Knowing the channel and marketing preferences of your customers is equally important for generating leads. When you know how to generate leads online, you understand the art of finding interested prospects and converting them into paying customers.

Similarly, you also need to understand how customers often research products or services online before purchasing. They also compare competitor’s offers and then make the decision. A knowledge of all this can help you capture online traffic and convert it into actionable leads. This is how you can grow your business. 

In this blog, we will explore online lead generation, understand different types of leads, and learn the techniques to generate leads for your business. 

Before moving further, let’s first get started with the definition of what is online lead generation.   

What is Online Lead Generation?

Online lead generation is the strategic approach or process of attracting potential customers to your business through different channels. Some of the popular digital channels to generate leads include search engines, online ads, websites, social media platforms, and email.  

The goal of lead generation is – 

• To identify prospects ( whether individuals or businesses) that show interest in your products or services 
• To gather their contact information in exchange for some value ( such as a discount, trial, or a free resource ) 

Once the leads are acquired, the next step is to nurture them by offering value. You can provide value in different ways, including through relevant content and personalized offers. When nurturing leads, make sure your offers are tailored to the specific needs and preferences of those who have shown interest. 

The purpose of nurturing leads is to – 

• Guide them through the sales funnel 
• Build relationships 
• Convert them into paying customers 

Once you have acquired leads, you can nurture them by providing relevant content, personalized communications, and offers tailored to their needs and preferences. The ultimate aim is to guide these leads through the sales funnel, building relationships with them and eventually converting them into paying customers.

Inbound Lead Generation Vs Outbound Lead Generation 

When it comes to acquiring leads, there are two distinct approaches – inbound and outbound. Both have their merits and uniqueness. Their effectiveness will depend on your business goals, your target audience, and your industry types.  

Let’s look at how inbound lead generation is different from outbound lead generation – 

Inbound Lead Generation

An inbound lead generation is an approach that relies on the concept of “pull marketing” where the focus is to draw customers naturally to the business. In this form of lead generation, potential customers are attracted by creating value-driven content and experiences specific to their needs and interests.  

Key Features

• Creating various forms and types of content to educate and inform your target audience 
• Optimizing your content for search engines to attract organic traffic
• Using social platforms to boost engagement and visibility of your brand and offers 
• Incentivizing people in exchange for contact information  

Outbound Lead Generation 

An outbound lead generation is an approach that is also referred to as “push marketing”. In this form of lead generation, the focus is to adopt proactive outreach efforts and reach out to potential customers directly. 

Key Features 

• Cold calling, cold emailing, and mass emailing to prospects ( whether or not they have shown interest in your product or services )
• Using direct advertising or social media advertising to reach a mass audience 

Why is Lead Generation Online Important?

Lead generation is important for businesses because it helps reach a wider audience. When efforts are made to generate leads, businesses get more opportunities to engage with potential customers.  

Following are the reasons that show why lead generation online is important – 

• Expanding Customer Base – The Internet makes it easy for businesses to attract leads from various locations. So, a business can expect to go beyond its local area and expand its customer base. 
• Growing Business in a Cost-Effective Manner – Online methods to generate leads don’t cost much and they are quite cheap compared to traditional methods. So, a business can use these methods to achieve growth without spending big.   
• A Tool for Targeted Marketing – Businesses can rely on the web to target audiences with specific demographics, behaviors, and interests. They can also leverage various tools in tailoring marketing messages to the audience’s specific needs. 
• Support of Data Analytics –  Platforms for lead generation provide useful data and analytics that can be used for tracking campaign performance in real time. It’s also possible to monitor key metrics and optimize lead generation strategies for improved results. 
• Competitive Advantage – Implementing lead generation strategies ensures a strong online presence for businesses. This is how a business can gain a competitive edge and grow its revenue. 

Types of Online Leads 

Online leads can come in different flavors. Each may require different strategies for conversion. Your business may also need more effort to acquire and nurture leads, depending on the behaviors of the target audience. 

Let’s look at different types of online leads – 

• Cold Leads – These leads belong to the top of the funnel category. They may have not engaged with your business yet but fit your customer profile. 
• Warm Leads – These leads belong to the middle of the funnel category. They may not have shown any interest in buying from you but they know your business and all that you offer. 
• Hot Leads –  These leads belong to the bottom of the funnel category. They are called hot leads because they have shown a strong interest in your offers. 
• Information Qualified Leads (IQLs) – These leads belong to the top of the funnel category. They are the leads that have a problem or a question and you can help them through informational content. 
• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) – They belong to the middle of the funnel category as they engage with your marketing materials. This means such leads are aware of your brand. 
• Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) – These leads belong to the middle of the funnel category. With such leads, your business has already engaged and provided value through your product but has not monetized them yet. 
• Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – They belong to the bottom of the funnel category and have actively shown interest in your offers.  

Online Lead Generation Process 

Generating leads online is a complex process involving many steps and various tactics. A business that adopts a strategic approach can effectively generate leads online. 

Let’s look at the entire online lead generation process – 

• Target Audience Identification – The first step is the identification of the target audience, their needs, interests, and pain points.  
• Value Creation – The next step is the creation of value or compelling offerings to incentivize potential customers to exchange their contact information.  
• Lead Magnet Development –  A lead magnet is a value-added piece of content provided to leads for their contact information. Ebooks are one of the top examples of a lead magnet. 
• Opt-In Forms Placement – These forms are placed on the website, blog posts, or landing pages to capture basic content information.  
• Traffic Generation – In the next step, the business needs to drive traffic to its website or landing pages through the channels of choice, be it paid ads, organic efforts, etc. 
• Engagement – The next step is to engage with the visitors who reach the website, blog posts, or landing page through persuasive content.  
• Conversion – Clear calls-to-action (CTAs) buttons are strategically placed on the website or landing pages so that visitors can take the desired action and get converted.  
• Lead Management – The next step is to manage and track leads throughout the sales funnel. 
• Lead Nurturing – Once leads are captured, it’s time to engage with them through personalized content or emails till their conversion. 

How Do I Get Leads For My Business Using The Website? 

For most customers, the website is often the first point of contact with a business. This makes websites great tools for generating quality leads for your business. If you know how to use your website strategically and use the right marketing tactics, you may see tons of leads for the business. 

Let’s look at how you can get leads for your business through the website –  

1. Optimize Your Website

When a website is properly optimized, it not only functions well but also attracts more visitors. Keeping the website user-friendly and visually appealing is important for optimization. Make sure the site is easy to navigate and it works well across mobile devices. 

2. Add Quality Content on Your Website  

When people visit a website, they may have a question or doubt and want a solution. Adding high-quality content to the website is essential for educating, informing, and sometimes entertaining the visitors. Some of the popular forms of content you can add to the website include blog posts, ebooks, videos, infographics, etc. 

3. Use SEO Tactics  

The more your website is visible to visitors, the more it will gain organic traffic. Higher search engine rankings are essential for lead generation. This is why you should use SEO tactics, and combine the best practices of on-page and off-page optimization for traffic.  

4. Design Landing Pages for Specific Products or Services  

Make sure you get landing pages created for specific products or services. You can also create such pages for special offers. The idea behind using landing pages is to provide clear information and use CTAs to get desired actions from visitors. 

5. Offer Free Downloads  

You should consider offering free downloads to visitors for their contact information, for subscribing to your mail, or for filing out a form. These free downloads could be anything such as ebooks, how-to guides, templates, etc. 

6. Place Pop-Ups, Slide-Ins, Social Proofs and CTAs 

If you want to capture visitors’ attention, you need to strategically use pop-ups, slide-ins, social proofs, and CTAs on your website. Make sure none of them feel intrusive or compromise the user experience.

How to Get More Leads for Your Business: 6 Proven Techniques 

Getting more leads for your business is easy when you know the right approaches and methods. There are various ways in which your business can get more leads online and achieve growth. 

Here are 6 proven techniques to get more online business leads – 

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Optimizing your website for search engines is one of the best ways to get more leads online. When the website is optimized, its visibility in SERPs remains higher, resulting in more eyeballs for the business. More so, SEO is an excellent method to drive organic traffic to your website and meet customer needs for information. 

