Category: Marketing Automation

In 2020, B2C businesses all over the world pivoted their strategies as consumers dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Not only did the pandemic force people to live and work strictly from home, but it also put a financial burden on many households and businesses.
Now, as the holidays approach, both physical and online business owners are wondering if they’ll still get the same level of booming business they saw last year.
Because we (unfortunately) can’t predict the future, we decided to survey a sample of nearly 300 general consumers about their holiday shopping plans.
Specifically, we asked, “Compared to last year, how will COVID-19 impact your holiday shopping plans?”
As part of the Lucid survey, participants could check all the boxes related to how their holiday shopping would be impacted.
While you’ll see that some of the responses align with research-backed shopping predictions, the overall results of the survey might surprise you:

Data Source
While you might not be shocked that many respondents are planning more online shopping than last year, you might be surprised that nearly one-third of them still plan to go to physical stores.
Additionally, with 41% of respondents planning to spend less money or buy fewer gifts this year, you might wonder if budget-conscious consumers will still spend money on your products.
Remember, this is just one small poll of general consumers. Had we zoned in on a specific audience target or location, the results might have been very different.
However, these responses are still worth keeping in mind as you navigate the holiday season. It also hints at potential trends that could continue in 2021.
Below, I’ll walk you through the three biggest holiday shopping pivots consumers plan to make this year, as well as a few business takeaways for handling each shift.

3 Pivots Holiday Shoppers are Making in 2020
1. Despite online growth, physical stores won’t be vacant.
As you might expect, the number one holiday shopping change, cited by 47% of survey respondents, was, “I plan to do more online shopping.”
This makes sense. In 2020, consumers who weren’t tech-savvy learned how to buy almost everything they needed online. Meanwhile, those who already made purchases regularly online embraced it more heavily. Additionally, with holiday shopping seasons known for closely packed quarters stores, some consumers might opt to stay at home this year to avoid the crowds.
However, it doesn’t seem like foot-traffic will cease completely.
To learn more about how abundant ecommerce would be this season, we asked, “Where do you plan to do your holiday shopping this year?”
As it turns out, lots of people still plan to shop in-person this season:

Data Source
While 33% of consumers plan to shop “mostly” or “completely” online, 34% plan to do an “even mix of both online and in-store shopping.”
On the other hand, 33% percent plan to shop “mostly” or “completely” in-store this year.
Although this survey is just one small piece of data, and these results might vary by location, the responses hint that physical stores might still get business despite increased online shopping.
Takeaways for Business Owners
Ultimately, online shopping is growing — and we see more online purchase revenue with each new holiday season.
Even if our survey results show that people still plan to shop at least partially in stores, you should consider building an online presence and — potentially — an ecommerce strategy.
When it comes to building an online presence, you could start with a business page on Facebook or Instagram, or a Google My Business listing to help internet users learn more about your brand and where you’re located.
If you’re ready and able to sell your products online, many digital tools, like HubSpot and Shopify, can help you create a simple, but effective online store.
For example, if you already promote your brand with a Facebook Business Page or Instagram Business profile, you could highlight and sell a few of your most popular products in a Facebook Shop. This will allow you to test the waters with ecommerce by selling a few select products online. Then, once you feel confident in your shipping and supply chain, you can launch a full ecommerce site with one of these tools.
2. Shoppers might not splurge — even on gifts.
Due to the uncertain financial times caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, shoppers were already tightening their budgets and protecting their assets. Now, with plans for in-person holiday gatherings uncertain for many folks, there are also fewer reasons to purchase gifts and other holiday items.
However, since holidays have been known to encourage people to splurge more than usual, you might think that this time of year could be an exception to current shopping trends.
When polling general consumers, 26% percent said, “I plan to spend less money.” while 15% said, “I plan to buy fewer gifts due to limited holiday gatherings.” In total, 41% of consumers indicated that they plan to spend less or buy fewer products this year.
The data above, although unsurprising, still reaffirms consumer predictions that might be concerning to business owners.
Takeaways for Businesses
By now, brands have already seen consumers tighten budgets and limit non-essential purchases. Not to mention, studies from McKinsey and other organizations predict that consumers will continue to spend more frugally through 2021.
But, even if you’re up to date on the current market research trends, you might not be sure how to grapple with these consumer behavior shifts.
Right now, buyers need extra motivation to buy expensive or non-essential products. While the holidays might give them a reason to splurge a bit more than they have throughout the year, consumers will still want to invest in products with the best value — whether they’re buying for themselves or their families.
Because people are looking for essential products they need or items that offer the best bang for their buck, focus your messaging on answering questions like:

“Why does the consumer need this product?”
“How does this product or service solve one of their problems?”
“Why is the product worth its price?”

