predict the step to be taken based on the information available. In these changing times, customers will be active at different times than usual and we can help determine the optimum send time for your emails or social media posts to receive maximum engagement. This feature can help you understand the shifting habits of your customers and predict when your subscriber base is most likely to open your emails and click through to the website.

3. Better Product Recommendations

This is another avenue where the data processing capabilities of our CORE system can be leveraged to send better emails. In times of crisis, people can’t browse through products as usual and hence complete their purchases in a jiffy. This way, some of the products may be overlooked or the customer may not be aware of such products. Personalised product recommendations provide a good user experience as the customer feels that they are being considered valuable. We can process all vital information about past purchases and the current online behaviour to recommend products that might hit the right spot. This way, marketers can learn the change in the consumption behaviour of the consumer and make the necessary changes to their business operations.

4. Notify Product Restock

In times of pandemic, the demand for essential products has hit the roof, and people have been facing shortages. For a consumer, disappointment is when they find certain products being out of stock and there is no means to know when they shall be available again. Timely notification is the difference between providing a good user experience and losing an opportunity to gain a loyal customer. This problem can be readdressed by sending an automated product restock email as soon as your inventory is updated with the product.

5. User-Generated Content & Referral Emails

It is a time when people are at home and taking up different challenges to remain engaged. CORE can monitor mentions over social media about your brands, and you can schedule social media posts that can keep your audiences engaged. The most engaging content can be placed in the emails, and your subscribers can be asked to refer it to their peers in exchange for an incentive. The referral can be tracked and updated on the customer journey, which opens up new paths for customer engagement.

6. Localisation

Even though the pandemic has forced brick and mortar stores to remain closed, it doesn’t mean you cannot connect with your customers. Based on the localisation information, your store managers and other stakeholders can send locally targeted email campaigns that are personalised to communicate with their local customers in a relevant and personal manner. Since CORE supports the use of dynamic content blocks, you can use the localisation information to send emails that carry information based on the local parameters such as location, weather, zone health, etc.

Wrap Up

These are really tough times, but desperate times call for desperate measures. We hope the pointers mentioned above really help you in effectively using Marketing Automation during the COVID-19 pandemic.