Pro Tips 

• Add quality content and use relevant keywords and meta tags throughout the website 
• Regularly add blog posts and articles on your website to provide information to users and boost engagement
• Get backlinks from trusted sites to improve your website’s domain authority 

2. Content Marketing

Content is king when it comes to generating leads. You can use the content strategically to guide users through the different stages of the sales funnel. There are different content forms that you can use according to the funnel stage and user needs. You can market your business using the power of content. This will create impact and boost engagement through content marketing insights.  

Pro Tips 

• Create engaging content such as blog posts, articles, videos, and infographics to cater to your audience’s needs
• Share your content across channels and platforms, including social media to drive traffic and build leads
• Develop high-quality, well-researched, and in-depth content and use them as lead magnets for exchange with visitors 

3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Organic traffic takes time. It also involves consistent work over time. So, results often happen late. However, if you want immediate results, paid traffic should be your digital marketing lead generation method. You can use the pay-per-click ad model of search engines or social platforms and get quick traffic to your website. 

Pro Tips

• Create, test, and launch targeted PPC campaigns on the platform of your choice, either on Google, Facebook, or Twitter 
• Make the campaigns tailored based on the demographics, behavior, and interests of your target audience  
• Drive more clicks and conversions using compelling ad copies with clear CTAs  
• Regularly monitor and track your paid campaigns and optimize their performance based on the metrics relevant to your business   

4. Social Media Marketing 

The number of social media users is exploding like anything. Some platforms have long crossed the 1 billion user-base mark while others are also not far behind. This is why brands realize the value of being present across social platforms, leveraging social media marketing, and reaching the target audience. Some of the popular social networks where your business can find quality leads include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest. 

Pro Tips 

• Devise a channel-specific strategy and share engaging content across channels 
• Regularly interact with your followers and boost engagement through regular discussions 
• Leverage social media ads to target specific audience  

5. Email Marketing

Emails are powerful and effective tools for lead generation and a lot of businesses employ them with great effect. You can use emails to deliver targeted and personalized messages. You can also reach your audiences directly and drive engagement. Using email marketing, you can drive conversions and make your business grow. 

Pro Tips 

• Grow an email list of interested customers 
• Segment your audiences or email list based on purchase history, demographics, and other parameters 
• Run targeted email campaigns and share updates, promotions, or content 

6. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Having a website or running marketing campaigns is not enough for lead generation if you don’t optimize your conversion rates. The key is to improve the effectiveness of your website or campaigns so that more visitors take the desired action.  

Pro Tips 

• Identify areas of improvement for your website or marketing campaigns 
• Analyze all the key aspects of your website, including its user experience and navigation flow 
• Focus on reducing friction in the lead-generation process of your business 
• Test your form fields, images, and headlines, and use tools like A/B testing 

Best Way to Generate Leads Offline  

What next when you have already used more ways to generate leads online? Well, online is not the only medium to generate leads. Businesses can also leverage various offline methods as well and build leads. 

Let’s look at some of the ways to generate leads offline – 

Attend Events and Trade Shows 

Meeting potential clients face-to-face is one of the best ways to generate leads offline. To do that, you can attend industry-specific events and trade shows. You can network there, interact with potential customers, and exchange your business cards. 

Host Seminars or Workshops 

Hosting workshops or seminars is another useful way to generate leads offline. In this way, you can share your industry expertise and knowledge with the target audience. More importantly, you can provide insights into the problems of those attending the workshops. You can also gather contact information and start direct mail campaigns over time. 

Run Referral Programs

Referral programs have always been a powerful method to generate leads offline. You can run a well-executed referral program to reward your existing customers. This reward can encourage them to bring new leads, or you can reward them for bringing new leads to your business.  

Use Local Ads 

Reaching potential clients in your area is key to building on your leads. To achieve that goal, you can consider investing in local ads. You can place such ads in newspapers, billboards, or magazines. If budget is not an issue, you can also use radio ads.  

Use Cold Calling 

Cold calling continues to be an effective technique to directly engage with your potential customers. This method is beneficial as you can introduce your products or services quickly and solve any customer issues. It will also help you reach out to people who may not have shown prior interest in your offer. 

Speak at Industry-Specific Events

Speaking engagements have been quite effective when it comes to building trust and credibility with your target audience. When you speak at industry events and conferences, it helps you share your expertise and insights with the audience.    

Interesting Lead Generation Statistics  

There are various ways to generate quality leads for your business. The key is to find the right one that matches your business goals and industry. You can also learn from some interesting stats on lead generation and get good ideas. 

Let’s look at some key stats about online lead generation – 

• 61% of marketers consider lead generation as the most challenging task. ( Source – StartupBonsai.com ) 
• 53% of marketers spend around half of their marketing budget on generating leads. ( Source – RulerAnalytics.Com ) 
• Around 7 out of ten marketers say social media marketing has helped them generate more leads (Social Media Examiner) 
• 60% of marketers believe inbound marketing is the best way to generate high-quality leads. ( Salesmate.io) 

Boost Engagement and Drive Leads With REVE Chat

Engagement is always at the core of generating leads online and offline. The more you engage, the better it will reflect in the number of leads you get. 

At REVE Chat, we understand the huge value that engagement can bring to your business and also offer a variety of tools for engagement. 

Your business can use our AI-powered chatbot to offer quick replies to customers, automate tasks, and streamline interactions. 

We also have visual engagement tools for help such as video chat software and co-browsing software.

Our live chat software can be added to the chatbot to offer hybrid support and boost the levels of engagement with your audience. 

Final Thoughts 

Generating leads is not easy and it requires continuous effort over time. The key is to explore and leverage both online and offline channels and boost engagement with your target audience. 

With REVE Chat, you find the support of high-quality tools and engage with your audience better. 

You can sign up and check how our tools can add great value to your business in various aspects of sales, support, and marketing. 

This strategy is essential for maintaining visibility across multiple platforms. A business using a multichannel marketing system can effectively target customers with varying preferences and also stand out from the competition. 

With consumer behavior constantly evolving, the key is to diversify marketing efforts and implement outreach programs across various channels. This approach will help a business meet customers across various touchpoints and serve them well effortlessly. 

In this blog post, we will explore multichannel marketing in detail, understand its benefits, challenges & examples, and also look at various strategies to use and increase sales. 

Before moving further, let’s get started with the definition first…

What is Multichannel Marketing? 

Multi-channel marketing is a strategy of using multiple channels to engage with customers. It’s an approach to leveraging a combination of offline and online platforms to reach customers and enlarge the business presence. 

One of the purposes of using multichannel marketing is to connect with the target audience at various touchpoints and ensure consistent value to them throughout their customer journey. The goal of this kind of marketing is to meet customers where they are and engage with them across their preferred channels. 

Adopting a multichannel marketing strategy gives the flexibility to integrate messaging, branding, and experiences seamlessly across all channels. It’s also essential for delivering tailored experiences specific to individual customer’s behaviors and preferences.    

Omnichannel Marketing vs. Multichannel Marketing

Omnichannel marketing and multichannel marketing are two approaches to engaging with customers across various channels. Both involve multiple channels but the focus area of each approach is very different. 

Omnichannel marketing integrates various channels and touchpoints, providing a friction-free customer experience. When this approach is used, all the platforms work together and customers can move between channels easily. 

Multichannel marketing also involves promotion on various platforms but it has less focus on integrating those channels for the customer. Each channel will operate independently which may result in disjointed customer journeys. 

Between the two approaches, omnichannel marketing emphasizes seamless and integrated experiences across all channels. It also recognizes the value of meeting customer needs regardless of the choice of channels they choose. 

When to Use Omnichannel vs. Multichannel

The decision to use omnichannel or multichannel marketing depends on the specific goals of the business. It also relies on the resources and capabilities of the business. Both strategies have their unique advantages and can complement a business’s overall marketing objectives. 

When to Use Omnichannel 

• When your goal is to offer seamless and personalized experiences to your customers across all channels
• When you aim to maintain consistency and continuity in branding and messaging throughout the customer journey   
• When you look to deliver a cohesive brand experience across all touchpoints 

When to Use Multichannel  

• When you want to reach a broad audience across different channels 
• When you aim to leverage multiple channels without the need for integration between them
• When your marketing strategy is channel-specific 

Channels Used in Multichannel Marketing

Multichannel marketing involves the use of various channels to reach and engage with the audience. These channels fall under different categories with unique features and focus points. The choice to use the channel, and category of channels, will depend on the goal of the business. 