Aside from adjusting your messaging, you can also adjust your content to help you answer the questions above. For example, you can post content that highlights sales, deals, and promo codes that people with more stringent budgets might use.
If you can’t offer a sale or deal, you could alternatively use testimonials, reviews, or user-generated content from your current customers in your marketing. When you share a happy customer’s review or testimonial, you allow prospects to hear stories of people who benefited from your products. This can build a sense of authenticity and brand trust that ultimately leads to purchases.
3. Shoppers will take social distancing seriously.
Above, we noted that our respondents still want to shop at least partially in stores this year. But, many of them might also want to avoid bustling crowds that have historically been seen during holiday shopping seasons.
Because of this, the third biggest holiday shopping change — which 33% of respondents cited — was, “I still plan to shop in stores but will be more cautious of social distancing.”
Takeaways for Businesses
While small business owners would love to see crowds line up to enter their stores during the holiday season, it’s clear that things will be very different this year. Not only will customers be mindful about social distancing, but other research shows that they might be more concerned about their health and safety when shopping than ever.
If you want to embrace in-person foot-traffic opportunities this holiday season, it’s important to know that people might be fearful of crowds or getting too close to others. Because of this, you should invest in PPE for your staff, while also considering protective barriers, one-way aisles, and other solutions to keep people far apart.
While this will not only make customers feel safer in your store, it could give you a competitive advantage over shops that take fewer precautions. After all, customers trust brands that care about them and their safety.
Navigating a Unique Holiday Season
While we can offer suggestions and basic data on how holiday shopping will change this year, it’s important to keep in mind that results could be different for every business — whether physical or online.
Although planning a holiday strategy in a pandemic can feel daunting or nearly impossible, keeping a few tips in mind could still help you get sales and intrigue consumers who are ready and able to shop.

Market your product’s value: Now — and in the near future — consumers will need to be persuaded that your product is valuable, better than a cheaper option, and worth investing in. If your messaging, reviews, or online content fail to convey those things, a budget-minded shopper might very well buy something from a competitor — or avoid buying any product in your industry at all.

Build an online presence: Even if you plan to rely on foot-traffic this year, you’ll still want to develop an online presence so people can learn about your store, where you’re located, and any deals you offer. If you’re ready to step into the world of ecommerce, many easy-to-use tools can help you launch a scalable online store.

Care about your customer: This year, customers are paying extra attention to how brands treat them. When a brand makes an effort to ensure a pleasant and safe experience, shoppers will remember and trust them more. Even if your business is mostly online, you can still show customers you care through helpful and responsive customer service, answering customer questions on social media, and offering deals or content that solve for your ideal customer.

To learn more about how COVID-19 has impacted the overall business landscape, check out our six-month retrospective fueled by data from thousands of HubSpot users.

 

 

Did you know that it is predicted that almost 350 billion of emails will be sent daily by 2022? Email marketing is growing big with almost 92% of email users checking their mailboxes every single day. Coordinating a successful mass mailing campaign can be dull. Thanks to Workflow your business can automate most of your repetitive actions, therefore significantly improve its income and target the customers with regular and personalized mailing. Discover four SALESmanago Workflow functions that will help you improve the experience of your customers and maximize your sales potential.

 

Offer your customers a product refill option

 

If your business is selling products that can be bought multiple times due to a limited amount of uses, such as cosmetics or food items, do not let your customers forget about ordering them again. Thanks to our Automation Process panel you can set a reminder sent to your customers after an adequate amount of time so they will receive information right when their product is about to finish. If you let yourself be remembered in this way, it will make the refill purchase process easier for your customers and encourage them to buy another set of your products.

 

Let’s go through the settings of the Workflow. The cycle starts with a “PURCHASE” event when a customer buys a product that has a limited time of consumption. After a set amount of days, the system checks if the customer has bought the same product again. If the second purchase hasn’t been made the system sends them an email and adds them to the Custom Audience group. The cycle repeats from that point, if the purchase is still not made after additional days, the system sends them an SMS. Finally, if the customer hasn’t made a second purchase after the established amount of time, the system assigns them with a tag “NOT_BUY_PRODUCT_REFILL”. In the event of the second purchase actually happening the system removes the contact from the Custom Audience group.

 

 

Get your customers back by retargeting after the visit

 

Unfortunately, some potential customers stay at the “potential” level for good. They may visit your website, even browse it for a moment but then they leave without taking any further action. Is there anything you can do to get them back at that point? Thanks to Workflow – yes! Convince them to come back to your website and make a purchase by showing a custom made message or a pop-up on any web page or device. Get them back by showing them an attractive banner to increase the probability of making a purchase. 

 

Take a look at the settings of the below Workflow. The first action will be taken after an hour since the customer enters the website on the condition that there has been no purchase and no cart event. A Web Push is sent to the customer, in order to encourage them to come back to the website. The next action is taken after the next 24 hours. If the contact meets the two set conditions, the email is sent to them with the last viewed products, and the personalized banner is displayed. 

 

The cycle repeats after the next 48 hours if the purchase hasn’t been made and from that point, the system uses various channels to reach the contact – through a mobile app, banner display, or another email. It is crucial to set the rule turning off any ads and banner displays, in case the purchase is eventually made.

 

 

Cross-sell complementary products after the initial purchase

 

Cross-selling of a complementary product encourages customers to make an additional purchase after the initial one. This strategy proves to be very effective as it is much easier to persuade a customer who already knows your offer to buy a product that will be useful for them and will match the previously bought one. Let’s study the below example. After a contact makes the purchase it is added to Facebook Custom Audience so a personalized banner can be displayed. 

 

After a set number of days, in the below example that is 3, the email with recommended products is sent. The next action occurs after additional 7 days on the condition that the purchase hasn’t been made up to this point. If the contact meets this condition the app notification, Web Push, or SMS is being sent as well. The next action is performed after the next 14 days if the customer still hasn’t made a purchase. It may be another email sent with the recommended product and a special offer.

