Artificial Intelligence & Marketing Automation Can Lead To A Digital Transformation
Aug 13, 2021
10 min read
Artificial Intelligence, better known as AI, refers to the working of machines and software tools instead of human intelligence to speed up the functions of an operation.
AI has significantly changed the face of the business world by introducing efficiency and eliminating the idleness of resources to be allocated to other tasks that require human consciousness and volatility.
In 2020, 20% of the surveyed executives, analysts, and business leaders from global businesses said that their company made aggressive changes in their business operation by implementing artificial intelligence in their strategies.
With more and more businesses shifting towards marketing automation tools and Artificial Intelligence to transform their digital assistance methods, we may assume that the human mind’s requirement shall be reserved for managerial decisions in maximum cases. The global artificial intelligence software market is expected to grow up to 120 billion by 2025! The funding for AI startups has also grown. It has increased from over one billion U.S. dollars to 8.5 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2020.
As far as marketing automation is concerned, the name suggests its functionality- automate the marketing function for repetitive tasks to enhance channel-wise sales and revenues. AI and marketing automation might differ in their application, but both methods are specifically designed to bring digital transformation to a business! However, as per Gartner, 63% of digital marketing leaders
find difficulties in personalizing their services. Only 17% of them use AI and MLbased functions in their operations.
Marketing automation streamlines the workflow of your business firm’s marketing department and establishes lead generation methods and how to nurture those leads before they’re ready for sales. In simple words, Artificial Intelligence aims at bringing efficiency in routine tasks by delegating them to software tools, thus reducing the possibility of human-made errors.
One of the prime objectives of blending Artificial Intelligence in the marketing function is how well you can manage and take decisions that require deep analysis and conceptual understanding of consumer data. It is now possible with AI to produce large sets of consumer data into smaller and readable pictorial representations to speed workflows.
Role Of AI and Marketing Automation In Business’ Digital Transformation
As Artificial Intelligence has massively supported most businesses in their journey of digitally enhancing their work operations, let us take a closer look at how it does that -
1. Better View At Customer Leads
With the help of Artificial Intelligence, your business’ marketing department can comprehend your customer base’s expectations from your brand in terms of product or service requirements. Here, digital transformation relies on how well your business understands and discovers the right audience. For that, we can create a purchaser persona with the help of Artificial Intelligence to gain the upper hand at comprehensive buyer study.
A comprehensive study of a buyer’s persona includes elements like purchase history, buying behavior, customer engagement journey that can be measured and analyzed with the help of AI to design marketing campaigns. Marketing automation also provides insights about consumer details and helps your business clinch relevant marketing campaigns for better customer service, resulting in profit gains.
2. Online Efficiency Analysis
Without a doubt, we can say that every business uses Artificial Intelligence to support its online website’s efficiency and manage the automated processes without human error. One can achieve online efficiency by integrating marketing automation systems and Artificial Intelligence tools to undertake those tasks that require less complex minds and consciousness, such as email autoresponders, online welcome programs, customer chat service, etc.
Having that said, AI reproduces analytical results from your website that are required to understand what is liked by your prospect, what segments on your website were worthy enough for accelerating lead generation, and data points related to real-time trends. By identifying these insights and clubbing them with Artificial Intelligence, your business can empower its online efficiency.
Source: Pexels
3. Redesigning Customer Service
With the world shifting towards the extensive grip on exceptional customer service from the business brand, you can achieve more. Your business can apply Artificial Intelligence to support this trend and advance technological factors for a better flow of communications with the help of chatbots that can guarantee efficiency and responsiveness at the same time. While marketing automation also aids in revamping the communication flow for customers via autoresponders and email support, it is suggested to have a dynamic analysis of both to simulate solution-driven operations based on the problematic scenario.
Gone are the days when businesses used to follow the traditional methods of providing customer service. AI has upgraded customer journey and communication service by giving the upper hand to customer behavior and relevant content presented to them via the brand website.
4. Anticipate Customer’s Actions
It is one of the most crucial aspects of the working of Artificial Intelligence - anticipating your prospect’s next move whether they are on the website or not. Gathering such information can significantly help your business nurture the pre-sales leads, initiate follow-ups with the priority shoppers, etc. Here, AI and marketing automation can directly put up relevant actions to customer behavior that can increase the conversion rates for your business, and more conversion leads to better sales and ultimately profit gains.