Let’s look at all the three broad categories of channels used in multichannel marketing – 

1. Digital Channels

• Social Media Platforms ( Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn ) 
• Email Marketing ( Newsletters, Drip Campaigns)
• Search Engine Marketing ( SEO, PPC & Display Ads)
• Content Marketing (Blogs, Articles, Videos, )
• Website and Landing Pages
• Mobile Marketing (Apps, SMS, Push Notifications)
• Chatbots and Messaging Apps 

2. Traditional Channels

• TV
• Radio
• Print Ads
• Outdoor Ads
• Telemarketing 

3. Other Channels

• Affiliate Marketing
• Influencer Marketing
• Customer Service Channels (Live Chat) 

Benefits of Multichannel Marketing

Multichannel marketing is the best strategy for businesses seeking to maximize their reach. It enables better engagement and conversion opportunities. More so, today 73% of retail consumers use multiple channels to buy products and services of their choice.   

Here are the key multichannel marketing benefits –  

• Broader Audience Reach – A business that utilizes multiple channels can expand its reach and connect with a broader audience. With various platforms and devices for help, it becomes easy to increase brand visibility and reach different segments of the audience. 
• Higher Levels of Engagement – Using a variety of channels for interaction can help a business offer more personalized and relevant experiences. It can engage with customers at different touchpoints and ensure value at each stage of their journey. All this can lead to higher levels of engagement. 
• Meeting Customers Where They Are –  Customers feel happy and satisfied when businesses offer multiple channels for communication and interaction. Adopting this approach is essential for meeting customers where they are and increasing their level of satisfaction with the business. 
• Increased Chances of Conversion – A business can gather more data when it has various channels for customer engagement. This can prove helpful in devising a data-driven approach to understanding the audience’s needs. Based on that, offering them tailored messages becomes easy. Chances of conversion go up when data-backed insights are available.  
• Optimized ROI – Having multiple channels is essential when a business wants to diversify its marketing efforts. This strategy also helps in allocating resources effectively and based on the way each channel performs, resulting in an optimized return on investment (ROI). 
• More Leads and Sales – The strategy of multiple channels opens up more chances for engagement through consistent messaging and offering at each touchpoint. The business gets more customers to guide through the buying process, resulting in more leads and sales over time.  

Multi-Channel Marketing Challenges

Multichannel marketing is a rewarding strategy as over 50% of marketers believe that it delivers excellent ROI. It however also requires a careful consideration of different aspects. With multiple channels involved, there are certainly more chances of errors which can impact customer experiences. 

Let’s look at some major challenges that are involved with a multichannel marketing approach –  

• Maintaining Consistency Across Channels – Customer experience is often compromised when there is a lack of consistency in the tone, style, and presentation of messages across channels. For any business that leverages multiple channels, keeping everything consistent across all channels will always be a big challenge. 
• Staying Relevant on Each Channel –  There are so many marketing channels and it requires considerable efforts and resources to stay relevant on them all. Lack of budget or poor planning may make gaining customer attention across channels extremely hard. 
• Determining the Optimal Investment –  Judicious resource allocation can be complex when there are many channels to cater to. Without proper planning and analysis, a business may find it difficult to determine the optimal mix of investments for each channel.  
• Mapping Customer Journey – A business has to work less to map customer journeys and understand interactions when the number of channels is fewer. However, customer journey optimization becomes incredibly complex when there are multiple channels involved.  
• Keeping Pace with Emerging Channels – Adapting to emerging trends and channels is easier said than done as it requires a strategic approach across all levels. If a business is not monitoring new channels and tech evolution, it might fail to challenge other players in the industry.  
• Accurate Measurement of Marketing Efforts – It takes advanced analytics to accurately measure the impact of marketing efforts across all channels. Not having adequate resources, tools, and support can be a big detriment in knowing which channel contributes most and which the least.  

Key Components of a Multi-Channel Marketing System  

A multi-channel marketing system is an effective approach to reaching customers across all touchpoints and engaging better. It is critical to forge stronger relationships with customers who want businesses to meet on the channel of choice. 

Here are the key elements of a multi-channel marketing system – 

• Customer Segmentation – A business can deliver personalized messaging effectively and target customers across channels only when it has segmentation in place. 
• Integration of Channels – A robust multi channel marketing system is achieved only when there is a seamless integration of various channels.  
• Consistent Messaging – Maintaining consistency in messaging across all channels is essential to ensure a unified brand identity. 
• Coordinated Marketing Efforts – An effective cross-channel marketing system is established only when there is a coordinated marketing effort.
• Data Collection and Analysis – Gathering and analyzing data from various channels is essential for a successful cross-channel system.  
• Personalization of Marketing Messages – Customer insights are vital to personalize offers based on unique demographics and behavior.  
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – A business must implement a CRM system to effectively manage customer data and interactions across channels.  

How to Create an Effective Multi-Channel Marketing Campaign?  

A business needs an effective multi-channel marketing campaign to reach and engage its audience across multiple channels. It however takes careful planning, execution, and optimization across various channels to make the campaign successful. Data and feedback also play a vital role in refining the approach and achieving success with the multi-channel campaign. 

The steps to creating a successful multi-channel marketing campaign are as follows –    

Step 1 – Define Your Goals 

Having well-defined goals is essential for implementing a successful approach to multi-channel marketing. Whether your business wants to generate leads, drive traffic, boost sales, or increase brand awareness, the goals you set will drive your strategy and metrics in the right direction.  

Step 2 – Conduct Research 

Once you have defined your goals, the next step is to choose the relevant channels that align with your objectives. You will need to do thorough market research to understand your audience and its pain points, behaviors, and preferences. 

Step 3 – Analyze Each Channel 

A successful multi-channel marketing strategy uses a combination of channels to cater to the target audience. The right approach is to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each channel and see how they fit in your marketing effort. 

Step 4 – Create High-Quality Content 

Creating high-quality content tailored to each channel is the next important step. Here, the focus should be on developing a variety of content types and pieces that align with your campaign goals. Make sure the content resonates with your audience and is optimized for impact.   

Step 5 – Plan Your Messaging 

Your brand messaging needs to be customized for each channel and audience. This will help ensure consistency of communication and value proposition across all channels.  

Step 6 – Deliver a Unified Brand Experience  

It’s important to develop cohesion among multiple channels to deliver a unified brand experience to your audience. For example, you can promote social media posts using email or online channels to promote real events. 

Step 7 – Track and Analyze Data 

Now when your multi-channel marketing campaign is ready, start tracking and analyzing data from various touchpoints. You can monitor KPIs such as conversion rates, CTR, and traffic to measure how effective your campaign is. 

Popular Multichannel Marketing Solutions For Your Business 

Businesses need feature-rich solutions to optimize their multichannel marketing efforts. Tons of popular software platforms are available to implement marketing campaigns across various channels. It is, however, important to choose a solution that is the right match for your business needs, budget, and scalability. 

Let’s look at some of the popular multichannel marketing solutions and tools for online businesses – 

1. Salesforce Marketing Cloud 

Executing effective marketing campaigns across various channels is easy when you have quality solutions at hand. Salesforce Marketing Cloud is one such comprehensive multichannel marketing solution to create and manage campaigns on any scale. Its suite of tools can be effective in engaging with customers across touchpoints and driving meaningful results. 

Key Features

• Tools for Email, Mobile, and Social Media Marketing 
• Journey Builder & Content Management 
• Analytics and Reporting 
• Personalization and AI 

2. Adobe Campaign 

Many businesses may look for a solution that helps them deliver engaging experiences across various digital channels. Adobe Campaign can help as it’s designed to enable the automation of marketing campaigns across channels. Its comprehensive features and capabilities are essential for driving customer engagement and achieving measurable results. 

Key Features 

• Tools for Multi-Channel Campaign Management 
• Robust Personalization and Segmentation Capabilities  
• Automation and Workflows 
• Campaign Analytics and Reporting 

3. Mailchimp 

It’s the right tool for businesses looking to engage with their audience across email, social platforms, ads, landing pages, and more. As a comprehensive multi-channel marketing solution, Mailchimp has a wide range of features and capabilities for engaging with audiences across various platforms. The stand-out aspects of this solution are its user-friendly interface and integrated approach to marketing. 

Key Features 

• Email as Core Functionality with Templates  
• Tools for Social Media Management 
• Digital Advertising Features 
• Easy Landing Pages Creation 

4. Brevo ( formerly Sendinblue) 

It is a popular choice for a comprehensive range of marketing tools to engage with audiences across various touchpoints. Brevo ( initially it was called Sendinblue) is a right-match solution for businesses looking to engage across email, chat, SMS, and other channels. 

