How To Harness Marketing Technology To Improve Results

Last Updated on 23 November 2023

Marketing has become highly dependent on technology and no marketing campaign is complete without its use. Knowledge of this marketing technology is important in order to reap desired results. So, are your marketing efforts not reaping desired results? What technologies (if any) are you applying to your strategy and why?

In this MarTech series we will take you through how you can make the most of Marketing Technology without getting overwhelmed. We will also provide some of our favourite tools to your MarTech stack.

In this edition we focus on consumer data; how to collect and store it, and how it can be used to add value to you and ultimately, back to the customer.

Consumer Data Technology

Collecting data about your customers and then segmenting them means that you can you can target the right audience by crafting or tailoring your marketing to increase your conversion rate. The best ways to achieve this is with the use of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool and a Customer Data Platform (CDP).

Customer Relationship Management Tool

CRM’s help you figure out what it is about your customer’s behaviour that is most vital to your business and how you can deepen that relationship with them. CRM’s help you reach your current and potential customers from anywhere and at any time. You can draw insight such as, what campaigns have worked (or didn’t) in the past, how you can best personalise your interactions with your customers, customer history and their interactions with your business. The information gathered by CRM’s range from client specific data like their name and then on to data such as their purchases or support tickets. You do, however, have to make sure that you stick to the privacy and IT security regulations.

Currently, some of the top CRM’s in marketing technology include Salesforce, HubSpot, Zooho, SugaCRM, Sage etc but there is a long list, with options that suit all business sizes and budgets, so shop around before you commit. Our team’s choice of sales CRM is Pipedrive.

So, here are things to consider when shopping for a CRM:

• Security & Privacy: You may want to make sure that your customers’ information is secure and compliant
• Data: The kind of information you’d like to collect about your customer
• Usability & User-friendliness: Is the interface intuitive and easy-to-use?
• Affordability: Does the pricing structure fit your budget while meeting your needs?
• Scalability: The ability to grow as your business needs expand
• Special features or ability to customise – you may need to tailor the CRM to your specific needs
• Reporting & Analytics: Is it easy to search for the data you need and segment customers? Can you easily analyse and track your key performance indicators?
• Integration: How easily the CRM can be integrated with your existing email, CDP platforms and other systems.
• Support: Are there sufficient resources for training and documentation for your team?

TOP TIP: Use free trials to test, review and compare which tool is best suited for you.

Customer Data Platform

CDPs are powerful tools that help marketers, product owners or other non-consumer facing roles by collecting more specific data around customer behaviours with products or services. CPDs can pull data from a variety of sources including your website data, email campaigns, social media interactions and more. This helps to provide a single view of your customer across multiple interactions with your brand, a unified customer profile, and can provide actionable insights that can help you to improve marketing campaigns, and ultimately ROI.

There are many options out there to suit your different needs and budgets, and they can also be bundled with other marketing automation platforms. So be sure to do your homework before making a final choice.

You can run through the same considerations as we’ve mentioned above for CRMs, but also take note of these key factors:

• Data Integration Capabilities: Be sure the CDP can connect to your other systems and platforms and that they don’t require complex connections, or added costs. It should be able to connect to your CRM, email marketing platforms, ecommerce databases, social media and other sources you may have.
• Segmentation & Personalisation: Personalisation is the name of the game over the past few years in delivering effective marketing campaigns.

TOP TIP: Book a demo to get a deeper-dive into what the tool can do for you

Audience Retention

Perhaps business is running smoothly and you have a solid client base. But that’s not where it ends – retention and building a loyal customer base is a critical part to a successful business. So what tech is out there?

How do you retain that client base even when a ‘new kid on the block’, with bigger and better toys arrives? Taking over everything including your loyal customers? There are MarTech tools you can make use of to measure what is working and what isn’t.

A/B Testing

A/B testing, or split-testing, can help your business by improving engagement with your client. What you put on your digital platforms needs to match their expectations from the moment they click on the CTA to when they leave your site. Rigorous testing helps you find what works for your audience so that you can constantly improve. We’ve unpacked a few other CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) testing methodologies in this data-driven marketing post.

A/B testing comes in a variety of forms with standalone tools or techniques to apply to your marketing.

• Landing page tools, such as Unbounce, Leadpages or Instapage give you the ability to create experiments and split traffic across multiple variations of your page for testing. Test a headline, a new image, a different colour button and find what works best.
• A/B test your email campaigns with tools such as Everlytic, Constant Contact and Mailchimp. Test email subject lines, visuals, content variations and Call to Action to determine a winner.
• Test your content! From testing your paid campaign ad copy and visuals to testing blog post titles and social media posts, test it all!

TOP TIP: Test 1 thing at a time, in that way you can identify precisely what element leads to better performance.

HotJar

Hotjar is a powerful web analytics tool that provides insights into user behaviour on websites. This tool can help you understand how users interact with your site by visualising their behaviour in heatmaps, scroll maps, recordings and more. You can also collect feedback from real users via surveys, interviews and polls which can give you valuable insights into their preferences and pain points. In the end you can get a deeper understanding and can make informed decisions to improve your site and boost user experience..

Artificial Intelligence

There is no space on the internet that artificial intelligence has left untouched over the past few years, and MarTech is no exception!

Every day platforms are incorporating or testing integrations with AI, which will provide a whole host of benefits and challenges to the marketing space.

Some noteworthy things we’ve seen thus far:

Predictive Analytics: Algorithms can crunch vast amounts of data to identify patterns and predict future outcomes. This can help to anticipate customer behaviour so you can optimise your marketing decisions proactively.

Chatbots & Virtual Assistants: AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants have become super sophisticated. They can handle customer queries, guide users and quickly provide key information around the clock – 27/4, 365 days a year. (psst… chat to us about WhatsApp chatbots)

Content Creation & Curation: There are heaps of AI copywriting, image and video generators out there, all to help you fast-track content assets production for content marketing efforts. But take care! This is a new technology that needs to be carefully managed.

Campaign Optimisation: Algorithms and machine learning can analyse campaign performance and can automatically adjust things like cost bidding, ad copy, ad placements and audience targeting, all to optimise results. This leaves you with more time to spend on the strategy and creative side of campaigns.

Personalisation

We’ve established that the tools mentioned above can help you in meeting your customer’s needs more effectively, they help you get one step closer to getting to know them and what they want. The next step is personalising your marketing to speak to their unique needs. You can deliver relevant marketing messages to your customers in a way that resonates with them based on their interaction with your brand.

Collecting data from your customers like age, location, interests and other first party data can help you in creating a more targeted message. This helps your message resonate with that segment at the right time. And this is where marketing automation software rises to the challenge.

TOP TIP: Email is the most commonly used channel for personalisation so start improving the data in your email list to leverage segmentation and personalisation opportunities.

Conclusion

So, what tools will you be using on your next winning marketing campaign? Marketing Technology is growing in leaps and bounds so if you are working with a knowledgeable team that stays ahead of the curve then you’re well on your way there.

Keep an eye out on our blog as we’ll be covering other ways you can bring in MarTech to your strategies. Get in touch with us to arrange a digital marketing workshop for you and your team.