With the help of predictive analysis, AI and help you go beyond the available data and foresee the customer’s following actions based on what has already occurred. For instance, a customer’s purchasing action would be anticipated by Artificial Intelligence based on the fact that the customer tried adding the product to the buyer’s cart. That helps in enhancing the customer experience by providing what they want at the right time.
5. Realize Customer Touchpoints
A consumer touchpoint means an action to the autoresponders that your business shares with the customer, such as personalized emails, text messages, or phone calls. Whenever a customer receives a touchpoint, it allows your business to identify data insights based on the interaction. Once this is done, AI and marketing automation play an important role in mending that information in your business database to derive details for your marketing campaigns. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, your business can move one step ahead of your rivals in creating campaigns that enrich the customer’s buying journey and is data-driven, thus reducing the chances of coming to nothing. Having trouble enhancing your business’ digital phase, Saffron Edge is the solution.
With our clear-cut software applications and identifying the right approach for your business, we aim at reinforcing efficiency in your marketing campaigns to boost your sales and revenues. You can have a closer look at the testimonies of our clients on our web page and connect with our team of experts to digitally transform your business. Give us a call now to know more!
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How do CRM and Marketing Automation Work Better Together?
Pitting CRM against marketing automation is like measuring a tight end up to a quarterback. There may be some overlap in functionality, but both complement each other, and neither can be an out-and-out replacement. Understanding the role and objective of these “sister solutions” can help you get the most out of each system. In this blog, we’ll clear up the differences between CRM and marketing automation, the benefits each can bring, and how you can get the best of both worlds. What is marketing automation? Marketing automation is a suite of tools that help you analyze, automate, and streamline workflows and marketing tasks. You can follow prospect activities such as website views, blog reads, email opens, and form fills. These tools schedule and track email campaigns and mass communications. Benefits Key benefits of marketing automation include: Improved customer engagement: Segment prospects based on past interactions or their interests and preferences. Lead scoring system: Identify the most promising leads with greater conversion chances. In-depth analytics: Reflect campaign performance and deliver insights. Automated triggers: Send emails when prospects are most interested in a product or service or schedule email series in a “drip” campaign. Do You Need a Marketing Automation System? Invest in a marketing automation platform if you check off the following points: You can’t manage your customer list manually. You want to quickly promote carefully crafted content to the right target audience. You want to feed more leads to sales, but your customer list is too small. Marketing Automation is a valuable business tool for streamlining marketing processes, enhancing customer engagement, and driving revenue growth. Utilizing marketing automation services can lead to increased productivity, improved ROI, and a competitive advantage in the market. What is CRM? CRM is a tool that helps you handle customer relationships, manage contact and sales, and improve agent productivity. You can store information about contacts, including their purchase records, phone conversations, and records of inbound emails. Most importantly, a CRM lets you optimize one-on-one client interactions, enhancing customer satisfaction and increasing sales. Benefits Internal alerts: Remind sales reps about call schedules, account renewals, and customer birthdays or anniversaries, prompting them to contact customers at the optimal time. Integrated workflows: Automate time-consuming everyday tasks to save time. Social media sync: Recognize the channels that drive the most traffic and know what people say about your business. Targeted promotional content: Increase conversion rates and build customer trust. Do you need a CRM solution? Most likely, your business needs to invest in a robust CRM platform if: You can no longer handle all your leads using a spreadsheet and need technical help to track customer data. You’re receiving reports about unsatisfactory customer experiences. Systematically reach out to unhappy customers and resolve their issues using omnichannel support. You’re losing track of customers during their journeys. Use pipeline management to track each customer throughout the sales pipeline and optimize customer experience. CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a strategic approach businesses use to manage and analyze customer interactions. SaaS automation tools enable companies to streamline sales, marketing, and customer service processes, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. Let’s break through your revenue hurdles We find your primary growth blockers, build expert-led strategies, and provide custom data-driven solutions to help you hit your revenue goals. Set up a 1:1 strategy call CRM vs. Marketing Automation Understanding the distinctions between Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Marketing Automation is crucial for optimizing