Key Features 

• Robust Email Marketing Tools 
• Features for Targeted SMS Campaigns 
• Marketing Automation Features  
• CRM Integration 

Best Practices for an Effective Multichannel Marketing Strategy 

Implementing a multichannel marketing strategy involves planning and careful consideration of various factors. There are best practices to follow for creating and executing a robust strategy for various marketing channels. If your business is ready to adopt a strategic approach to marketing across customer touchpoints, it will find it easy to reach and engage the audience on their channels of choice. 

Following are some of the best practices for a successful multi-channel marketing strategy –  

Understand the Buying Habits of Your Target Audience 

A successful marketing strategy is always built on the foundation of complete customer understanding. When you know your audiences well, it becomes easy to serve their interests and needs. The key is to conduct detailed research to gain insights into customers’ demographics, preferences, and buying habits.  

Set Clear and Measurable Objectives for Your Marketing Strategy    

Chances of achieving success with marketing efforts go higher when businesses have clear and measurable objectives in place. When there are clear goals in sight, your business can be guided in the right direction, resulting in sustainable growth and success over time. It’s important to have a clear analysis of each channel before launching digital marketing campaigns for them. 

Evaluate Whether the Channels Align with Your Business Goals 

Many businesses fail to realize that not every channel will match their marketing goals. Despite that, most of them try to leverage the maximum channels they can, resulting in poor ROI on marketing efforts. The right approach is to first identify the channels that align with your target audience, and that fit with your long-term goals. 

Adopt a Segment-Based Personalization Strategy 

Your marketing campaigns will never be ideal for all your audience segments. That’s why you need more focus on customer segmentation and data for devising a robust personalization strategy. Make sure your messages are tailored based on diverse factors such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and engagement levels of the segment. 

Consider Cross-Channel Marketing Automation 

Cross-channel marketing automation is essential for streamlining marketing efforts and ensuring a seamless experience for customers. A business can automate a variety of marketing tasks such as campaign deployment, segmentation, and personalization to provide consistency of experience. This approach will help in delivering relevant and impactful messages to the audience.  

Optimize All Marketing Channels for Mobile Devices 

More customers than ever before use mobile devices and smartphones to reach out to businesses for engagement and interaction purposes. Keeping this in mind, your business should take steps to optimize all channels for mobile devices. From creating responsive website design to using mobile-optimized content, there are many ways channels can be optimized for the audience on the move. 

Provide Value at Each Touchpoint 

Marketing efforts are truly successful when the business provides value to customers at each touchpoint. The key is to make the customer journey hassle-free and smooth. This can lead to enhanced experiences at each stage of the journey. Make sure all your marketing efforts, right from quality content to excellent customer service, are aimed at building trust and loyalty. 

Measure the Performance of Your Marketing Efforts 

What purpose would it serve when you spend so many resources on marketing and don’t regularly measure the performance? Don’t make this mistake and rather use tools for tracking and analyzing data from various touchpoints. Make sure you monitor and analyze key metrics such as engagement, traffic, and ROI to identify areas of improvement. 

Multichannel Marketing Examples

Many brands are setting good standards for engaging audiences across various touchpoints and ensuring value to each segment. They are using multiple channels to their advantage and growing the brand visibility and driving growth.  

Here are some multichannel marketing examples from across industry verticals – 

Example 1 – Nike’s “Just Do It” Campaign 

Nike is a great example of how to leverage the power of multichannel marketing and reach the audience. Whenever they launch a new shoe, a promotional video appears on social channels. They follow it up by sending targeted email campaigns where the focus is to showcase the benefits and features of the product. Buyers can also purchase the shoes from their website or mobile apps. More so, in-store promotions are also quite common for Nike. 

Example 2 – Starbucks Rewards Program 

Starbucks is another brand that knows how to get the most out of multichannel marketing. Its loyalty programs are strategically integrated across multiple channels. It gives customers the freedom to sign up for the program through the website or mobile app. The company also uses email and push notifications for sending personalized offers. It leverages user preferences and purchase history for its loyalty programs.

Example 3 – Amazon Prime Day

Most of us might be aware of Amazon’s annual Prime Day event and how it generates so much interest across the world. Well, the way Amazon uses multichannel marketing is the reason why this event became so successful. This event is promoted through various channels such as TV ads, social media ads, website banners, and newsletters. Once the events roll about, customers get the freedom to shop through the Amazon website, mobile apps, and also by using Alexa. 

Example 4 – Burberry’s Digital Flagship Stores 

The famous luxury fashion brand Burberry also sets high standards in the way it uses multichannel marketing. The manner its retail stores are transformed into digital stores is commendable. This is the reason why customers can enjoy an immersive brand experience both offline and online. The digital screens that are available in-store can be used to browse collections and personalize products effortlessly. 

Example 5 –  Walmart’s Grocery Pickup and Delivery Service 

The global retail giant Walmart always stays one step ahead of emerging trends which it also shows in the way it offers a multichannel shopping experience. It allows customers to book groceries online through the website or mobile app and get them delivered to their doorstep, or have them picked up at a nearby store. Plus, it makes sure that customers can access the same products and prices across channels. 

Supercharge Your Multichannel Marketing With REVE Chat

Your business needs a quality tool to successfully implement a multichannel marketing strategy. The features and functionalities of that tool will play a big role in how effectively you can engage with your audience across various touchpoints. 

With REVE, you can find a variety of engagement tools and strengthen your multi-channel approach. 

Your business can rely on our AI-powered chatbot to automate marketing tasks, and also enhance service delivery. Using the chatbot, providing quick answers to customer queries is possible. 

Our tools like video chat software and co-browsing software are excellent for visual engagement across channels. 

The live chat software we provide can be paired with the chatbot to offer hybrid support and add value to customers at any stage of their journey with your brand. 

Final Thoughts 

Adopting a multi-channel marketing approach is the way forward for businesses that want to engage customers on different channels. This type of marketing gives the flexibility to utilize many channels together and enhance customers’ experience with your brand. 

At REVE Chat, we always focus on providing the best-in-class tools and solutions for businesses so that they can engage with their audience on multiple channels.

With us, you sign up and check how our tools can add great value to your multi-channel strategy of marketing. 

Tracking this metric can help you better understand the level of customer happiness with your product or service. It can also show the health score of your business at a particular point in time. If your business is healthy, chances are there will be a low churn rate and vice versa. 

More so, a business that constantly tracks the customer health score can easily identify customers who are at risk of churning or disengaging. By proactively addressing churn issues, companies can improve retention rates and increase revenue or profitability. 

In this blog, we will explore a customer health score in detail, understand its importance for companies, see some examples, and also look at the tips to increase it. 

Before moving further, let’s first get started with the definition. 

What is a Customer Health Score?

Customer health score is a helpful metric to measure the risk levels of a customer churn. It is a good indicator of a company’s robustness of relationships with the customer. When this score is low, it shows there are higher levels of risk of customer churn. 

By tracking the customer health score metric, a business can understand ideal candidates for upselling. This score also prepares businesses to deploy their sales and marketing efforts where it matters more. 

This metric is also essential for any business that cares to know whether a customer is planning to stay or leave their brand. The earlier customer success teams have this score, the more proactive steps they can take to minimize the dangers of churn.  

Why is a Customer Health Score Important? 

A business should consistently track its health score. Doing this can help it identify customers who are likely to go away. When this metric is not measured regularly, a business fails to know how healthily it’s managing customer relationships and ensuring success. 

A customer health score is important for various reasons, including –  

• A predictive indicator of potential churn – A health score is key to understanding customers’ loyalty or churn potential. It can serve as a good predictive indicator of the chances of customer stickiness or churn.  
• A tool for proactive customer management – A low health score suggests that your customer is not feeling engaged with the brand or he/she is dissatisfied. Based on this information, a business can adopt proactive steps for customer management and fix the issues before they cause churn.    
• A solid metric to tailor customer engagement – Health score is a useful metric to identify happy and unhappy customers. It will help you know whether customers need immediate support for their issues or whether they can be offered additional services or upgrades.  
• A guide for resource allocation –  A business always expects its resources to be used where they are most needed. This can help maximize the customer service and success efforts. To allocate the resources judiciously, a business needs a health score to know the customers they can prioritize.  
• An approach to customer segmentation – Your business can use the customer health score metric to categorize customers into different groups. This will help in personalizing experiences based on the needs of each segment.   

