What Does a Successful CX Strategy Look Like?
Before we explore which martech tools to use for a better CX strategy, it’s crucial to establish what a successful CX strategy looks like. When you have a successful CX strategy, your customers will not only want to do business with you, they’ll encourage everyone they know to work with you, too. A robust CX strategy makes customers feel as though they matter to you – they’re not just a number. They know you care about what they want, and you want to make their interactions with you positive all the time.How Can Martech Tools Support a Successful CX Strategy?
How can martech tools support a successful CX strategy? What is it about this type of technology that makes it uniquely suited for this job?Marketing is where the customer experience begins – the first interaction customers have with a firm involves marketing messages. If marketing messages don’t appeal to the client, he or she won’t do business with your organisation. However, martech doesn’t exist in a silo; the information you gather and use can be implemented by other line-of-business teams.Which Martech Tools Should You Choose for an Effective CX Strategy?
The martech tools that best support your CX strategy should offer:
- Personalisation at scale
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Predictive analytics
- Business Intelligence (BI)
Personalisation
You can’t ever overstate the importance of personalisation in your CX strategy. When you personalise your marketing messages, you show customers that you understand what they need and what they want. As a result, they’ll turn to you more frequently and even recommend you to others.
What should martech tools do in the arena of personalisation? Martech tools should allow you to deliver personalised messages in context, so communication always feels authentic, never disturbing. With Sitecore, for example, you can put location-based personalisation into place; let’s say you walk past your favourite store and receive a text message informing you of a massive sale. Wouldn’t you want to go in?
Two Types of Personalisation
There are two personalisation methods. You can tailor messages to your customers, but you can also personalise the customer experience.
Customising your message involves using information you already know about your customer (such as what they’ve already purchased) to craft messages that appeal to what they want or need. Tailoring the customer experience means that when a user enters one of your digital properties, he or she sees information that’s relevant. For example, if that person has already provided his or her name to a chatbot, the chatbot will remember it for the next time.
Artificial Intelligence
You might be wondering how it’s possible to personalise content for more than a handful of customers at a time. Personalisation, you muse, is a manual task. That’s not true anymore, though.
AI allows you to personalise at scale. It ‘learns’ your customers’ preferences, then puts that knowledge into action by customising messages and experiences. There are two benefits: you save time, money, and effort as you deliver personalisation, and your customers feel that you’ve taken the extra step to build a relationship with them. Microsoft Cognitive Services is an example of martech tools that enables personalisation at scale.
Predictive Analytics
A use case of AI is predictive analytics. Predictive analytics give you insight into what a customer will do next. AI reviews what actions a customer has previously taken; then, it provides you with an idea of what the following step will be.
Predictive analytics has some important applications. You’re most likely accustomed to hearing about predictive analytics as they’re used in recommendation engines; based on what you’ve watched on Netflix, the streaming service will tell you what you might like to watch next. However, you can also utilise predictive analytics to give you a deeper understanding of your customers. AI can tell you which customers you should pursue based on the actions they’ve taken, which helps you direct your marketing efforts efficiently.
Business Intelligence
BI can be used in two ways:
- External customer communications
- Internal uses
External Customer Communications
Marketers can use BI to make their customer-facing communications richer. Let’s say you want to convince your leads that by purchasing your product or service, they’ll save money. BI allows you to create data visualisations to support your statement.
The human brain is naturally drawn toward images, so including a pie chart or a bar graph with contrasting colours gets people’s attention. How does this enhance your CX strategy? Data visualisations enrich CX by giving customers the information they need and positioning you as a trusted source of data.
Internal Uses
BI can be used internally within marketing departments, too. This martech tool gives marketers deeper insights into their customers and how to improve CX.
For example, you can see the relationship between the location of your customers and the impact of your last marketing campaign. Maybe customers in certain geographic areas clicked on banners more often than those living in other parts of the country. With that information, you can boost your CX strategy by creating ads that resonate with your most valuable customers.
Enlighten Designs: Helping You Choose the Right Martech Tools for a Successful CX Strategy
Since 1998, Enlighten Designs has helped its clients offer amazing customer experiences. Thanks to our knowledge and expertise in martech tools, we can guide you in making the right choices. Enlighten is a proud partner of Sitecore and Microsoft, both of which offer robust martech tools. To learn more about martech tools that shape a powerful CX strategy, contact us.