 

 

Remind your customers about the subscription renewal

 

Show your customer that you care and remember about them by sending a reminder when their contract or a subscription is about to end. This Workflow serves as a great help in creating meaningful relationships with the customers. It will also prevent the customer base reduction by creating a greater chance for a larger number of renewals.  

 

The Workflow starts again with a purchase event, whenever the customer is starting their contract. Let’s say the contact bought a monthly subscription. The day before it ends, the system checks if a renewal has been ordered. If no, the contact is added to the Custom Audience group as in the previous scenarios. 

 

From that moment, the Workflow uses multiple channels to remind the contact about the ending contract, eventually ending in a final reminder. As in the earlier cases, it is important to withdraw the contact from the Custom Audience group so your customer wouldn’t be bothered unnecessarily if they had already made a renewal.

 

marketing automation

marketing automation

Email marketing may seem like an old school tactic, but it plays a vital role in e-commerce. For example, sending three abandoned cart emails can lead to 69% more orders. That stat alone solidifies email marketing as a mainstay. And while it may be here to stay, it does not remain stagnant. Email marketing is…
The post 5 Email Marketing Trends for Supply Chain and Logistics appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

Introduction
It’s hard enough to disseminate information across the various departments of your university or college under normal circumstances, but this year has posed an entirely new set of obstacles. Email is a simple, cost-effective way for you to share information fast—but it only works if your audience engages with your messages. 
Turns out, not only are higher ed institutions sending more email than ever, more people are reading, clicking, and engaging with them, too. 
To help you during this time, Campaign Monitor has partnered with our sister brand, Emma, to bring you up to date email metrics so you know exactly how your institution compares based on hundreds of millions of emails sent by other organizations in your industry. 
Below, you’ll find the most recent open rates, click-to-open rates, and click-through rates for higher ed organizations. Are you above or below the benchmarks? Either way, there’s always room to improve.
After you’ve looked at the data below, download the guide to see what these numbers mean for you and how you can maintain this momentum to best serve your audience.
Because the better your email is, the more informed your audience is. And these days, nothing is more important than that.
Email benchmarks by year
First, here’s a look at 2019 and 2020 email metrics. Like we already mentioned, this tumultuous year has meant better engagement for email:
Universities and colleges are sending more email than ever, and audiences are engaging at a record-setting rate.
For this graph, we looked at the emails sent between January and September of the specified year. 

Note: Unsubscribe rates and bounce rates are often included in our benchmarks, but those metrics remained consistent, making their inclusion redundant. For simplicity’s sake, we left them off the graphs. The unsubscribe rates stayed at 0.1% and bounce rates hovered around 0.6%.
To see what these metrics mean for you—and how you can improve yours if you fall short—download the guide.
Email benchmarks broken down by month
Let’s look at how people engaged with email each month since universities experience seasonal increases in sending volume that can have an effect on engagement. COVID-19 has also forced universities to send more emails depending on when they made changes to their class schedule and other activities on campus. To see what these metrics mean for you—and how you can improve yours if you fall short—download the guide.

What happened in March? 
Here in the US, March really saw a big uptick in cases. It’s also when many institutions switched to online learning after Spring Break.

You can see that March experienced a massive shift this year, no doubt related to COVID-19 and the increase in email communications institutions were forced to send. 
You can also see that people stayed engaged despite the onslaught of messages. They needed the information and the engagement rates show it. Now that people have adjusted to the new normal, it’s important that universities and colleges continue to follow best practices in order to keep audiences engaged and informed.
To see what these metrics mean for you—and how you can improve yours if you fall short—download the guide.
Download the insights
Now that you’ve compared your metrics to the industry averages, it’s time to get to work. In our guide, we explain how you can maintain this momentum to ensure your audiences stay engaged and informed for the rest of the year and beyond.
There’s no way to know what the next year—or several—will hold for higher ed, but with the right email strategy in place, you’ll be ready for it. And when you’re confident, your subscribers can be confident, too.
Wrap up
We are always adding to our benchmarks library, so explore the rest of our benchmarks collection for more insights into other industries, regions, and previous years. And don’t forget to check back in the next couple of months for our 2021 report. 
To make sure you’re one of the first to get our 2021 report, subscribe to our blog.
Methodology 
We looked at hundreds of millions of emails sent from all of the CM Group family of brands in order to bring you the most complete picture of what high ed organizations have been experiencing this year. While many of these universities are located in the US, our sample consists of institutions located across the world.  
All universities are customers of CM Group brands and all have self-selected “University” as their industry. Even so, this category also includes colleges and individual schools or departments.
How email benchmarks are calculated
Listed below are definitions for the rates we mention in this report. You’ll also find resources available to you if you have specific areas that need improvement.
Email open rate
Open rates are calculated by taking the total number of opens and dividing by total delivered emails. You can explore more resources on improving open rates in this guide.
Email click-through rate
Click-through rates (CTR) are calculated by dividing the number of clicks by delivered emails. You can explore more resources on improving click-through rates in this guide.
Email click-to-open rate
An email click-to-open rate (CTOR) is determined by dividing the number of clicks by the number of opens, showing the engagement rate of subscribers that actually see the content of your email. You can explore more resources on improving click-to-open rates (and overall email engagement) in this guide.
The post Email Marketing Benchmarks: Higher Ed Edition appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Hey, I’m trying to build an automation with Zapier, so I can segment Zoom webinar attendees automatically, as well as sending them the zoom recording after the webinar. Using Zapier is quite limited, so I’m looking into Plusthis, so I can segment attendes vs non attendes automatically. Has anyone got some experience with Plusthis? Thanks
submitted by /u/1984ya [link] [comments]

