Content is one of the best ways to connect with the audience. One of the Bill Gates quotes states that content would indeed rule and be the single most important aspect of the internet has for the most part, and it has come true.
In today’s marketplace, we are overwhelmed with content. Marketers creating content at a breakneck pace but those contents have already been written by someone, somewhere. But does it humanize us?
This isn’t a new issue. Marketers continuously putting an effort to determine how to make content that stands out. Marketers should try to think from different perspectives, create CTAs and try to engage the audience.
We need to think differently, we need to find out the best possible personalized way to engage with our audience.
Tactics of Humanization
In order to humanize the marketing automation system, you must carefully look at past interaction which you had with your client and determine how can improve your efforts and how you can humanize it. Here are a few tactics to get you started.
Be relational
You have to create an experience where your customers should not feel that they are interacting with an automated system. Instead, they should see you as a real live person. Use the proper tags (first name, last name or any particular tag) to relate to your audience and identify them uniquely.
Communicate with them in a personal tone as it will deepen your relationship with the audience. A business tone will get you only a short period of a relationship.
Segmentation
Segmentation is a powerful tool in the automation toolbox and a great medium to humanize your marketing automation system. Segment your audience into specific groups this will allow you to content and offers that are personal and relevant. When you provide very targeted messages that relate to your customers on a personal level, it will feel human and things turn in favor for you.
Logical Campaign flow
If you have implemented an automation system, it’s tempting to automate every interaction but not necessary you automated everything in your business, hence proceed with caution.
For example, if your audience doesn’t answer your email, then sending them another one the next day, is not good practice. Step back and consider the buying journey. At what steps are decisions being made? When does it make sense to re-engage your audience? Take time to analyze all the relevant things and then approach them.
Consider the entire customer experience
The best way to add value, relate to your customer, build a strong everlasting relationship, is to assist them not only before sales but also after the sale. Don’t just limit your efforts to sale, try to get after sale details and other details- How did their experience with your product or service go? Were they satisfied? Are there other areas of the customer experience you can add value to?
Some principles to humanize marketing automation
- You should build a relationship by listening to your customer and adding value by meeting their needs at each stage of their buying journey, it helps in establishing your customer trust in you. But you can’t accomplish this in a short period of time, trust builds over a certain period of time.
- Delivering a positive customer experience is more than knowing what kind of product your customer use. According to Michael Hinshaw “Several studies back up the fact that no matter who your customers are (B2B or B2C), there’s a high price to pay for delivering poor customer experience. The thing is, customer experience is really based on how your customers feel. And one of the best ways to make them feel better about the experience is to listen to them, understand their concerns, and deliver empathetic service across multiple touchpoints.”
- We must take the additional step to “micro-mini” the data. Data gives us a limited view of our customers such as it shows us open rates but doesn’t reveal intent.
Humanizing your marketing automation system is not an easy task. It takes a lot of time to understand your customers thoroughly. But just as any relationship takes time to develop, so does your relationship with your customer and automating your marketing.
Marketing automation is still relatively new. Your team should be trained enough to generate the campaign, creating landing pages and emails, capture lead, etc.
From my point of view, giving a real effort into automation will make customers take attention in a positive way. For humanizing the marketing automation effort, one should focus on each interaction throughout the CX as it correlates to the communications and defines how we humanize it. CSAT.AI, Salesforce Einstein are some AI tools that provide the tactics of humanization.