The nature of marketing is changing. Marketing is becoming an increasingly data-driven profession focused on customer journeys. More effective use of data is the key to improving customer experiences, personalisation and targeting.
Marketing professionals are faced with increased competition, the need to measure and show results, as well as aligning priorities with other functions. We are seeing a rapid move away from traditional marketing campaigns toward the tracking and tailoring of customer journeys. Many organisations are trying to achieve all of this with the same systems, resources and budget.
A modern marketing solution, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing, enables marketing teams to capture and make use of their all-important data, all in one place. By automating a lot of your marketing activities, this frees up valuable time to focus on analysing your data, creating customer journeys and making informed data-driven decisions.
So, what are some modern marketing techniques and how is Dynamics 365 for Marketing helping organisations adopt them?
Communication channels
Nowadays, people are bombarded by marketing communications like never before. People are communicated to through traditional channels such as post and email as well as newer channels such as text, multiple social media channels and push notifications from apps. No matter what sector you operate in, it is no longer appropriate or worthwhile to solely communicate with your audience through periodic emails or sales calls.
In order to drive engagement and demonstrate relevance in today’s fast paced world, organisations need to be proactive and in line with the latest communication techniques. This often means managing multiple social media outlets (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and maybe even Snapchat) as well as your more traditional channels.
Within Dynamics 365 for Marketing, organisations can manage data, create communication templates, schedule social posts and monitor all communications channels in one central place. This makes your communication channels much more streamlined and easier to govern.
Personalisation
Personalisation is key to modern marketing. A greater amount of personalisation is required to sustain truly meaningful interactions with your audiences. Gone are the days (if they ever existed) of a one size fits all approach to marketing.
Personalisation does not simply mean inserting a contact name personalisation token to the start of your marketing emails, it is much more sophisticated. It means reaching out to each of your audience groups with the best message for them, at the right time, via the correct channel. Demonstrating your relevance and appealing to different demographics is vital and is becoming increasingly expected by customers.
Dynamics 365 for Marketing enables you to capture more information about each of your contacts and their preferences, every time your organisation interacts with them (or they interact with you). All of this data can be used to make more informed decisions about how you engage with them again in the future – for example, what topics you want to discuss, what days and times are best to reach out to them or what communication channel they best engage with. All of this insight can be built into automated user journeys.
AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being adopted by marketing teams. Dynamics 365’s in-built AI can be used to sophisticatedly personalise your communications. AI enables you to reach out to your contacts at the optimal time, via the channel likely to have the best impact and with a message tailored to their past behaviours and previous interactions.
AI is also assisting companies in managing their ever-increasing amount of data. AI is ideal for consolidating all the data you capture at scale, eliminating the time spent by staff inputting and updating data manually.
Once data has been collected, the in-built AI of Dynamics 365 for Marketing is used to analyse the data to determine patterns – a task that is tedious and difficult for human beings. AI is taking on board complex organisational and analysis tasks that would be difficult or impossible for humans to carry out, freeing up marketing professionals time to do the more intuitive, creative work that they are better suited to.
To find out more how to embrace these techniques and optimise your marketing, download our Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Marketing product guide.