The pandemic forced organizations to undergo rapid and vast digital transformations. The silver lining is that by adopting digital tools, businesses have found new ways to improve operations, reduce costs and risk, and connect and engage with customers in more meaningful ways. As a result, consumer expectations have never been higher.
In fact, if you’re not delivering an exceptional customer experience (CX), you’re simply not delivering. Customers today expect a seamless experience across all channels – digital or physical – and with all of the options available to them, why should they settle for less?
That’s why digital transformation initiatives have become so critical for marketers. A recent 2021 Middle Market Digital Transformation survey of 500 C-level executives found that roughly half (49%) of respondents plan to revise their long-term strategic vision for a more digital future. Additionally, 90% plan to maintain or increase their digital spending dollars. Adopting digital technologies enables a company to vastly improve operational efficiency, optimize costs, and drive value. For marketers, it opens up an array of opportunities to connect in meaningful ways with customers and prospects.
Ensure Data Continuity Throughout the Customer Journey
Nothing’s more frustrating than engaging with a brand that doesn’t provide continuity along the customer journey. When the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing – i.e. marketing and sales aren’t in sync or customer service has no contextual data – customer experiences suffer.
Adopting digital tools such as marketing automation systems and CRMs eliminates manual, error-prone data entry. Plus, your marketing and sales teams have access to accurate information about customers at all times. This makes it easier to collaborate and nurture them to conversion. Importantly, these tools can be connected to customer service ticketing systems, so that everyone who interacts with customers is working from the same data. Data continuity enables a seamless experience for customers, regardless of how or where they interact with your brand.
Additionally, today’s AI-powered chatbots leverage marketing, sales and customer service data to deliver highly personalized, nimble experiences and leverage self-serve capabilities. They enable customers to complete basic interactions without being required to engage with the dreaded automated phone system, send emails back and forth, or even engage with a live agent. Not only does this lead to a superior CX, it dramatically reduces your costs – savings that can be passed down to your customers to drive retention.
Deliver Personalized Experiences that Wow Your Prospects
Leveraging digital transformation to personalize your marketing outreach is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a must-have. Accenture found that 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations, and 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences. What’s more, 63% of consumers will stop buying from brands who get personalization wrong!
Through digital transformation, AI and machine learning can be applied to analyzing data from all platforms holistically, delivering a far more nuanced understanding of the preferences and behaviors of your prospects and customers. Digital tools and AI are being used to personalize an array of experiences, from websites to social media outreach to email marketing – and even images. And that’s important, because personalized imagery has been shown to decrease cart abandonment rates by 17%, boost click-through rates by 150% and improve conversion rates by 200%.
Live chats also have a place in the digital transformation era. Human agents are now teaming up with chatbots, and utilizing the benefits of the newest AI technology to provide sentiment analysis and personalized canned responses. Smarter algorithms are removing ambiguity and helping businesses understand the social sentiment surrounding their brand.
Pro tip: Be sure to establish trust with your consumer before getting too “personal.” Make opting in and out of marketing outreach quick and painless, and most importantly, reassure your consumer that security is of the utmost importance to your organization.
There’s No Going Back – BDO Digital Can Propel You Forward
BDO Digital can help you leverage your investments in digital transformation by tackling all the heavy lifting of implementing digitized systems, and whipping your data into optimal shape. We apply the D3 Methodology – a framework designed to manage the intricacies of demand generation through demand creation, management and expansion – to help you build a high-performance revenue engine.
Download The D3 Methodology to find out how you can develop and execute programs that create demand and maximize revenue growth.
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