Improving customer loyalty by Marketing Automation: a solution to avoid churn?

Philippe Pavillet

Mar 16, 2023

In the ever-changing landscape of B2B marketing, one thing remains constant: the importance of customer loyalty. A loyal customer is worth their weight in gold, as they are more likely to make repeat orders, refer your business to others, and even pay a premium for your products or services. However, building and maintaining customer loyalty can be a challenging task. Customers are bombarded with marketing messages, and their attention spans are short. They are quick to move on to the next option if they don't feel valued.

One solution to this challenge is marketing automation. In other words, the use of software tools to automate repetitive marketing tasks, such as email campaigns, social media posts, and lead nurturing. By using marketing automation, B2B companies can streamline their marketing efforts, reduce costs, and most importantly, improve customer loyalty. Keep reading the article if you are interested in knowing more!  

These kinds of software tools typically use customer data and behavior to trigger automated campaigns and communications, which can then be customized for that customer. The goal is to improve the overall customer experience and increase customer engagement and loyalty while saving time and resources for marketers. But, how can this help reduce customer churn? Well, one of the main reasons why customers switch suppliers is that they don't feel valued. Thus, by using marketing automation to deliver personalized, timely, and relevant communications to customers, businesses can build stronger relationships and keep customers engaged. 

Here are some specific ways that marketing automation can help to avoid customer churn:

1) PERSONALIZATION: By using marketing automation, B2B companies can personalize their marketing messages and communications based on each customer's preferences, behavior, and interests. For instance, they can make a personalized discount offer for a particular product to a customer who has already purchased similar products. Accordingly, customers will be more engaged if they receive targeted messages and promotions that are tailored to their needs and interests. Furthermore, product recommendation engines will also help marketers know what product each customer should be offered, based on their purchasing behavior (read our last article to know more).   

A study by HubSpot found that personalized and targeted emails result in 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click-through rates compared to generic emails. Besides, 74% of marketers say that targeted personalization increases customer engagement (Adestra). 

2) TIMELY COMMUNICATIONS: Marketing automation can help B2B companies stay top-of-mind with their customers by sending relevant emails at the right time. For example, a company can send a follow-up email after a customer has made a purchase, thanking them for their business and providing additional resources or support. These communications help to keep customers engaged and interested in the business.

3) LEAD NURTURING: Not all customers are ready to make a purchase right away. By using marketing automation to nurture leads over time, businesses can build a relationship with the customer and keep them engaged until they are ready to make another purchase. This can help to prevent the customer from churning and choosing a competitor.

According to a study by Forrester, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. 

4) DATA-DRIVEN INSIGHTS: Marketing automation provides B2B companies with valuable data and insights about their customer's behavior and preferences. By analyzing this data, companies can gain a deeper understanding of their customers and make informed decisions about their marketing strategies. This can help businesses to identify potential churn risks and take proactive steps to prevent them. 

In short, marketing automation allows companies to deliver a tailored offer at the right time, on the right channel, and build stronger relationships with their customers avoiding churn. However, businesses need to be aware of its limitations, such as: 

LIMITED CUSTOMER DATA

Marketing automation relies on customer data and behavior to trigger automated campaigns and communications. However, businesses may not have enough data or may have incomplete data on their customers, which can limit the effectiveness of their efforts. 

Fructifi acts as a bridge between data that sits in your ERP or CRM and your marketing automation platform. Thanks to its AI and predictive analysis, it is able to filter customers based on numerous criteria, including their next re-stocking date and amount, the number of orders they have placed, their lifetime value, where they stand in re-ordering a specific product, what other products they might be interested in… This makes it possible to set up dynamic marketing sequences that are directly based on your customers’ behavior.

CHANGING CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR

Customer behavior and preferences can change over time, which can make it challenging for businesses to keep up with their customer's needs and preferences. Businesses need to continually monitor and analyze customer behavior to identify potential churn risks and take proactive steps to address them.

Fructifi automatically monitors customers for their risk of leaving and uses RFM to group them into dynamic segments, which makes it possible to align marketing actions to support the sales team’s effort. 

Use cases are multiple, for example, to automatically reach out to smaller customers whose limited value does not justify spending valuable sales rep time and suggest a call. Or to make targeted cross-sell offers to customers based on what products they have previously bought. The platform will even tell you which products tend to make customers stick longer.

If anything, the challenge is to deploy it step by step - possibilities are so large!

Request a demo to see what we offer at Fructifi! 

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