To address customers optimally companies resort to immense datasets. Yet a wealth of information does not automatically lead to a targeted customer approach. Marketing automation helps companies to exclusively communicate information relevant to the prospect.
What happens on the Internet stays on the Internet – evermore and in detail. Companies take advantage of this fierce, especially in the field of media and ethics, discussed fact. Of course they do! Selling – that’s what it’s all about. And everything revolves around efficiency. Everything the user does – every click, every purchase – is tracked and connected with personal data used for an increasingly personalized customer approach. However, a heap of data alone does not yet result in tailored online advertising for potential customers. It’s a complex computerized and network-based procedure to interpret such datasets to accordingly display personalized online advertising. In any case, the remit of e-commerce is diverse: Social networks should be served and analyzed, content marketing should be conducted, branch-specific online portals should be included or SEO and ASO (app store optimization) should be installed. Self-explaining that this makes it difficult to maintain perspective.
Whereas Marketing Automation Tools (MA) relief the advertiser of the work. They work, as the name already suggests, automated and in real time. MA constitutes a technology, which unifies, automatizes, scales and efficiently measures marketing tasks and processes. But how does Marketing Automation work? Mike King gives an example:“Lets say you’re a plus size women”, says the in Brooklyn-based Digital Marketing Consultant. “When you go to a e-commerce website you put plus size clothing in your cart. When you leave the site and than come back later, all the visuals, all the models are now plus size models.”
Therefore Marketing Automation supports companies to pass on solely the information that is relevant to this specific prospect. For that reason the users behavior on the website is monitored and analyzed and thereby personalized. Now the user sees only the proposals specifically customized for him or her. Does a user search for shoes in various online stores for a while and than abruptly chances the search request to a completely different one, specific automated IT tools conclude than that the last visited site was the most interesting, because the user probably found there the product he or she had searched for. In the words of Mike King MA is “the way, a website reacts to the demands, characteristics und the behavior of the users on the corresponding site.”
In the US the concept is long since an inherent part of any company using online advertising. In Germany, King – who made a name for himself under the SEO-pseudonym “iPullRank” – assumes, there is still pent-up demand. King, worked formerly as Marketing Director, Developer and Tactical SEO at agencies such as Publicis and Razorfish. Yet Marketing Automation increasingly gains acceptance in Germany. In 2013 only one in four of the big B2B companies had banked on automation. In 2015 the number already rose to one third. But currently the marketing specialist can’t make a clear comparison between the US and Europe. But he doesn’t want to compare at all: “There are things that don’t catch on in other countries like they do in the States. A lot of what we do in the States, I haven’t seen here yet. But obviously it’s all about the context. Like what do users in Germany respond to. It may not make sense to do things that we do in the States.”
Obviously Marketing Automation doesn’t work without precise tracking of the customer. For critics, which counter such progresses on the Internet with concern, King has a clear message. Today everything gets tracked, not only on the Internet and you can’t do anything about it. “So at this point people understand that there is so much information on the web about them, that they want a better experience if all this data is collected anyway”, says King. Therefore he believes that personalized customer approach will become prevalent. Although people say they don’t want such personalization because it is frightening, their behavior says otherwise.
In an entertaining chat with the Internet Innovators Mike King reveals also why he likes Germany and especially Mercedes:
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