Key Customer Health Score Metrics

There is no specific formula to calculate a customer health score. Businesses that look to calculate it often rely on various metrics, specific to the nature of their industry and the unique customer needs. However, there are some key metrics that you need to measure customer health, and these are –   

Product Usage Metrics 

The way customers use products or services of a business is a good indicator of their level of satisfaction. Maybe that’s why a business can use various product usage metrics to measure its health score. These metrics may include the frequency rate of product usage, logins, sessions, interactions, and feature adoption rate.   

Engagement Metrics 

Engaged customers spend 67% more on average than new ones. This shows why customer engagement level is a very solid indicator of someone’s probability of sticking or leaving. Different engagement metrics are available that can be tracked to understand a customer health score. They include click-through rates, email open rates, response times, the number of tickets raised, etc.   

Satisfaction Metrics 

Happy and satisfied customers not only stick for longer but also spend more. Such types of customers are true assets for any business. That’s why it’s important to regularly track and measure key satisfaction metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) to understand the level of happiness of your customers.  

Financial Metrics 

A business’ financial health improves when customers stay for a longer duration and purchase more. Such behavior is often reflected in the overall performance of the business. That’s why financial metrics such as renewal rates, revenue growth, and customer lifetime value (CLV) work as key metrics to measure the customer health score. 

How to Calculate Customer Health Score?

Calculating a customer health score is easy if you have found the right metrics to track. The calculation will depend on the type of metrics you use and the type of business you operate. The key is to include both positive and negative indicators as it will give a detailed insight into the health of your customer. 

Follow these steps to calculate a customer health score specific to your business – 

1. Determine What to Measure

You need to analyze key indicators first if you want to determine the health of a customer. Determining what to measure is important as it will be unique to your business or product. Whatever you track should suggest the likelihood of your customer’s chances to upgrade or disengage. When you know what to measure, it can lead you to a unique and robust health score formula. 

2. Define What Your Score Will Represent 

Whatever score you achieve will indicate something about your customer health, either positively or negatively. The score will suggest whether you need to re-assess your customer effort and customer success strategy. Based on the kind of information you seek, you can monitor the relevant behavior metrics and accurately measure customer health at any specific point in time.  

3. Establish Score Distribution 

Make a list of all actions – both positive and negative – you want to consider for calculating the health score of your customer. You can consider separating both types of actions into two groups for clarity purposes. Based on the classification, you can add the positive actions to your score and subtract the negative ones. This is how you can get a specific score assigned to each action according to its weight or value. 

4. Create a Scoring System

Creating a scoring system should be the next goal to get an overall score on the health of your customer. In this system, you can assign a score to each action based on their value addition to the business. If you think any action of the customer is good for the health of the business, you can show it on the positive side and vice versa.  

5. Collect Data on Customer Behavior 

The more customer data you have, the better insights you will gain on the health of your customers. That’s why you need to collect data on consumer behavior and habits to get an accurate picture of customer health. The data you have can help you put customers in different number ranges and set benchmarks. 

6. Create a Customer Health Score Template 

Having a template to measure customer health can prove helpful as everyone on the team can easily track the metric and become aware of the customer scenario. The template can effectively guide your customer success team. Similarly, you can create a customer health score dashboard where everyone can log in and see what’s going on at any point in time. 

Factors Affecting the Customer Success Health Score

For businesses, it’s always a big challenge to develop a comprehensive understanding of a customer’s health. The task is complicated because several factors may affect the customer success health score. Once these factors are known, it becomes easy to take proactive steps and drive customer success with the business. 

Some of the key factors affecting the customer success health score include –   

• Whether the customer is using the full potential of the product or service is always a big determinant of their level of satisfaction with the business. 
• The extent to which the various features or functionalities are used by the customer is also a big indicator of their happiness level. 
• The levels of engagement with marketing materials and the depth of interactions with the support team are also good reflections of customer success with the business. 
• The frequency to which a customer engages with educational resources can be a good determinant of their positive or negative perception of a brand.  
• The kind of feedback a customer provides, whether in the form of reviews, testimonials, surveys, or ratings, can be a good judge of their health score. 
• The overall reliability and performance of the product or service of a business can also be a big factor in making customers stick or leave. 
• The strength of the relationship that the customer enjoys can also be a major aspect of their loyalty or disengagement with a brand. 
• Whether a customer is happy or not can also be evaluated based on the frequency and quality of communication they have with the business. 
• A business’s ability to meet customer needs and align values to specific goals can also impact the health score.  

How to Improve Customer Health Score?

Keeping customers engaged and satisfied is a strategic approach that needs to be adopted to achieve growth for the business. That’s why the value of the customer health score metric grows manifold when a business uses it to improve the health of its customer relationships.  

Here are different ways to improve the customer health score – 

1. Identify Areas of Concern 

A business first needs to identify the areas of concern before planning to improve them. Some areas may need more improvement than others, and some may need no improvement at all. Reviewing customer data and feedback could be the key to finding out areas where you need to improve. Evaluating support interactions can also be a good point to start when it comes to identifying weak areas. 

2. Prioritize Issues based on Impact  

Some issues may be critical and can impact the health of your customer more. If they are not addressed timely, they might push customers toward churn. However, some issues may not cause an immediate impact but might have a negative impact in the long run. So, you need to prioritize the most critical issues based on the level of impact they have on the customer, and the health of your business.   

3. Focus on Enhancing Product Adoption by Customers  

When customers are happy, they are more likely to fully optimize the features of your product or service. You can trust them to stick for longer based on the extent of product adoption. More so, their responses to your messages and communications are also a good signal of their immediate trust in your brand. That’s why you should always focus on encouraging customers to maximize the value of your offering. 

4. Engage More with Customers 

Engaged customers tend to be more trustful and less fidgety. The more engaged they are, the better relationships they form with the business. Such customers are also more receptive to price fluctuations in products or services. However, if they are not engaged, the likelihood of churn is not far away. 66% of consumers will abandon a brand if not engaged through personalized experiences. 

That’s why your business should foster engagement through proactive and personalized communications with the customer. Make sure you collect regular feedback, attend to their queries promptly, and take steps to meet their needs.  

5. Provide Great Customer Support and Build Relationships 

Customers won’t go away anywhere if you provide great support to them, address their issues timely, and guide them through their problems. More so, you can win customers for life if you focus on building long-term relationships by aligning your business goals with theirs. But yes, always strive to offer the best quality of product and service as nothing else matters much if your offering does not meet customer’s expectations.   

6. Talk to customers

If you’re not sure why your customer health score is low despite all your efforts, what would you do? Well, you can speak to customers and get a better understanding of the matter. Sending out satisfaction surveys can help, but up to a point only. The best way is to reach out to customers and ask them the reason why they are not scoring highly on various parameters you have set. You may also ask them about the steps and actions they expect of you. 

7. Identify Patterns 

All the customer data and insights you have gathered can be used to identify patterns of behavior. Those data could throw up some surprises as well on why some features are not getting the kind of traction you expected and so on. Maybe some features are not clicking with the customers for any reason beyond your understanding. The more you dig deep into the data, the more you can hope to find some patterns behind the low health score of the customer. 

Customer Health Score Examples 

Interpreting behavioral data and health scores is vital to gaining deep insights about customers. It helps us reach a meaningful conclusion about what customers like and what not. Some businesses are very good at turning the health score data into a decision-making tool. 

Here are a few customer health score examples for you – 

1. Percentage Scale 

This scale is very simple to use and most businesses can adopt it for calculating their customer health scores. Whatever maximum value is assigned for a health score, the customer score can be divided by that value to get a percentage. Using this scale, a percentage score for each action can be calculated which eventually can help you exceed customer expectations.  

2. Colour-Coding Scale 

This scoring system may not be as precise as the percentage one, but it nonetheless is easy to use. Its working resembles that of a traffic light where the “red color” and “green color” have different meanings. Here too, the health score is assigned three values in color red, yellow, or green for easy understanding of their satisfaction level with the business.

3. Grading-Based Scale 

As the name suggests, this scoring system assigns grades from F to A to a range of health scores. Excellent scores are rated A while poor ones are graded F, and the rating follows a top-down approach with the inferior ratings appearing higher and vice versa. The grading system makes it an easy method to understand the health score quickly. 