This article is part of a larger series that focuses on diversity and equity in marketing through the amplification of Black and racially diverse authors. As a company, we are committed to identifying actions we can take in the fight against racism and injustice, and elevating BBIPOC voices is paramount to inspiring change. Follow along and read other posts in this series here.

This post is authored by Kerel Cooper, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at LiveIntent.
The fights for racial equality of 2020 have been a catalyst for companies and organizations to rethink their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Across the board, companies and organizations are thinking about how they recruit and develop more diverse talent and how to instill DEI efforts into their everyday way of life. 
And while the conversations and efforts are great, there is still a very long way to go. 
These efforts and impact must be sustainable over a long period of time or they are for naught. Regardless of your race, gender, sexual orientation and background, we all have a part to play.
Our idea
For an industry that does a great job of talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, the fact of the matter is there was very little progress made. 
As you see in the chart from the ANA, only 12% of CMO’s are non-white. That is unchanged from 2019.

Source: ANA Diversity Report for the Advertising/Marketing Industry (2020)
Back in April of 2018, my friend Erik Requidan called me up one evening and said that he had an idea. The idea was to create a platform for diverse voices within advertising technology to tell their personal stories and journey. Erik came up with the idea as a response to the widely held feeling of exhaustion that comes from going to industry conferences and events and seeing only a few of “us” in the room and even less on stage. 
Erik’s idea was fueled by his desire for change and I loved it. He asked me to join him, to which I responded with an emphatic yes! After a few brainstorming sessions, Erik’s idea turned into the Minority Report Podcast, which we launched in May 2018. 
Our purposeful mission
Over the past 2½ years, the Minority Report Podcast has evolved into a platform that highlights people of color, women & LGBTQ+ communities within business, media and technology as we tap into their experience and subject matter expertise. To date, we have recorded 65+ episodes featuring a wide range of diverse individuals. 
Our discussions dive into family background & upbringing, career journey, career advice, how they’ve dealt with discrimination, ideas for improving DEI, and insights into how they see the world through their unique lens. 
Of course, we also delve into business models and the ecosystem in which their businesses thrive, and how their experience informs their leadership. 
We know this podcast is having a positive impact on the industry. Here is a great text I received from a former guest of the podcast: ”[I] wanted to say thank you for what you guys did with the Minority Report Podcast. Whatever ppl and companies are trying to recognize ‘diversity and inclusion’, you guys were already at the forefront, shining a light on [DEI efforts] a couple years back.”
Erik and I like to say that we’ve created one of the largest collections of stories from diverse individuals in the world of business, media, and technology. But even more importantly, these stories live on as a catalogue for the next generation of leaders to reference. 
Stories of people like us, their experiences, and their expertise were missing from our careers as Erik and I were coming up in the industry. 
Our hope is that our content will fill that void by shining a light on diverse talent. There’s no shortage of diverse talent out there! Creating this content library is our way of contributing to change and turning an idea into a purposeful mission.

Minority Report Podcast Guests
Advice for turning an idea into a purposeful mission
Again, regardless of your race, gender, sexual orientation or background we all have a part to play. And there are many ways in which we can contribute. 
If you have an idea and may be stuck on how to move forward, here is some advice for turning that idea into a purposeful mission.
Be unapologetic
Do not express regret about speaking up and taking a stand. One thing I always try to remember is to never start a conversation with “I’m sorry but..” Instead, stand firm and don’t apologize for sharing your perspective.
Follow your passion
There are many ways to impact DEI. When deciding how you will impact DEI, the key is to follow your passion. That passion will be what sustains you over a long period of time and help you maintain consistency. You could write a blog, starting a podcast, getting involved in company ERG programs, being a strong ally, assisting with company recruiting efforts, or anything else you can think of. 
The important thing is that, whatever it is you do, you have a passion for it.
Stay focused on your mission
Again, there are many ways to impact DEI and it’s easy to try to get involved in too many things. But if you spread yourself too thin, you’ll burn out and you won’t be able to continue your work. 
It’s much more impactful to stay focused on a couple of things and do them really well as opposed to spreading yourself too thin.
Wrap up
There is no one way to impact DEI. The most important thing you can do is get involved and stay involved. If you’ve got an idea, follow through. You might not be able to influence the number of non-white CMOs all by yourself, but any well-placed effort contributes to that change. 
The more people involved in these initiatives, the better! No matter how small you might think your idea is.
A few key points to remember:

Only 12% of CMO’s are non-white, a number that’s unchanged from 2019.
There’s still a widely held feeling of exhaustion that comes from going to industry events and seeing only a few of “us” in the room—and even less on stage. 
Share your story. Stories live on as a catalogue for the next generation of leaders to reference. 
Be unapologetic as you speak out. Your work is needed and necessary.
Following your passion will help you stay motivated for the long run. There’s still a lot of work to be done and nothing will change overnight. Finding an idea you’re passionate about will help sustain you when a moment of emotion or the news cycle has moved on. 
Keep your focus on one or two things instead of on every thing. There are a lot of great ideas out there, but you have limited time, resources, and energy. Choosing one or two projects you love will keep you from burning out.

