How to reach your customer with the tools you already have in place
By: Julie Johnson
Tags: Marketing Automation, Business, Customer Service, Customer, CRM

As things shift digitally, lean in to your existing marketing automation tools to maintain business continuity and help reach your customer.

With the world undergoing change by the second, businesses are forced to adapt at rapid speeds to minimize interruption to operations. It’s a weird time — especially if you are in sales and on the front lines, trying to maintain connection and outreach efforts.

Your sales force is pivoting from making impressions in-person to relying solely on digital connections. And while there isn’t an exact science for how best to engage with customers and prospects right now, there are ways to keep your business moving forward while also being mindful of the times.

Here are three focus areas to help better utilize the tools that you already have in place — marketing automation and CRM-supported outreach — to maintain continuity with your outreach tactics and strategies:

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Manage expectations and be transparent with clients and prospects

Rapidly create, modify, and publish landing pages containing the most up to date information around your company’s approach to maintaining business continuity during this time.

Utilize form submission, allowing current clients and leads to easily subscribe to updates from your company. Take it a step further and, upon submission, create an automated background task that notifies the assigned Sales Manager to follow-up with a personalized note offering to answer any questions or concerns they may have.

Ensure your messaging always leads with empathy. We’re all experiencing an unprecedented situation together. Focus on how you can help make life easier or better within the context of what you’re trying to communicate.

Make sure your existing campaigns and customer journeys are updated for timeliness and sensitivity

Audit your existing journeys (think on-boarding, lead nurture, product maintenance, and re-engagement, etc.) and make updates to the copy and frequency where necessary. For example, adjust your automated on-boarding journey to account for the altered new client experience as a result of COVID-19. If Step 1 once was to schedule an in-person meeting, is your copy updated to reflect that this step is now a video conference or phone call?

Look for automated transactional communications that need adjusting to appropriately reflect current impacts of COVID-19, such as customer service, shipping, event, product servicing, product launch or delivery timelines.

Review previously used subject lines and content that now may be insensitive or untimely. Subject lines alluding to social activities, time spent with friends and family, etc. should be modified to match the tone of the current times.

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Drive partnership between marketing and sales to build effective digital communication tactics

Create an internal forum for sales teams to partner with marketing on internal and external content creation to respond quickly to changing needs. Sales teams are on the front lines of hearing what your customers are asking; marketing needs to hear that messaging to advise on and execute external communications.

Collaborate on effective digital nurturing strategies. If deals are traditionally closed in person, sales and marketing should work together to rethink of how they can deliver the same excitement and commitment digitally with customers and leads.

Re-inform and re-train your teams on the Marketing Automation and CRM tools available to them. This may be especially important to sales team members who haven’t regularly used the tools. Marketing teams can be good partners by highlighting new or existing campaigns, sharing learnings, demonstrating the process for adding a contact to a campaign, and educating their sales counterparts on what automated tasks are created upon contact engagement to help them continue to drive business forward.

Consistency and trust are more important than ever. Invest the time to modify your approach to Marketing Automation tactics and messaging to ensure you are doing your part to be transparent and offer additional support.