Streamlining customer marketing workflows

The impact of AI in customer marketing workflows, continuously tightening privacy regulations, and a cookie-less future are the talk of the town for every enterprise marketing team. Now more than ever, a brand’s ability to create personalized and streamlined customer experiences is at the heart of effective customer marketing.

But without access to first-party data and the right tools in place, marketing teams can’t orchestrate impactful workflows that resonate with their audiences. To overcome this, marketers must optimize their data, martech stacks, current customer workflows, and analytics.

In this article, we’ll cover the ins and outs of customer marketing workflows, including their importance, strategies for streamlining them, tools like Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) to consider implementing, and the common challenges associated with traditional approaches to customer workflows.

What are customer marketing workflows?

A customer marketing workflow is the creation, execution, and analysis of marketing campaigns directed toward customers. It encompasses everything from real-time data analysis and segmentation to campaign execution and post-campaign evaluation.

The value of these customer marketing workflows lies in their ability to cultivate lasting relationships, drive customer loyalty, and ultimately contribute to business growth — meaning they require a strategic and iterative approach to develop and execute.

The challenges of customer marketing workflows

Traditional customer marketing workflows often grapple with inefficiencies that hinder their effectiveness. Manual processes, data silos, and disjointed communication between marketing teams and within their martech tools can impede the seamless execution of campaigns.

Another challenge is the implementation of stricter privacy laws when it comes to third-party data collection and storage. Now it is more difficult than ever to identify users, understand their customer journey, and have a complete picture of each potential customer — especially when many databases have duplicate or conflicting customer data records.

Even when marketing teams can identify users, the lack of a unified view of customer data (also known as a Customer 360) makes it challenging to craft personalized and timely messages, resulting in missed opportunities for engagement and ineffective marketing campaigns. This is why marketers must ensure their first-party data is accurate, implement streamlined workflows, and track metrics against their business goals.

The advantages of streamlined customer marketing workflows

Streamlining your customer marketing workflows offers a multitude of advantages, benefiting both your business and customers. These benefits run the gamut, from increased efficiency and productivity and lower operational overhead costs to improved delivery of hyper-targeted and personalized content for your customers.At Simon, we’ve seen many customers reap the benefits of streamlining their workflows by using a Customer Data Platform (CDP) and Cloud Data Warehouse (CDW), with many citing the benefits below as the most impactful advantages to having efficient customer marketing workflows.

Enhanced efficiency

Streamlining customer marketing workflows provides a myriad of advantages, ‌and enhanced efficiency usually tops the list. Automation is key, as it frees marketing teams from performing repetitive, time-consuming tasks. This is also where AI can significantly improve customer marketing workflows.While automation tools can handle email scheduling and customer segmentation, marketers can focus on strategic planning and creative endeavors. Moreover, automation minimizes the risk of manual errors, ensuring that marketing campaigns are executed consistently. This enhances your brand’s voice and helps maintain integrity across diverse channels.

1:1 personalized customer experiences

A streamlined workflow has a direct and positive impact on the customer experience. By automating routine tasks, marketing teams can dedicate more time to understanding customer behavior and preferences, which, in turn, enables them to curate personalized content, offers, and recommendations throughout the entire customer journey.

For example, marketing teams can build campaigns that recommend specific products based on a customer’s past purchases and browsing history, or initiate real-time push notifications offering relevant promotions based on specific interests. This improved responsiveness and personalization — and the ability to have tools like chatbots available 24/7 that cater to customer needs — ensures that customers feel valued, fostering a deeper connection with the brand.

Predictive analytics enable marketers to develop a 1:1 customer relationship by anticipating a customer’s next purchase or desired channel and offering relevant suggestions in real time, as well as tailoring loyalty or exclusive experiences.

They can even help reduce customer churn by providing opportunities for personalization. Building churn models can help identify customers at risk and proactively engage them with retention offers or support the moment they are flagged for potential churn.

Increased ROI and boosted marketing performance

Optimizing customer marketing workflows is not just about efficiency, it’s also about driving tangible results. Targeted campaigns, made possible through customer marketing workflows, significantly improve conversion rates and boost customer lifetime value (LTV).

By leveraging data-driven insights, marketing teams can allocate resources effectively, ensuring that every dollar spent contributes to a positive return on investment.