Remember, all great change starts with an idea.

Kerel is the Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at LiveIntent. He currently leads the marketing team and works closely with sales, product, engineering and customer success to create awareness and generate leads for key products and features. Kerel has 20 years of digital media experience building and leading Advertising Operations, Account Management, Partnerships & Product Marketing teams. 
Prior to LiveIntent, Kerel Cooper held positions at Advance Digital as the Senior Director Ad Platform Strategies and JupiterMedia as Director of Advertising Operations. Kerel is also the co-founder and co-host of Minority Report Podcast which highlights people of color, women & LGBTQ community within media, business and technology. Kerel has a Bachelor’s degree in Management Science/Marketing from Kean University, an MBA from Regis University, and Diversity and Inclusion Certification from Cornell University. 

Visit this page to see more in the series, or check back in for our next guest post. 
CM Group is a family of global marketing technology brands including Campaign Monitor, CM Commerce, Delivra, Emma, Liveclicker, Sailthru and Vuture. By joining together these leading brands, CM Group offers a variety of world-class solutions that can be used by marketers at any level. Headquartered in Nashville, TN, CM Group has United States offices in Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New York City, Pittsburgh and San Francisco, and global offices in Australia, London, New Zealand and Uruguay. 
The post Turning an Idea Into a Purposeful Mission appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Hello! ​ I am looking for some insight in regards to automating the creation of co-branded marketing flyers and promotional collateral for sales reps. ​ Our current process looks like this:
Sales rep fills out a hubspot form for a marketing request which is sent to my email. I reach out to sales rep to discuss any extra info needed. I create a flyer from a template with the desired information on it, including the reps contact information. In few cases, I develop completely custom flyers or social images. The rep then downloads this as an image or PDF, then sends it out to their clients via email.
​ This process is messy and slow. I was wondering if there are any SalesForce solutions that would allow reps to create their own marketing based off of a list of dropdowns or is prepopulated with account info. I’m new to marketing automation and not familiar with all SalesForce can offer, so I am looking forward to hearing from some of you! ​ Thank you
submitted by /u/mark_shotgun [link] [comments]

It’s an exciting time to be a marketer, but it’s also more complicated than ever before. There are more customers, more channels, and more opportunities to succeed and fail. But these are the challenges that marketers like Nick Runyon, CMO of PFL.com, thrive on.
PFL is a leading provider of tactile marketing automation and helps brands deliver special customer experiences by combining digital marketing efforts with physical direct mail. In the tactile marketing automation equation, gifts and swag plus great digital ads equals excellent customer memories. 
Nick recently appeared on the Marketing Trends podcast to talk about multichannel marketing. With two decades of marketing experience, he joined PFL in late 2019 — just in time for the tumultuous year that has been 2020. Here’s how he’s helped the company keep innovating as the marketplace has shifted to digital.

MAKE VIRTUAL ENGAGEMENT AS TACTILE AS YOU CAN

As everyone’s shifted to working from home, many B2B marketers’ prospects have dispersed. If your buyers are no longer in the office, how do you reach them? And once you figure out how to reach them, how do you create experiences that are engaging, valuable, and lead to reliable revenue streams for your company?
Zoom is one of PFL’s clients, and though millions of people are using the free version of Zoom, the company also has an interest in retaining paid customers. To help Zoom achieve this, PFL created customized, interactive landing pages and links that their sales team could send out on a one-off basis. 
Now, Zoom’s sales team sends those links to customers they’re interested in retaining. On the interactive landing page, the customer can explore the value they’d get from upgrading to a paid Zoom account, and choose from a list of customized swag kits to receive for free from Zoom — including items like drink coolers, webcams, microphones, and headphones.
Once the kit is delivered to the customer, Zoom’s sales representatives are immediately notified through PFL’s software, and they can follow up with an email or a phone call. By melding the physical and virtual worlds through gifts and ads, you can create truly compelling and personal experiences for your buyers.

PLUG SALES INTO THE MARKETING EQUATION

In our new all-digital marketing landscape, sales and marketing alignment is more important than ever. At PFL, it’s been really important for sales to plug into everything marketing is doing. The more they know about PFL’s customers, the more relevant their engagement can be. For example, if a customer’s profile says they’re a proud graduate of the University of Alabama and a big college football fan, sales teams can send them Crimson Tide-themed gifts. 
When you can give your customers the gift of a physical object that’s relevant and personalized to their interests, it shows that your marketing and sales teams are thinking about them and value their business. In Nick’s view, that’s a good place to be, and it sets your teams apart from less thoughtful or distracting marketing. 
But the gift doesn’t close the deal. What really matters is providing relevant service and delivering value to the right person with the right product at the right time. No matter how great your swag is, the customer experience across digital and physical channels is key.
MAKE YOUR MARKETING REMARKABLE
In B2B marketing, you have to generate real conversations, not just awareness. After all, it’s no good if a bunch of people know about your product but never talk about it together. To generate the conversations you need, your marketing needs to be remarkable. 
That’s where the value of a physical gift comes in. As Nick says, if there’s something in the room from your brand, that’s a conversation-starter. People want to know where the object came from and the story behind it — and that story has the potential to be a great story about your brand. 
Ultimately, a gift is never just a gift. It’s a storytelling device — especially now that almost every other form of marketing engagement has to take place digitally. A relevant, personalized gift has the power to tell an exciting story and set your brand apart. And with marketing automation, it’s easier to send those gifts at scale.
To get more insights about the power of marketing automation and relevant swag for your B2B buyers, listen to Nick Runyon’s episode of the Marketing Trends podcast.