your company's operations and growth. Let's delve into the comprehensive guide that will unravel the unique benefits marketing automation and CRM bring and how each can revolutionize your business strategies. What are the key differences? Drilling things back to the basics, marketing automation helps users manage digital campaigns, email marketing, lead tracking and scoring, and landing pages. You can check out our list of marketing automation features for a full rundown. CRM covers the entire sales pipeline process, from individual emails to lead status tracking, task management, opportunity tracking, and pipeline reporting. Get an in-depth view of our must-have CRM features here. CRM drives and increases sales, while marketing automation helps generate and nurture leads. We’ve outlined the differences in three major factors below: Target Audience: A CRM platform broadly caters to sales reps, providing them with tools to manage customer relationships and improve their performance and productivity. A marketing automation (MA) system helps team members focus on marketing, specifically in B2B SaaS industries, to generate qualified leads and improve conversion rate optimization . Purpose: A marketing automation tool enables businesses to automate marketing campaigns using predefined conditions and triggers, making it ideal for short purchase cycles and optimizing marketing efforts in SaaS industries. On the other hand, a CRM helps businesses manage sales processes, assign tasks to sales reps, and maintain an organized database to streamline customer relationship management. Goal: The primary goal of a CRM solution is to manage customer relationships, improve sales reps' performance and productivity, and ultimately contribute to business growth. On the other hand, a marketing automation platform helps businesses measure marketing's contribution to the overall ROI, generate qualified leads, and improve workflows between sales and marketing teams, particularly in SaaS marketing environments. Do you need both? There’s no easy “yes” or “no” answer to this question, as it depends on your customers' stage in the sales funnel. Syncing data between both platforms is the secret third option to access all your data through one solution. If you want a perfect combination of marketing automation and CRM without investing in two separate systems, you should consider integration or choosing a system that offers functionalities of both solutions, such as marketing automation in CRM. How to integrate CRM with marketing automation software? Integrating CRM and MA solutions helps improve the customer experience and increase your business’s efficiency, leading to improved ROI. Most importantly, it helps maximize their benefits by combining their strengths. Using them together, you can: Assign lead scores Nurture prospect relationships Glean analytical reports and track progress Enable sales reps to visualize lead journeys Communicate consistently and seamlessly Understand the Integration Process Here are a few tricks to help you align the two platforms: Personalized Messaging: Engage with the target audience better and increase the chances of lead conversions through personalized messages when using a CRM and an MA system. Quick Lead Scoring: Assigning scores to leads ensures increased conversions. Using both platforms, it’ll be easier to identify users who are most likely to convert. Duplicate Elimination: Using the platforms in tandem means easy access to centralized data, which can lead to overlaps and accidental duplicate tasks. Monitor the systems closely to ensure no duplicate data. Robust Planning: Design and follow a plan to identify, implement, and address changes to your marketing and sales efforts, making them cost-effective and efficient. Examples of CRM and marketing automation Finding a solution with CRM and marketing automation capabilities is like getting a glimpse of the Loch Ness monster. However, unlike the Scottish legend, platforms with the functionalities of both solutions do exist. Here are a few examples: HubSpot Sales Hub: Combine the power of a unified CRM with sales automation processes to eliminate data silos and increase efficiency. Salesforce Sales Cloud: Salesforce’s enterprise suite and Lightning builder provide access to limited marketing automation functionalities. Active Campaign: This MA solution doubles as a marketing-oriented CRM with lead qualification, contact scoring, and sales task management. Zendesk Sell: Add a marketing automation module to real-time insights from your sales, marketing, and customer support departments. Integrating CRM and marketing automation can provide a holistic approach to managing customer relationships and marketing strategies. By combining these tools, businesses can optimize their marketing efforts and enhance customer engagement through personalized and targeted campaigns. Conclusion Choosing CRM over marketing automation can feel like picking a favorite sibling. With CRM automation, businesses can combine CRM and marketing automation functionalities to streamline processes, enhance customer relationships, and boost marketing efforts for greater efficiency and success in the digital landscape. Nailing down your needs goes a long way toward investing in the right solution. Schedule a free call to understand the need for CRM and marketing automation for direct insights on actionable steps to take in your software selection process. When comparing CRM vs. marketing automation, would you prefer a system with combined functionalities, or is it better to opt for two different solutions? Let us know. ...
