Last updated: How marketing automation solutions help orgs pass the empathy test

How marketing automation solutions help orgs pass the empathy test

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Leveraging the best marketing automation solutions for your organization can help you gain a competitive advantage.

Save time.

Reduce costs.

Optimize resource efficiency.

Create exceptional customer experiences across the entire customer journey.

Win the experience economy. 

“I’m not in the business…I am the business”: Does your org pass the customer empathy test? 

The film Blade Runner is set in a world where humanoid robots called replicants move among the human population and are thought by some to pose a threat. To determine whether someone is human or a replicant, a kind of emotional Turing test is administered, called the Voight-Kampff, or an empathy test.

How confident are you that your customers would say your organization passes the empathy test?

Since your marketing strategies will be the first and most consistent contact you have with your customers, getting it right can make or break your brand or organization. Customers perform an empathy test every time you engage them. And they can detect a phony the moment they read a weak subject line or an impersonal ‘Dear Whoever-you-are’ greeting.

Sending out ill-conceived or tone-deaf content will shrink your subscriber like wool in the dryer. And should your marketing automation solutions ignore pleas to unsubscribe, be ready for tense times on social media.

Marketing automation solutions that drive loyalty and results

The automation of marketing is essential to achieving digital transformation and becoming an Intelligent Enterprise that leverages the integrated strengths of digital and human team members in a data-supported, empathy-driven approach.

With time and resources always in short supply and high demand, marketing automation solutions can lend a competitive edge across your organization both now and later.

Get immediate results by reducing time spent on low-value and repetitive tasks, thereby freeing up team members to focus on activities where added value and success require the human factor.

Long-game results include reaching customers more effectively, generating and nurturing higher quality leads, and other valuable capabilities gained through deep insight into customer needs, attitudes, and behaviors.

The deep insight and real-time actionable data analytics help you create exceptional customer experiences across all channels and touchpoints.

The focus and capability of different marketing software platforms will vary, so the first step is knowing and understanding your organizational goals and needs, then seeking digital marketing solutions, like:

  • email marketing
  • social media automation
  • lead management and scoring
  • mobile marketing
  • CRM
  • real-time alerts

Selecting the right marketing automation solutions will spike ROI across all functions. If you’re not reaching customers or drawing in potential new ones, the rest of your organizational starves. Marketing is the supply line.

“Machines are either a benefit or a hazard.” Or are they both?

The history of human labor and machine automation is ongoing, so we get to participate in writing the story and framing the narrative. The dawn of GDPR and similar legislation is a step toward ensuring that the power of automation is more benefit than hazard. Properly integrated, humans and machines make each other better as teammates.

The oldest and most obvious machine advantages are that they don’t get tired, don’t complain, and don’t need sleep, smoke breaks, or vacations. Positive marketing automation solutions include the basic benefits of performing repetitive tasks, scheduling emails and social media posts, and providing customizable templates – all saving time and reducing human error and fatigue.

Beyond mundane repetition, machine learning and AI operate on deeper levels. Intelligent digital solutions gather data and create a unified 360 view of the customer in their messy, complex glory – and in real time, as they change from minute to minute.

Without the assistance of digital teammates, marketers must answer and address the most difficult questions with old information and guesswork, over and over, trying to keep up with the ever-evolving customer and rising expectations – a truly Sisyphean task.

“All he’d wanted were the same answers the rest of us want.”

Who are our customers? What do they want and need? How can we reach them where they are, at the right time, with the right message? How do we draw more customers, keep the ones we have, and convert interest into sales? These are the questions that great marketing automation solutions can help answer.

Optimizing your marketing solutions is an important facet of the Intelligent Enterprise, which includes generating and nurturing organic, high-value leads, and loyal customer relationships.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.”

The best marketing automation software provides accurate, up-to-date, and relevant data analytics, giving you insights into customer needs, attitudes, and behaviors. It allows you to see what’s otherwise unseeable in real-time – or at all.

Invest time and resources up front for inbound lead generation. Build an email list instead of buying one. The time and effort saved in simply paying for a grab bag will go the way of “tears in the rain” while chasing ill-suited leads and trying to nurture uninterested or low-value prospects.

When someone gets an unsolicited mass email from you, it takes about a nanosecond to realize their email was purchased from someone else they’d mistakenly trusted with their information.

But when an actual potential customer gives you their email because they want to hear from you and receive useful and interesting content from and about your company, it makes sense that your efforts are exponentially more likely to increase your ROI.

“There’s part of me in you.” 

When you’re in marketing mode trying to figure out customers, it’s easy to forget that you have more in common than not. Think like a customer. Be the customer. Think of when you’re a customer. What do you like? What irritates you? Exercising empathy is a necessary and important strategy.

Human-machine teamwork can show its superhuman strength when utilizing the complex power of automated digital intelligence combined with the human factor.

Leveraging powerful digital tools to amplify your data-supported, empathy-driven marketing automation strategies, and your organization is sure to pass the empathy test.

Personalization: It’s not magic.
It’s method.
Find out who does it best HERE
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