Buyers don’t think like marketers or salespeople. Anyone who works in these departments can admit that. More importantly, buyers don’t think like each other either.
Each consumer follows their own set of buying patterns, whether they recognize it or not. For instance, someone who walks to work every morning may grab a coffee from the Starbucks on the corner — to them, that’s part of their routine. To Starbucks, that’s an established buying pattern.
But if this person happened to move neighborhoods, they’d likely establish a new routine (and buying pattern).

Buying patterns are important to recognize, analyze, and measure because they help businesses better understand and potentially expand their target audience. Buying patterns also fall in step with the customer journey, although they connect more with the psychology and motivations behind each stage.
In this post, we are going to discuss buying patterns and how to predict those of your customers.
What are buying patterns?
Buying patterns refer to the why and how behind consumer purchase decisions. They are habits and routines that consumers establish through the products and services they buy.
Buying patterns are defined by the frequency, timing, quantity, etc. of said purchases.
These patterns are determined by factors such as:

Where someone lives
Where they work
How much money they make
What they enjoy and prefer
What their friends and family recommend
What their goals and motivations are
The price of the product or service they’re interested in (and any active sales or discounts)
Any product displays
The necessity of the product or service
Festivals, holidays, rituals, or celebrations

For example, let’s say the customer mentioned in the introduction is named Robert. Robert’s coffee-buying pattern is one coffee every weekday morning, and this pattern is primarily influenced by where he lives and what he likes to drink.
Therefore, when Robert moves neighborhoods, he’ll likely choose a new morning routine (and establish a new buying pattern) that allows him to still snag that morning coffee.
So, in this case, why should Starbucks care?
Well, by understanding Robert’s buying pattern, Starbucks could better understand the buyer persona he represents, predict in-store traffic, and analyze how they could better market their products to similar customers.
Predicting Customer Buying Patterns
Many, many things influence a customer’s buying behavior and patterns. In the case above, Robert’s neighborhood and coffee cravings influenced his daily Starbucks routine, but that’s just one example of his buying patterns. Robert also has established buying patterns for his groceries, gym usage, clothing purchases, and more.
These types of purchases fall into four consumer behavior categories:

Routine purchases (e.g. weekly grocery shopping)
Limited decision-making purchases (e.g. a new salon recommended by a friend)
Extensive decision-making purchases (e.g. a new car)
Impulse purchases (e.g. a pack of gum at the register)

Buying patterns are present in all of these types of consumer behavior, but they’re most prevalent and predictable through routine purchases. (We’ll dive more into these types and examples in the following section.)
Marketers at companies in all these industries work to uncover and understand the buying patterns of their customers. Most buying patterns are established through the typical buyer journey: awareness, consideration, and decision.
When a pattern is established, however, the buyer then no longer has to become aware of their problem and consider a solution — they simply repeat the decision stage over and over, thus creating the pattern.
So, how can marketers and salespeople uncover the current buying patterns of their customers? The most straightforward way is to ask. Once you set a baseline of customer behavior and expectations, you can then start to predict their patterns — and those of similar shoppers.
Here are some questions to ask in a customer survey or focus group:

Why did you first purchase

?
Who in your household decided to purchase ? Does this person make all the buying decisions?
Where do you go when looking for ?
How long does it take to decide to buy ?
Do you buy other ? Why?
What’s your budget for ?
How far would you travel to buy ?