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How to grow your Dental practice with Google My Business
In the present era, where every business is moving online, dental practice also needs to be optimized for growth. Here, Google My Business serves as a boon. People nowadays ask google for any kind of help. So, your dental service should appear online to get noticed. But, opting for building a website is not enough. One needs to get a position in Google My Business listing and search engines. Before we get into the fact how Google My Business can help in the growth of a dental practice, let’s understand what Google My Business is. What is Google My Business? Google My Business is a listing of business/services. It includes the business/service's profile comprising Practice name The name with which your dental practice is known. Description of your business/service You need to add a description of your business. The word count should be around 750 words. Working hours The timings you work in one or more clinics. Mention the non-working days also. Google Maps directions It helps the patients to reach your clinic easily. Contact information Add contact information including your address, contact number and email id. Link to your website So that patients are directed to your website easily and can gather more information. Links to your social media platforms To redirect the viewers to the pages displayed on social media sites. Reviews Prospects choose the service which has the maximum number of positive likes. Questions Answer the questions asked by the customers. This helps you link with the customers and brings you close to them, thereby, retain them for a longer time. It is easily accessible through any digital device, may it be a desktop, laptop, Android, or iPhone. Google My Business App can be easily downloaded in any digital device.Google My business has added two new features for public convenience. These dynamic features are:- Product Collection This newly added feature lists all the products/services offered by the business. For a dental practice, it may include oral healthcare services like scaling, root canal treatment, whitening, implants, fillings, Browns, veneers, etc. Appointment booking feature When you get the advantage of booking your appointment for a service while sitting at home, it adds more comfort to your life. With this new feature, you can now book an appointment with the service. They send you a confirmation revert and a reminder on the day your appointment was fixed. How you proceed with Google My Business To get your dental practice registered with Google My Business and maintain it properly, you need to follow the following steps: Enter your personal details The very first step is to set up an account with Google my Business (GMB). For this, you need to enter your personal details, including your practice name, address, working hours, contact information, google maps directions, links to your websites, and links to your social media pages or accounts. Select the right category GMB has an excellent feature that allows the users to select more than one category. For example, if one has to select categories for the dental practice, then, one can select from a cosmetic dentist, pediatric dentist, dental implant periodontist, dental radiology, etc. This helps you explain properly the type of service provided by you and drives out the factor of narrowing down the choice. Claim for approval of your business Once the profile is updated, claim for approval and verification. Once verified, your practice becomes authentic and official. This increases the trustworthiness of your dental practice. When you claim for verification, GMB will send a verification code to the address given by you. After entering this code you will have access to your account. Keep the information updated To get more clients, keep your information updated. Keep posting photos, videos, any change in personal information, etc. This will earn you more traffic and more clients. Make a habit of logging into your account regularly daily. Respond to the questions asked by patients. Add photos and videos Visual aids are the most effective and have an everlasting impact on the viewer's brain. Firstly, make your business recognizable by posting your logo. This aids in the process of branding. Add high-resolution photos of your dental clinic, including the waiting lounge, interior, camps put up by you, your team, services provided by you, the results of the treatments provided by you, before and after treatment pictures. This acts as a magnet to attract more customers. Go for constant reviews Reviews posted on your GMB page work as a positive signal for your practice. Encourage patients to post positive reviews for the dental treatment they have received. This helps you get higher ratings on your page. You can make the review posting process easy by providing them links to your GMB page.Patients can also be directed to your GMB page by the QR code method. This can be achieved by placing a scannable QR code in the office, which links your GMB page directly to the customers, where they can post reviews. Answer patients questions This helps you in retaining the customers for a longer time. Monitor your account regularly With the help of the insights tab, you can monitor the visits made by searchers. You can also determine how well is your name being viewed in Google search results or map listings. Tips Be consistent with your information – Make sure that your personal information, details of any camp or offers, etc. are the same on all the social media sites and GMB. Optimize your profile by opting for claim your account – If you miss on claiming your account, you lose the opportunity to rank higher in the search engines and GMB listing. Stay updated to be a part of Google snack pack- Snack pack lets the searchers view the best in class services. Always stay updated so that you become a part of the GMB snack pack listing, thereby, become the first choice of the searchers. Closing thoughts On the whole, it is clear that Google My Business is one tool that helps in the growth of any business. The importance of Google My Business in dental practice lies in the fact that it increases the reach of patients. With the best features of Google My Business, a dentist can list their practice and even make the appointment booking process smooth and easy. ...
