Recent events have time and again encouraged businesses to accept the volatile markets and find agile ways of conducting their operations. As businesses brace themselves to work across big, bold plans, they are not quite sure about the long-term approach of resolving deep-rooted problems and establishing human connections with integrated processes forcing them to reimagine their organizational approach.
Digital transformation initiatives incorporate multiple avenues, including data science and marketing technology, to explore new possibilities with fresh tools and approaches. Most projects revolve around different binding aspects of the organization, with a unifying goal, derived from analytical insights. Whether to survive industry disruption, build engagement, or boost sales, companies can survive with an approach that can yield positive, long-term results.
Here are some common threads in digital business transformation across the globe:
Rigorous planning shepherded by the executive team with a proper articulation of a digital-first vision and enterprise with tangible ROI expected.
Wide-scale personalization in approach, especially in driving fresh experiences that resonate with clients based on their demographics, interests, and affiliations.
Memorable experiences tailored to individual interest and preferences backed by AI and marketing automation with strategic placement for maximum empathy and creativity. Presence of a digital experience platform to collect data along the customer journey for better engagement and increased revenue.
Top Platforms and Approaches for Digital Transformation of Businesses
Digital Platform: To create unique experiences for businesses in today’s digital world, marketers need to leverage technology to understand customer behaviour and then align content based on the relevance of the behaviour. Real-time personalization and omnichannel data capture should be the guiding lights of digital transformation processes.
- Experience commerce: Conversions being top priority should encourage businesses to embrace personalized shopping experiences.
- Content hub: With integrated digital asset management, product content management, and content marketing, marketers should manage content operations efficiently right across all departments and the entire marketing team.
- Cloud solutions: Cloud technologies can help businesses capture digital marketing with utmost speed and scalability helping businesses to boost time to market while lowering total cost of ownership.
Email Marketing: Email marketing can maintain and strengthen customer relationships considerably over time. As the Nielsen study suggests, 66% of online consumers suggested that they preferred new products from brands when they are familiar with their offerings. Emails help breed familiarity in prospects and clients, also keeping the average cost of customer acquisition down. Managing and optimizing average email open rate as much as possible is key to the success of many businesses.
Employing Email Marketing – the most cost-effective way for digital transformation
Start building email lists
Most business owners do not have email addresses of their customers right from Day 1. This fact is a major regret among companies who commit frequent mistakes without growing subscribers even before launching the business.
Before building your email list, take permission to follow up with clients and prospects over time. Subscribers need to “opt-in” to your emails and to hear from you. Hence you need to employ enticing tactics like encouraging them to download useful stuff for their email address.
Set up pre-launch pages for your products
Although product validation requires real paying customers, you could have a long list of email subscribers before the launch itself. Get the list of potential customers by allowing them to opt-in to early bird offers.
Without officially launching the site to paying customers, you could design a landing page to invite visitors to share their email address for prompt information on offers. Give incentives to early adopters right away!
Collect emails from customer accounts without registration
Customer accounts help businesses stay in touch with guest sign-ups and a number of prospects since they always require shoppers to distribute only relevant information before making the purchase.
Provide the option to create accounts after the first order is placed on the site. Customer accounts can be kept optional, and you can send emails to them with direct invitations about account activation after the purchase for handy discounts.
Boost signups with lead magnets and cool ideas
Too often, businesses assume newsletters are compelling enough to attract subscriptions. But that is not so. Consider introducing real offers and discounts for visitors to share their credentials, including the email address. You could motivate them with real discounts on the products but not too heavy to hurt the bottom line. Conduct sweepstakes or contests, especially giveaways to attract lots of people to perform tasks and share details so that you could engage them periodically.
Some consumer products could benefit from new photographs and utility angles on their benefits. Rendering tangible value is the key in this context, especially to pull visitors into a buying frame of mind. The lead magnets can certainly do your campaigns a world of good.
Author Bio
Saumil Shah is the marketing lead at InboxArmy, an e-commerce email marketing agency that specializes in providing email marketing services from production to deployment. In 2014, the digital marketing bug bit him and he fell in love with helping clients succeed in the digital arena. Saumil Shah has helped clients in various niches grow their businesses and revenue through SEO, content marketing, PPC, email marketing, and lead generation.