Boost Customer Engagement and Achieve a Better Health Score with REVE 

Engaged customers stay for longer, spend more, and have a higher CLV. Keeping this in mind, your business should focus more on engaging with customers more frequently and effectively.

At REVE, we bring you a wide range of engagement and support tools that you can use and serve your customers better.

You can use our AI-powered chatbot to increase the response rate and automate tasks across sales, marketing, and support. 

You can also provide better visual support to customers by using our tools such as video chat software and co-browsing software.  

Plus, we have advanced live chat software that you can add to the bot and elevate the level of customer support. 

Final Thoughts

A business that strives for customer happiness enjoys better retention rates and lower churn. When customers are happy, they don’t feel the need to switch to competitors. 

At REVE, we understand the significance of keeping customers engaged and serving them the best you possibly can. 

That’s why our tools can be a great value addition to your customer engagement strategy. You can sign up and check the features of our products. 

Focusing on customer equity helps build loyal customers. It safeguards business interests by mitigating risks associated with market fluctuations. Companies that prioritize building loyalty are better able to meet customer needs and preferences, therefore improving the overall experience with the brand.  

All this indicates how customer equity should be a focus area if your business prefers long-term sustainability over short-term growth. This approach can ensure consistent revenue streams and profitability over time.

In this blog, we will look at the definition of customer equity, analyze its importance, benefits, and model, and also find ways to increase it. 

Before moving further, let’s start with the definition… 

What is Customer Equity? 

Customer equity is defined as the sum of the entire lifetime value of all customers of a business. It refers to the total profits of all customer relationships to a business. Calculated for a specific period, it’s also a measurement of the entire potential worth of a customer for the business. 

For many businesses, customer equity is now a key metric to measure because it accounts for various factors, including customer lifetime value (CLV), retention rates, acquisition costs, and chances for future transactions.  

More so, it’s also a measure of the long-term value that a customer adds to the business in different ways, such as through repeat purchases, referrals, loyalty, or upgrades. For a business, calculating and maximizing customer equity is key to getting insights into the overall value of their customer base. 

Role of Customer Equity in Marketing  

Customer equity is a key concept in marketing as businesses use it to focus on building and nurturing long-term relationships with their customers. Marketers often leverage it to quantify the value customers bring over time and then devise strategies to augment that value. 

Here are different ways customer equity in marketing shows its relevancy – 

• Marketers often use customer data to segment and identify high-value customers with the potential for long-term revenue growth and profitability. 
• Most marketing strategies are based on attracting customers with the potential for term-term value and that’s why customer equity considerations are often leveraged.    
• The ultimate goal of a marketing campaign is to increase the total equity customers bring to the business through personalized communication and engagement strategies.   
• Customer equity insights are very helpful as marketers use them to identify chances for cross-selling and up-selling to existing customers.  
• Marketers always focus on exceeding customer expectations and ensuring exceptional experiences for them. Both are crucial for maximizing customer equity.  
• A marketing team can make informed decisions about resource allocation only when it’s aware of customer lifetime value.     

Customer Equity vs Brand Equity 

Customer equity and brand equity are two key concepts in marketing that are used to gauge the various levels of customer relationships with the business. Both are not similar and differ in scope, focus, and measurement. 

Let’s look at how they are different in many ways – 

1. Focus

Customer equity is concerned with the monetary worth of customers to the business and explores the financial value gained from the entire duration of customer relationships. 

Brand equity focuses on the intangible value and perception that customers have of a business. Its focus is more on the perceptions that customers have in their minds.  

2. Scope

Customer equity has a narrow scope as its sole consideration is the total financial impact of customer relations on the business.  

Brand equity is broad in scope as it concerns aspects such as perceived value, brand awareness, and trust in a brand by its customers. 

3. Nature of metrics  

Customer equity is often measured using monetary metrics such as churn rate, CLV, customer acquisition cost, etc. 

Measurement of brand equity is often done using qualitative and quantitative metrics and methods. 

4. Impact

Customer equity gauges the impact of a business’ customer relationship strategies over a specific period. 

On the other hand, brand equity analyzes the impact of consumer perceptions.  

Importance of Customer Equity 

Building sustainable relationships with customers is essential for growth and success. It ensures a constant stream of revenue and provides a competitive edge in the market. However, to achieve all this, a business first needs to invest in increasing customer equity whose importance extends to many areas, including – 

• Boost to Bottom Line –  When customers are happy and satisfied, they stick with the business and make repeat purchases, leading to a boost to the bottom line. Such scenarios are frequent when there is an attempt to increase the total equity of a customer.  
• Reduced Customer Acquisition Costs – Retaining existing customers is significantly less expensive than hiring new ones. By focusing on customer equity, a business can greatly minimize the costs associated with acquisition.  
• Creating Brand Advocates – Customers become loyal when a business focuses on meeting their needs and prioritizing their preferences. Such customers can turn brand advocates for the business and bring more equity over time.  

• Increased Referrals – A business that has high customer equity witnesses frequent recommendations, resulting in increased referrals and improved revenue growth. 
• Stability During Challenging Times – Many businesses find it tough to adapt to market fluctuations and economic downturns due to the absence of a strong base of loyal customers. This kind of problem is not faced by companies that often invest in increasing customer relationships.  
• Sustainable Growth and Success – Improving customer satisfaction is the route to fostering a customer-centric culture. This kind of culture lays the foundation for sustainable growth and success for the business. 

 Customer Equity Model 

For businesses, the Customer Equity Model is a strategic framework to understand the depth and value of their customer relationships. This model helps analyze the factors that add up to the monetary worth of customers to the business. The insights gained from it can be used to drive decision-making and devise marketing tactics.   

Let’s look at the key elements of the Customer Equity Model – 

• Customer Acquisition – It focuses on the analysis of all the costs associated with attracting and converting customers.  
• Customer Retention – It measures the value dedicated to engaging customers and keeping them happy over time. 
• Customer Expansion – This element involves monetary evaluation of all the strategies to expand customer value for the business. 
• Customer Advocacy – This element values the strategies aimed at encouraging and rewarding customer advocacy.  
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – This element estimates the total net profit generated by a customer over their entire stay with the business. 

Customer Equity Formula 

Customer equity is an effective metric to assess the value added by each customer to the business. This equity is calculated using a formula and the calculation is often done for a specific period. 

As per the Customer Equity Formula – 

Customer Equity = Viral Coefficient X Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – (Acquisition + Retention)

In this formula, the “viral coefficient” refers to the total number of customer referrals made by a customer.  

In the formula, CLV refers to the total monetary value that each customer brings to the business. 

Acquisition is the total cost of attracting customers while retention is the total cost of retaining customers. 

How to Calculate Customer Equity? 

Customers generate equity throughout their stay with a company. To calculate this equity, it’s first important to know all the sources of that value. When the entire value source is available, a business can calculate the total equity of the customer. 

Let’s look at how to calculate customer equity – 

• First of all, determine the amount of money you spend on acquiring a new customer. To get this amount, you need to divide the total spending on strategies by the total customers acquired at the end of the year cycle. 
• Next, establish the total money spent on customer retention strategies. This money will be added to the total acquisition cost. 
• Now estimate the annual spending of each customer for each year.  
• Determine the profit margin by subtracting the total cost of retention from the total cost of customer acquisition. 
• Now you can list the estimated cash flow of each customer for a specific period and then add up those values to get a customer lifetime value.  

Key Factors of Customer Equity  

Customer equity refers to the total value of a customer base. It includes the present and future value that customers bring through their association with the business. This is how equity accumulates over time. These factors can be prioritized to drive growth and gain an edge in the market. 

Let’s look at the key factors of customer equity and how you can maximize them – 

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – A business should focus on increasing the frequency of purchases as it has a positive effect on the equity. 
• Retention – High retention rates equate to satisfied customers. So, a business should focus on retaining existing customers as it reduces acquisition costs. 
• Customer Acquisition – The cost of acquisition should be in proportion to the expected lifetime value of customers as it ensures equity growth and profit over time. 
• Customer Loyalty – Your business should focus on building strong relationships with customers and offer them exceptional service as it can help foster loyalty and increase equity. 
• Brand Equity – Brands that have high equity enjoy customer trust and it also contributes to value creation in the long run. 
• Customer Segmentation – A business that segments the audience can leverage the value of targeted marketing strategies and meet the specific needs of its audience. 
• Customer Engagement – Continuous engagement through various channels is key to great experiences that lead to customer satisfaction and relationships. 