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Top 7 Link Building Mistakes In-house SEOs Make & How To Avoid Them
Higher the number of backlinks a website has, higher will be its authority and rankings on SERPs. It has been proven time and time again. While many SEOs are aware of this fact, not many care about the fact that it has to be done in the most natural way possible with strict quality control. If you care about building a backlink profile for your company that Google will love, this post is just for you! Being a link building company ourselves, we care about the link building services we provide to all our clients and actively use the best link building techniques to do so. It was about time we let you in on some of them as well… But there are many ways to build backlinks for your business. You could approach other websites, industry influencers and biggies with your content and ask them personally to feature your content on their website for a backlink or you could create remarkable content that people and publishers would love to link to without asking. Either way, here are some mistakes most SEOs commit that does more harm to their backlink profile and SEO in general than good. Let’s have a look at some of them - 1. Getting most of their backlinks from irrelevant websites In their pursuit of getting as many backlinks to their website as possible, most SEOs tend to derail from their website niche and start acquiring backlinks from wherever they can, without looking twice at the website they are getting a link from. Getting a backlink from a high quality but irrelevant website is equal to acquiring a low-quality link. For example, If you sell premium hair care products, getting a high-quality backlink from a publisher in the IT industry will do you no good. But if you get a backlink from an authoritative blogger that has a decent reader base and actively blogs about the best hair care services and products in town, it could prove to be pure gold for the authority of your website. Try staying as close to your industry niche as possible when it comes to acquiring backlinks from other authoritative websites and watch your Google position rise up. 2. Going for automatic link building schemes Automatic link building in any way is bad for your website. But still many SEOs every year make use of ‘automatic natural link building’ tools found on the web. While many of these tools may give you an initial push in your rankings by publishing your website link on link farms and low authority web 2.0 sites, Google, sooner or later, catches up to them and may even penalize it for indulging in such practices. The essence of link building is in providing relevant content to websites related to your industry and automatic submission kind of kills it completely because you never get to know on which website your links are being posted on. A big no-no when it comes to natural link building. 3. Building backlinks for just the homepage Think about it for a minute. Obviously, no publisher who is looking to provide the best information to their readers would want to link to a services page, unless it’s a paid promotion of course. But if you are still putting links of your website’s homepage in all your guest posts with no informative blog of yours to accompany it, it will turn off readers, and eventually Google. You could try internal linking for building the authority of your homepage but when it comes to guest posting, try only linking your blogs in it, that too if they are super relevant to the topic you are writing for. 4. Imitating competitor’s link profiles In the fast-paced world of SEO, it is normal for SEOs to spy on the backlink profiles of their competitors and completely copy them to their last link. While doing this is a great SEO strategy to surpass them in SERPs, do it without your personal touch and you’ll never be able to outrank them. It’s totally fine to copy your competitors backlink profiles, but do your own market research as well with it and try digging out opportunities that your competitors don’t have the slightest idea about. You’ll obviously have to do a little extra to gain that edge in website rankings over your competition. 5. No personal touch in outreach Working on the way you outreach your content to authoritative publishers can sometimes make all the difference but sadly not many SEOs stress over it too much. Using the same outreach template for each and every outreach request can get your awesome content rejected without them having a look at it and most of the authoritative publishers can smell a template from a mile away. Try adding your own personal touch to all your outreach requests. Be as personal as you can and write clearly how your content piece can help their readership and why are you approaching them in the first place. Doing this makes them interested in your mail and your chances of getting published increases by folds. 6. Building links too fast Google keeps a close check on the number of backlinks a website acquires over time. Do it too fast and they might even penalize you for good. Usually, if a website acquires too many links in a day or two, it’s because the webmasters are using a tool that is automatically doing it for them or they are posting their links on link-farms, which are both red flags for Google. When done naturally, you would be able to gain 10-20 backlinks for your website at max and that includes commenting on various blogs in your niche, posting on social media, posting on social bookmarking websites, syndicating your blog to a high-authority publisher and all the other things SEOs do to acquire links. See it from the eyes of Google. If a website is getting 1000 backlinks a day, doesn’t it reek of something fishy? Sounds spammy even when I say it, let alone doing it and getting away from the clutches of Google. 7. Not keeping a check on the current backlinks Most of the SEOs build links and completely forget about it. But the task of building an authoritative backlink profile for your business doesn’t end when you acquire a link, it also includes making sure that the link stays active as long as possible. It’s common for websites to delete certain blogs after a certain point of time, making sure that a proper redirection link is placed on all your backlinks if something like that happens to your publisher’s website is as important as acquiring that link. Also, the domain authority of websites keeps fluctuating from time to time, so going through your backlink profile and making sure that your link stays authoritative and contributes positively to it is what SEO’s need to focus more on when it comes to staying on top of their game and gaining some valuable places on the SERPs. While there are a ton of bad link-building tactics being put to use by SEOs every day out there, these 7 are the most prevalent in the SEO world of today. Stay away from the above-mentioned pitfalls and you’ll do just fine. If there are any other link-building tactics you think hurts your SEO more than it does good, do share it with us in the comments. ...
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