With the right customer workflows in place, data-driven decision-making becomes the cornerstone of success because campaigns are optimized based on real-time analytics. This strategic approach maximizes marketing spend and sets the stage for continuous improvement and adaptation to changing market dynamics.

Streamlining your customer marketing workflows

So, how do you go about streamlining your current customer marketing workflows? First, thoroughly review your current workflows to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies. Pinpoint areas with redundant tasks, data silos, and manual processes, and prioritize improvements based on their impact on efficiency and feasibility of implementation.

Next, look for opportunities to automate repetitive tasks. Automation is the engine that powers streamlined customer marketing workflows, and, depending on your needs, there are plenty of automation martech tools you can consider to execute on these tasks more efficiently. (Hint: our customers use the combined power of a CDP and CDW to keep their real-time data clean, connected, and actionable.)

Consider where you can build out automated email campaigns triggered by customer behavior, such as a discount promotional code when a customer abandons their cart without purchasing from your site, or personalized content delivery based on segmentation.

Finally, focus on automating tasks that are predictable and rule-based, allowing your team to redirect their energy towards more strategic initiatives.

Breaking down data silos within workflows

One of the primary challenges in traditional workflows is the existence of data silos — isolated pockets of customer data scattered across various platforms. To overcome this, implement a robust data integration strategy that unifies customer data from disparate sources into a centralized platform. This is where using a CDP, especially one that sits on top of a cloud data warehouse, proves invaluable.

Utilizing a CDP enables the creation of a single, holistic view of each customer. This consolidated data repository acts as a treasure trove, empowering marketers with a comprehensive understanding of customer preferences, behaviors, and interactions across channels. This not only facilitates personalized communication but also enables more informed decision-making throughout the customer journey.

The best part? Marketers don’t have to rely on data teams to access and use this data, empowering them to access Customer 360s and optimize their customer campaigns in real time.

Activating customer data within marketing workflows

With a unified view of customer data in place, the next step is leveraging this information for data-driven decisions by personalizing campaigns based on customer preferences: Do your customers prefer receiving SMS, push, or email notifications? Is there a particular day or time that customers seem more engaged and likely to purchase?

With these insights, you can schedule and personalize content delivery across various and preferred channels based on individual preferences.

Another way to streamline customer marketing workflows is to segment audiences strategically. Marketing teams can leverage a CDP's segmentation capabilities to automatically group customers based on specific criteria, such as demographics, interests, and purchase behavior, ensuring your customers have a consistent, seamless experience.

Finally, predict future behavior using advanced analytics. CDPs provide centralized analytics dashboards and reports that offer actionable real-time information into campaign performance.

Marketers can use website and app analytics to monitor user activity, like page views, clicks, and geolocation to understand immediate customer interests.

When it comes to campaigns, using a CDP’s analytics tools can identify spikes or dips, engagement, and purchase patterns.

With this data at your fingertips, you can track key metrics, analyze customer behavior, notice patterns, and identify areas for improvement within your customer marketing campaigns. Ultimately, CDPs enable marketers to continuously improve their customer marketing workflows and campaigns based on real-time feedback.

Fostering collaboration and communication

While a platform like a CDP can centralize data, enable teams to work cross-functionally, and improve scalability, streamlining workflows isn't just a technological transformation; it's also about fostering collaboration and communication within the org.

Ensure clear communication and shared goals among all teams involved in the customer journey, including engineering, IT, security/compliance, customer success, marketing, and sales. Look for cross-functional objectives and pain points, as well as ways to optimize processes, within your workflows to understand how they fit into your business goals.

Conclusion

Streamlining customer marketing workflows requires a strategic and multifaceted approach combining technology, automation, and a customer-centric mindset. First, consider the state of your customer data. Is it siloed? Is it accurate? Most importantly, can you access it?

Next, review current marketing workflows and identify areas for both improvement and automation, revamping as necessary. Once your data and processes are in place, build out personalized campaigns powered by the data. Don’t be afraid to experiment!

Review the metrics and outcomes to determine what’s working and what isn’t, then iterate.

By embracing the advantages of streamlined workflows and harnessing the power of CDPs, businesses can unify real-time customer data, automate campaign management, understand critical insights, and elevate their customer marketing strategies to power the personalized experience that customers crave.

To learn about how Simon Data can help you streamline your customer marketing workflows, check out our resources or book a demo.