These questions help you understand the why and how behind your customer purchase decisions, thus uncovering their buying pattern as it relates to your product or service.
The most important takeaway about buying patterns is that they’re ever-changing. Not only do they differ between your customers and buyer personas, but they may also change as an individual’s life changes — as we saw above with Robert.
Customer Buying Pattern Examples
In the previous section, I outlined the four main types of consumer behavior. Below, I’ll unpack an example of a customer buying pattern for each of the types of consumer behaviors.
1. Routine Purchases
I mentioned above that routine purchases typically yield buying patterns. This is true because these patterns are the most prevalent and predictable.
For example, let’s say Betty goes grocery shopping every Monday morning after taking her kids to school. She buys many of the same items every week since her kids are young and prefer to repeat their favorite meals for dinner. Sometimes, she’ll splurge on an extra dessert or fancy coffee, but for the most part, she sticks to the same list.
On one Monday, her kids’ school is closed for maintenance. She has to take them to the grocery, vastly changing her grocery routine as her kids pull a variety of snacks and treats off the shelves. She decides to buy a few to placate her kids and treat them to a special day off.
This is also an example of how a buying pattern can be altered based on who accompanies the decision-maker.
2. Limited Decision-Making Purchases
Limited decision-making purchases are typically rendered through a trusted recommendation by a friend or family member. Because of the recommendation, the decision-maker doesn’t consider it to be a tough decision or feel the need to do much research. This type of purchase can actually be the catalyst for an altered buying pattern.
For example, let’s say Georgia has gone to the same hair salon for five years. She’s never disliked her services there, but when her friend mentions an amazing new salon that has opened down the street, Georgia is curious to try it.
When she goes, she is so impressed with the service that she decides to make it her new routine salon, thus altering her buying pattern due to outside influence or recommendation.
3. Extensive Decision-Making Purchases
Extensive decision-making purchases are usually those that are for expensive, seldomly-made purchases. These may include a new car, computer, or even a home. Because of their ticket size, there’s little room to establish a buying pattern between purchases.
However, some consumers are loyal to certain brands or stores. For example, let’s say Austin decides it’s time for a new car. He and his family have always owned Fords, so when it comes time to shop for cars, he doesn’t think twice about looking for a new Ford.
While he’s uncertain of what model he’ll buy (sedan versus SUV), he knows for sure that he’ll purchase a Ford vehicle, thus creating a buying pattern between his few-and-far-between car purchases.
4. Impulse Purchases
Impulse purchases are exactly how they sound — impulsive purchases made with little planning, research, or forethought. For this reason, buying patterns are hard to establish with these kinds of purchases.
However, one consistent factor in impulse buying is convenience; consumers often make impulsive purchases when they need something quickly or see something they (think they) need. The convenience factor of impulse purchases allows for buying patterns around location and proximity.
For example, let’s say Gio likes to add a little something extra to his takeout purchases when he orders on his food delivery app. He often changes where he gets food from, but he typically throws in an add-on (e.g. fries, a drink, or a cookie) when prompted before check-out.
In this case, there’s no buying pattern established in what Gio orders or where he orders from, but the app tracks his add-on purchases to analyze how often he makes impulse buys on the app. Then, they know to continue prompting those add-ons or perhaps increase the number of products listed.
Tools for Analyzing Customer Buying Patterns
Customer buying pattern analysis is all about analyzing customer behaviors, and there are plenty of tools that can help.
1. Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides a deep-dive view of your customers’ behaviors on your website. From traffic numbers to user demographics, Google Analytics can show you how your customers are interacting with your website. It can also help you establish baseline behaviors from which you can track patterns (or new behaviors that indicate breaks in patterns).
2. Facebook Audience Insights

If your audience is active on your Facebook Page, you can learn a lot about their behaviors and patterns through Facebook Audience Insights. These patterns may not always result in a purchase, but understanding how your audience behaves on social media can teach you how to optimize your social and other promotional content to better entice them to buy.
For example, if you see your followers engage the most on posts that ask a question, perhaps you start posting inquiries that relate to your product or service (versus blatantly promotional posts that don’t otherwise interest your audience).
3. HubSpot CRM

Here at HubSpot, we’re strong advocates of customer relationship management (CRM) tools. So much so that we offer a free one. Not only do CRMs help align your sales, marketing, and customer service teams, but they provide natural, seamless places to store and track customer behaviors — including buying patterns.
If you link your CRM to your register and/or ecommerce platform and track your customer’s purchases, it will quickly show you patterns in purchase frequency, timing, and more. All you have to do is stay diligent in your data collection.
4. HubSpot Service Hub

HubSpot Service Hub includes valuable Customer Feedback Software that can help you run surveys and collect insights about your customer buying patterns. The tool offers many pre-written and templatized survey options so you can dive right into gathering information around your customer behaviors and preferences.
For example, if you surveyed 25 known customers through HubSpot Service Hub, their answers and preferences would then be recorded in your HubSpot CRM, making it easier for you to track behaviors and establish buying patterns.
Buying patterns can tell you a lot about who’s buying from you and why. Use this information to better understand your customers, and fashion your marketing to match their expectations and meet them where they are.
To dig deeper, read our blog post on marketing psychology next.

HubSpot was founded during a time when people were under constant attack from aggressive outbound marketing tactics.
I’m sure nobody misses the unwanted ads, spam emails, and cold calls that used to interrupt their day back in the mid-00s.
Ad retargeting wasn’t a thing, so we all had to settle for repeatedly seeing the same ads for products we had absolutely no interest in.
Marketing has changed a lot since then. Thankfully.
Nowadays, companies have the ability to develop engaging advertising campaigns that complement their inbound strategies and speak directly to their audiences’ needs. The concept of journey-based advertising has been widely adopted and marketers can now create customized content for individuals at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
Targeting has become more sophisticated, meaning that ads are now less interruptive and more informative — so sophisticated, in fact, that that we now take for granted the quality of the ads we get served in our Instagram feeds and YouTube videos.
Dare we say it — in some cases, the ad suggestions are actually really useful: “Oh, hey ad for that new running watch that I didn’t know I needed but now am obsessed with.” There is still a lot of bad advertising and mediocre marketing out there, but it’s important to recognize just how far we’ve come.
But, as advertising capabilities have evolved, so too has the digital landscape. And that has created a host of new challenges for marketers.