How to Increase Customer Equity? 

Increasing customer equity is never easy if your business does not take care of improving customer relationships. The better you build relationships, the more will be your retention rate and the lesser the acquisition rate. 

Here are some of the tips to increase customer equity for your business – 

1. Offer a Great Customer Experience 

There is absolutely no substitute for quality interactions and excellent service. Both are key to boosting customer experience with your brand. When the customer experience is good, it always leads to improved satisfaction. With satisfied customers, you will get more repeat purchases and fewer issues with support. 

However, you need to consider every stage of the customer journey and ensure that the experience is hassle-free at each stage. High-value interactions are always essential for engaging customers better no matter in which stage of the journey they are. 

How to offer a great customer experience? 

• Seek regular customer feedback 
• Analyze areas of improvement 
• Make customer experience a value proposition 

2. Personalise Customer Experience

Customers like personalized interactions. They feel great when a business prioritizes connecting and engaging their customers on a personal level. The more you personalize their experience, the more you can improve their experience with your brand. 

59% of customers accept that personalized engagement is the reason they may convert. Such engagement not only brings a positive impact to the sales but can also enhance a customer’s perception of your brand. 

How to personalize customer experience? 

• Use customer data and gain detailed insights 
• Understand the wants and needs of your customers 
• Analyze customer experience opportunities 

3. Identify and Resolve Pain Points 

Happy customers bring referrals. What about the unhappy ones? Well, they may vent their anger, and may also communicate their problems to others, and this can be damaging to your overall brand reputation. That’s why you need to focus on identifying and resolving customer pain points. A proactive approach is essential so that you can be aware of customer issues before they become a big challenge. 

Many top brands make it easy for customers to get help. They also understand the value of investing in an omnichannel engagement strategy. This helps them reach customers on the channels of their choice and maintain the quality of service. 

How to identify and resolve pain points? 

• Analyze your customer journey and work on reducing the points of friction  
• Have a robust feedback mechanism in place 
• Be prompt with responses and prioritize customer experience  

4. Build Customer Relationships

Have you ever wondered why some businesses perform better than others? Well, some of them understand the value of forming an emotional connection with their customers. They know how good customer relationships can form the foundation for the long-term success of the business. Maybe that’s why some brands have more loyal customers than others, and also the better CLV as well. 

How to build customer relationships? 

• Make customers feel appreciated and heard 
• Forge healthy bonds with customers across channels and interactions 
• Send relevant offers tailored to their specific needs  
• Keep evaluating your customer satisfaction ratings 

5. Provide Valuable and Engaging Content

Keeping customers engaged with your brand is vital to gaining their trust and loyalty forever. The more you engage with your customers, the more value you will get in return over time. Engaged customers often stick and make repeat purchases. Such customers are also more likely to be responsive to your offers. The key is always to provide valuable and engaging content that adds value to them and gets their attention. 

How to provide engaging content? 

• Know your audience and define your goals 
• Create a well-planned content calendar 
• Consider using email marketing 
• Leverage weekly newsletters or automated drip campaigns 

6. Improve Your Products and Services

Nothing else would work if your products and services lack quality. For customers, quality matters above all and they won’t feel bothered about how much you spend on marketing. Only high-quality products and services can help you improve customer equity. More so, it’s the quality of your offerings that will make customers come back to you over and again. 

How to improve your products and services?  

• Seek customer feedback on quality 
• Implement customer feedback in product or service design 

Boost Customer Engagement and Equity with REVE Tools 

The way you engage your audience will have a direct effect on customer equity. That’s why you should always focus on engaging better to boost the equity of customers. 

At REVE, we understand the value of customer engagement and how it can drive your growth and success over time. 

We have a variety of engagement tools you can use to interact with your customers well, understand their pain points, and serve their needs well. 

You can use our AI-powered chatbot to automate various tasks across sales, marketing, and support. Using the powerful bot, you can respond to queries faster, put key tasks on autopilot mode, and improve customer’s experience with your brand. 

We also have other useful tools for engaging customers better such as video chat software, co-browsing software, and the ticketing system. 

What’s more, you can pair our live chat software with the chatbot and offer a hybrid support experience to customers. 

Final Thoughts  

Your company’s customer equity is a big asset as it lays the foundation for overall growth. That’s why you should focus on developing it with a sustained effort over time. 

With REVE, you can find the best customer service tools and take the right steps towards improving equity.   

You can sign up with us and check how our tools can add great value to your journey of enhancing customer equity. 

But the question is, how exactly does automation help for ecommerce marketing? 

Well, marketing automation can be an invaluable tool for eCommerce businesses in many ways. It can help streamline the processes and boost overall efficiency. Above all, automating some, or most, parts of marketing gives your business the freedom to complete tasks without requiring a lot of people and capital. 

So, marketing automation is an investment that your ecommerce business must make without blinking an eyelid. The benefits will easily outweigh the cost. 

In this blog, we will explore marketing automation for ecommerce, and understand its uses, benefits, tools, software, and platform. 

Before going further, let’s first look at what exactly marketing automation for ecommerce is…

What is Ecommerce Marketing Automation? 

E-commerce marketing automation is the process of automating and streamlining marketing tasks using a tech platform or software. It’s a strategic approach to putting marketing on autopilot and increasing the efficiency of the processes. For online retailers, automation is a powerful tool to automate, economize, and optimize operations. 

An e-commerce business can leverage automation to improve customer engagement and drive sales. There are plenty of software that can manage repetitive marketing activities with efficiency and ensure value to the business.  

Marketing automation for ecommerce can be a huge differentiator as tasks can be automated so that teams can focus on more critical aspects. This is why more online stores look to benefit from the power of automation.  

Benefits of Marketing Automating For Ecommerce   

Marketing automation is growing in demand across industries and ecommerce is no exception. More online retailers now look to benefit from automation and achieve their marketing goals timely. 

There are many benefits of ecommerce marketing automation, including – 

• Time Savings – Automation reduces the time spent on manual tasks. It also enables marketers to schedule and execute marketing strategies, activities, and campaigns in advance. This can free up, or save valuable time to be used elsewhere on other key aspects of the business. 
• Reduced Human Errors – Chances of error are always high when repetitive tasks are done manually. Your ecommerce enterprise can reduce human error by automating those tasks, resulting in improved efficiency in your marketing efforts.   
• Data-Driven Results – Implementing automation in marketing provides tons of useful data that can help you gain deep insights into customer behavior and campaign performance. The data can help you optimize your campaigns and gain better ROI and results.
• Improved Customer Engagement – Marketing automation is key to delivering personalized messages and experiences based on the demographic data and purchase history of customers. When you adopt a personalized approach, it leads to increased engagement and stronger relationships with your customers.  
• Increased Sales and Conversions – When an ecommerce business automates its marketing campaigns, it can nurture leads better and recover abandoned carts. This can result in increased conversions and sales for the business.  

Key Stats on Marketing Automation for Ecommerce 

Effective marketing is key to growing your ecommerce business. There are different ways to make marketing more effective, and automation is one of them. More online stores now look to automate parts of their marketing to achieve success and drive sales. 

Let’s look at key statistics on the role of automation in ecommerce marketing – 

• 55% of eCommerce marketers use email marketing or marketing automation software. ( Source – Spotler) 
• The global marketing automation market size for ecommerce is projected to grow at a CAGR of 19.4% from 2021 to 2027. ( Source –  Grand View Research )
• 77% of marketers in the e-commerce industry agree that they witnessed an increase in conversions due to marketing automation. ( Source – Email Monday )
• 35% of marketers accept that streamlining marketing and sales efforts is the top reason to implement marketing automation. ( Source – Ascend2.Com) 

Key Considerations Before Automating Your Ecommerce Marketing 

Automating your ecommerce marketing is a strategic decision that requires serious consideration of some factors. The more things you consider, the better you can handle the potential challenges along the way. 

