Marketing Automation: The key to an exceptional customer experience

Artificial intelligence (AI) is making headlines and dominating conversations everywhere. It’s clear that AI brings new opportunities, not just in content creation, but also in refining marketing strategies and enhancing the customer experience. With automation or marketing automation, you can now personalize your interactions and make your customers feel truly special. 

With 71% of consumers expecting personalization from brands, the demand for tailored experiences has never been higher. Having a personalized experience has thus become a determining factor for 80% of the customers, on par with the quality of the product or the service itself. To bridge this personalization gap, merchants can now turn to automation.

What is Marketing Automation?

Automation or Marketing automation involves using AI tools to automate your marketing campaigns based on predefined scenarios. This powerful technique allows you to deliver relevant and personalized messages to your customers and prospects, based on their website activity and email responses. Automation is a game-changer that enables you to fine-tune your marketing strategies and create more compelling offers tailored to your audience’s needs.

How does it work?

The implementation of marketing automation involves the following key steps:

• Analyzing customer behavior:

The automation software is equipped to track customer behavior, including website navigation, actions taken (clicks, downloads), and reactions to emails. This valuable data is then segmented to create targeted internet user groups.

• Creating scenarios or workflows:

Scenarios aim to automate emails or SMS notifications based on customer actions. They encompass various elements, such as trigger events, actions or groups of actions, pre-designed and customizable messages, and the choice of communication channels (email or SMS). The possibilities are endless, ranging from simple to sophisticated based on your specific requirements.

• Streamlining multi-channel automation:

The marketing automation tool automatically streamlines the sending of emails and/or SMS notifications based on predetermined scenarios.

For instance, imagine a customer who makes a significant purchase with a high cart value. With marketing automation, you can automatically send them a personalized email to express gratitude for their purchase, followed by a loyalty offer (a voucher for their next order) three days later.

Why does it matter?

Automation serves several purposes:

1. Welcome (newsletter sign-up, additional information, interests…)
2. Customer retention ( frequent purchases, high order values, customer anniversaries…)
3. Cross-selling and upselling (complementary purchases, upgrading, new products…)
4. Navigation or cart abandonment (follow-up, asking for feedback)
5. Stock alerts, price drops
6. Customer reviews and appreciation
7. Customer data update/cleansing

The primary objective is to maintain contact with your active clients and reactivate your inactive ones. You may notice that some customers haven't made a purchase for a long time. It’s time to schedule an email to verify their contact details. Grab this perfect opportunity to offer them an enticing deal and “win them back.”

Email: A key success factor

Contrary to popular belief, email still remains the preferred channel for customers, even with changing behaviors due to the pandemic and the rise of social media platforms.

Email is globally favored by a large majority of customers (62%), surpassing SMS (40%), Facebook (36%), and Instagram (22%), across all generations! Be it baby boomers, Gen-X, or the younger millennials and Gen-Z, as long as the content is interesting…Let creativity take the spotlight!

Crafting compelling messages

While promotional offers remain a primary driver of purchases (64%), customers expect more than just that. They are receptive to emails that aim to reward their loyalty (50.8%), suggest highly relevant products based on their interests (39.1%), or explain the brand/product’s ethical and sustainable aspects (19.3%). These topics undoubtedly play a significant role in an automation program, where you can test their performance using A/B testing.

Cracking the code

To support you in implementing a marketing automation strategy, PrestaShop now offers PrestaShop Automation with Klaviyo. Integrated into the back office of your ecommerce website, you can easily manage the collected data, design scenarios tailored to your business model, and automate your campaigns. Your customers receive personalized messages based on predefined key actions. The tool includes pre-built, tested, and customizable templates, as well as 300 pre-established scenario templates to help you get started easily.

PrestaShop Automation with Klaviyo

Address your shoppers like you know them with PrestaShop Automation. Whether it's through email or other channels, you'll have a unified customer platform that puts your online brand in direct control of your customer data and interactions.

Learn more

While marketing automation forms a part of the major trends in ecommerce, only 15% of customer service interactions worldwide are handled by AI. Thus, its implementation allows you to stand out from your competitors, offer your customers a differentiated experience, and meet their ever-increasing needs for personalization.