Cutting Through the Noise
There’s more choice online now than ever before, and what was previously helpful has, in many cases, become noise. Where we were once served two ads a day for a new jacket, we’re now served 22. Where there was once three restaurants in the local area offering takeaway menus, there’s now 30.
In 2020, this trend has accelerated due to COVID-19, as more and more businesses have moved online and added to the ever-increasing competition for attention. This increased volume of noise is causing consumers to tune out, and customer acquisition costs to go up. And marketers are struggling to make an impact.

To overcome these new challenges, marketers need a new approach — one that allows them to adapt the way they advertise to how consumers like to buy.

Today, the buyer’s journey is rarely linear. Consumers now interact with brands on laptops and smartphones and via social media, websites, and third-party influencers on the path to a purchase. And they still expect a consistent brand experience throughout.
Nowadays, the only way advertisers can break through the noise online and deliver a seamless experience across multiple touchpoints is with extreme relevance: both in terms of content and location.
Relevant messaging is the key to grabbing consumers’ attention, engaging them, and guiding them to the next stage of the buyer’s journey. The first step towards delivering this is meeting the audience where they are. With over four billion people worldwide now working from home, consumers’ purchasing behavior and content consumption habits are changing rapidly.
In the U.S., staying home has led to a 60% increase in the amount of content consumed — Americans are now watching roughly 12 hours of media content a day, according to Nielsen data. Knowing where an audience is paying attention is as important as knowing what messaging is likely to resonate.
Once a marketer understands where their target audience is spending their time, the next challenge is to create ad content that addresses their needs in an engaging way and is tailored to whichever stage of the buyer’s journey they are at.
For example, if a prospect is at the attract stage, an ad that helps them become more familiar with a brand name and core value proposition would probably perform much better than a niche ad that highlights a specific new feature. That type of ad would likely work better with audiences that are much closer to a purchase decision and comparing the feature sets of different products.
However, most companies today are struggling to deliver the type of relevant, engaging ad content that resonates with consumers. And, in most cases, the cause can be traced back to a disconnection between their marketing, website, and sales efforts.
When these elements aren’t working in unison, it becomes extremely difficult for marketers to get a clear view of where prospects are spending their time and which stage the buyer’s journey they are at. This makes it virtually impossible for them to deliver relevant messaging and leaves them with little choice but to resort to those dated outbound tactics I mentioned earlier.
In 2021, the secret to delivering better advertising lies in marketers’ ability to unlock the data at their disposal and leverage it to deliver hyper-relevant messaging and a unified buying experience.
At HubSpot, we call it ‘CRM-powered advertising.’
A Data-Driven Approach to Advertising
CRM-powered advertising enables marketers to create more relevant, engaging ads for prospects in three key ways:

By providing them with up-to-date customer data, which allows them to understand their audiences’ preferences and purchase intent.
By giving them reliable reporting based on holistic customer data, which provides insights into what’s working and what’s not.
By enabling them to automate their ads based on live CRM data, which allows them to continually deliver relevant ads as prospects move to different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Let’s take a look at an example.
Say you’re a demand generation specialist working at a B2B company. Competition is rising in your industry and you’ve seen a decline in the number of qualified leads coming from your ads each month. You know that a more targeted and personalized approach is needed. And you turn to CRM-powered advertising.
As a first step, you create a different campaign for each stage of the buyer’s journey. For the attract stage, for example, you use data in your CRM to create a lookalike audience based on your happiest customers. This will be your target audience. You know that your company’s security features are a key differentiator in the market so you create ads that highlight that aspect of your value proposition.
Because the target audience you’ve created is reflective of your best customers, you get a high percentage of click-throughs. This leads prospects towards the next stage of the buyer’s journey, where they get the opportunity to download an ebook to learn more about your company’s products and services. Your software gives you the ability to create custom fields on the download form, which helps you to gain more granular preference data, and ultimately, get to know your prospects better.
You have set up your campaign to automatically route these new leads to your sales team, and because you’re working out of a shared CRM, you see a number of prospects move into the “demo” stage of their journey.
Again, using your CRM data, you sync these lifecycle stages to the display network you’re using, which automatically begins to serve a new set of ads to prospects based on the next stage of their journey. This allows you to deliver hyper-relevant messaging that addresses the pain points that are specific to prospects who are on the verge of making a purchase decision, such as social proof from happy customers.
As deals close, you then use attribution reporting to see exactly which new customers engaged with your ads and report to your leadership team on the number of deals your CRM-powered strategy influenced.
How to Get Started With CRM-Powered Advertising
HubSpot’s Marketing Hub is built to enable marketers to launch CRM-powered advertising campaigns and deliver a seamless experience for prospects — from the first time they see an ad to the moment they become a customer and beyond.
It offers ads tools that allow marketers to build deeply segmented audiences, serve different ads for different stages of the buyer’s journey, and precisely measure the performance of every campaign — all informed by rich CRM data.
Advertising has come a long way since the days of interruptive, irrelevant, and irritating content that once dominated our screens. A new era is unfolding — one in which consumers expect relevant messaging across every touchpoint and in which companies must find new ways to cut through the ever-increasing volume of noise online.
A CRM-powered advertising strategy, driven by a CRM platform built with this purpose in mind, empowers marketers to not only gain deeper insights into their customers’ needs, but to turn those insights into engaging content with the potential to delight prospects at every stage of the buyer’s journey.