Let’s look at some of the key considerations – 

• Resource Allocation – Automating your ecommerce marketing often requires an investment in tools and technology. So, you need to plan the kind of budget, time, and personnel you can dedicate. 
• Business Goals– The automation you plan must be aligned with your overall business goals, or else its entire purpose will be lost. The key is to analyze and decide the tasks, activities, and processes best suited for automation. 
• Target Audience – Automation can serve its intended purpose well when you understand your audience well and have data on their demographics, behavior, and preferences. This is how you can personalize marketing messages for them.    
• Customer Engagement – Your customers will engage with your messages and campaigns when your automated marketing efforts are relevant. Make sure you prioritize the customer experience for each stage of the journey through the automation process.  
• Adaptability –  Adopting a rigid approach with automation is never an ideal strategy as it does not consider changes in consumer behavior and market conditions. Ensure your approach is flexible so that you can adjust your tactics accordingly. 

How to Automate Your Ecommerce Business? 

Automating an ecommerce business marketing is a strategic decision to improve the efficiency of your operations. It involves the use of different tools and technology with capabilities to help streamline marketing operations and processes.  

Let’s look at how to automate your ecommerce business –   

Step 1 – Define Your Marketing Objectives 

Have clear goals and define the key performance indicators (KPIs) to effectively guide your marketing efforts. Whether you want to boost sales, improve customer retention, or expand the customer base, clarity in goals is essential for success.    

Step 2 – Select a Marketing Automation Platform

Once your goals are set, you can go ahead and choose the right platform for automation. Make sure you choose a platform that offers all the key features and capabilities for automation. 

Step 3 – Create Personalized Campaigns 

Segmentation is the next step where you need to divide the audience into different groups. This is essential for creating targeted marketing campaigns specific to each segment.

Step 4 – Set-Up Automated Emails 

Once the audience is segmented, the next focus area is to set up automated emails to engage with them throughout their journey. You can personalize those emails based on customer data and behavior.  

Step 5 – Implement Workflow Automation 

Workflow automation is the next step where the purpose is to automate repetitive processes and tasks using the right tools. 

Step 6 – Analyze Data 

Analyzing data and predicting customer behavior is the next stage where the focus is on optimizing marketing strategies. You can use analytics and AI tools to gain valuable insights into customer interactions. 

Step 7 – Monitor and Optimize Performance 

Identifying areas for improvement is the last stage, so you should focus on monitoring the performance of your marketing campaigns. Make sure you A/B test different versions of messages, strategies, and workflows to achieve your automation goals.

How Does Marketing Automation Software Work? 

Automation software can help automate repetitive marketing tasks. They have a big role in streamlining your workflows and processes, resulting in improved efficiency. But how do they work? This is something you should know to leverage their features better. So, let’s look at how this software works –  

• Automation software can collect data from all your marketing tools and aggregate the data.
• The software can help you leverage marketing data and segment your audience. 
• Marketers can create ad campaigns across channels using the software’s interactive interface.  
• Customer workflows and automation rules can be designed to specify how and when you can send messages to your specific audience or segments.   
• The software allows us to set up triggers and actions based on user data that can make marketing efforts more effective.  
• Using automation software can help you personalize your marketing messages based on each user’s preferences and interactions. 
• You can deliver targeted content to prospects at each stage of their journey with your brand which can result in lead nurturing.  
• The software provides detailed analytics for performance tracking of your marketing campaigns.   
• Automation software can be integrated with other marketing tools, platforms, and CRM systems for the smooth flow of data between different systems.  

Things to Look for in an Ecommerce Marketing Automation Platform 

Choosing an automation platform for your ecommerce marketing needs careful consideration. The focus should be on selecting a platform that aligns with your business goals and budgets. It’s equally important to consider your marketing teams’ various tech requirements for automation.  

Here are the things to look at before choosing a platform for ecommerce marketing automation – 

• Features and Functionality – An automation platform can meet your specific marketing needs only when it has standard features and functionality. Make sure the platform you choose has features for email marketing, segmentation, social channel integration, cart recovery, etc.  
• Integration Capabilities – A good automation platform must seamlessly integrate with your CRM system, ecommerce platform, and other tools. Without these features, you might not be able to streamline processes and synchronize data as effectively as needed.  
• Scalability – The platform you select for marketing automation must scale with your business growth. Its pricing and features should be flexible to scale with the increase in sales volumes and marketing needs. 
• Level of Customization – When you select an automation platform, it’s important to analyze the level of customization it offers. It should help you customize various aspects such as workflows and email templates to make your marketing campaigns effective.  
• Analytics and Reporting – Quality automation tools come with robust customer analytics and reporting features. This helps them provide detailed insights into campaign performance. Some of the key analytics and reporting features to look for include A/B testing, conversion tracking, and ROI analysis.  

 Popular Marketing Automation Tools for E-commerce

1. Salesforce Pardot

Salesforce Pardot is one of the best automation ecommerce marketing tools to help businesses streamline their marketing processes and generate more leads. It offers a comprehensive range of features that can help improve marketing efforts on any scale. The main focus of this tool is on lead generation and nurturing, and it also gives control over email campaigns. Key features of Salesforce Pardot include lead scoring & grading, engagement studio, triggers, actions, and automation rules. 

2. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is another effective marketing automation platform that suits the varied needs of small and mid-sized enterprises. Its main focus area lies in sending personalized emails, nurturing leads, and measuring results. It provides several event-tracking options for measuring the length of the customer journey or sales funnel. The tool allows you the option of creating campaigns and autoresponders and setting up rules for email triggers. 

3. Autopilot 

Autopilot is the right option when you are looking for an easy-to-use marketing automation tool. By using this tool, you can automate the entire customer journey. It also has a robust canvas for building email automation sequences. More so, marketers can annotate the sequences with fun stickers, explanations, and emojis. This tool can be applied to various marketing channels including email, SMS, and in-app but it lacks a built-in CRM.  

4. MailChimp 

MailChimp is a popular and easy-to-use tool for ecommerce marketing automation. It has robust features for tracking all leads, managing contacts, and automation marketing emails. This tool suits businesses of all sizes and helps in creating, sending, and tracking emails. Using this tool’s Contact Tracking feature, it’s easy to track all your leads from signup to purchase. More so, it allows the creation of custom email designs for each stage of the journey. The Automated Emails feature is beneficial for sending out automated messages based on specific events. 

5. Mailmodo 

Mailmodo is a feature-rich marketing automation tool that proves effective for ecommerce businesses looking to increase conversions through interactive emails. You can leverage its functionalities to dispatch dynamic tailored product recommendation emails. More so, this tool is very effective for creating easy workflows and automating the user journey. Marketers can launch AMP email campaigns using its drag-and-drop builder and mobile-friendly templates. Plus, it has tons of responsive email templates with built-in email flows. 

6. Rejoiner  

Rejoiner is a very effective marketing automation tool for those ecommerce companies that need basic automation features and tons of support for SMS marketing. It can add great value if you don’t want to allocate considerable resources to crafting campaigns. Using this tool, marketers can find various things including analytics and design. Some other key features of this tool include a drag-and-drop email builder and an interactive automation builder. 

Tips for Creating an Effective Ecommerce Marketing Automation Strategy 

It takes careful planning and execution to create an effective automation strategy. You also need to optimize your efforts and strategies for driving meaningful results your way. 

Let’s look at some useful tips for crafting a successful marketing automation strategy – 

• Understand your audience well and get a complete knowledge of their pain points, behaviors, and preferences. 
• Consider customer research so that you can achieve value with audience segmentation. 
• Set measurable and specific automation goals so that your efforts are easy to track and quantify.  
• Look for an automation platform that aligns with your business goals, offers features for all types of automation, and comes with plenty of integration capabilities.   

• Focus on delivering relevant content to each audience segment as it can help improve engagement.  
• Map out the customer journey and various touchpoints as it helps you deliver targeted messages at each journey stage.  
• Prioritize re-engagement with customers who visited once but did not complete the purchases.  
• Create an omnichannel experience for customers by integrating marketing automation with other channels such as social media, paid ads, etc.  
• Analyze key metrics such as CTR, open rates, ROI, and conversion rates regularly to make adjustments as and where needed.  

Final Thoughts  

Automation is essential for improved efficiency of marketing activities and processes. So, your ecommerce business should focus on leveraging powerful tools to make its marketing automation effective. 

At REVE, we understand the big role automation plays in boosting ROI, and increasing sales and conversion. That’s why we bring you a whole range of tools to automate various aspects of your marketing, sales, and support. 

With us, you can sign up and check how our tools can add great value to your marketing automation efforts.