Discover what Cloud CRM marketing trends are going to be impacting your business in 2021.
There is little doubt that we are now in a digital-first, work from anywhere world. The drive for digital transformation has accelerated and new Cloud CRM innovation and solution trends are emerging to help us all adapt and thrive in these times. The ‘Digital Imperative World’ is one which is being embraced by many marketers and business leaders around the globe to enable companies to continually reinvent themselves so they can adapt and thrive with every unpredictable challenge and every opportunity which arises.
In this blog, we explore how there is no returning to the business or marketing model which served us well in 2019. We look at how Salesforce’s marketing tools are helping business leaders go beyond a translation of what was there before to achieve true digital transformation to best understand and serve their Customers, staff and partners.
Customers go front and centre
Engaging with your Customers at the right time, with the right message is now a non-negotiable part of the marketing mix. But this is only possible by listening and learning. With more digital touchpoints out there than ever before, there is untold rich Customer data out there for marketers which is just waiting to be used to create exceptional Customer experiences.
To capitalise on this, the role of the marketer will grow into driving cross-departmental collaboration and engagement through Customer touchpoints such as marketing, sales, commerce and service. This will help drive our track, capture and optimise the entire Customer lifecycle and create a solid marketing strategy with Customers front and centre to achieve business growth.
Salesforce marketing solutions to help you achieve this include Social Studio which enables you to listen, publish and engage with your consumers across social media channels, Journey Builder to create 1-to-1 consumer journeys across all channels and departments, and Advertising Studio which helps you target 1-to-1 advertising using your CRM data to acquire and re-engage consumers.
Celebrate uniqueness or lose your voice
Marketers are facing an ever-increasing challenge to communicate with an audience whose attention is split between hundreds of other competitors, all bidding for the same clicks. To cut through all of the digital noise, marketers need to open a personalised 1:1 channel of communication with their Customer which celebrates their uniqueness.
Personalisation goes far beyond addressing someone with their name in an email salutation; it’s about gathering insight so you can put the right message, at the right time through the right channel directly to each Customer. To do that, we need to be specific and utilise the power of data-driven marketing. As the world-leading CRM platform, Salesforce can help us leverage the strength of data so we can see every detail of our Customers’ interaction and activity within your brand.
Artificial Intelligence – know more, guess less
Artificial Intelligence allows us to automate engagement with individual Customers, and these journeys are able to react and act based on Customer’s real-time actions. Salesforce’s Einstein enables us to utilise AI to optimise every interaction and build new segments based on cross-channel data. Now we can anticipate Customers actions and then impress with every interaction.
The embedded AI also learns which channels, messages and content resonate with Customers by automatically analysing the interactions they have with your business across all touchpoints. This data and insights help us understand Customers and our business like never before, giving us assistance right where it’s needed!
Visualising your data
Most people are a big fan of fact-based decisions, but this doesn’t need to mean spreadsheets! That is why many people are now tuning in to the benefits of Tableau which is exceptional interactive data visualisation software.
Tableau reconstructs data into useful, manageable insights that empower people across a business to understand the data around them. Gone are the days where people rely on others to run reports and decide what information will make it to the final spreadsheet. Now everyone can have access to a wealth of data they personally need to make fact-based decisions.
With real-time interactive dashboards, advanced visual analytics and enhanced business intelligence, you can empower your business with better data than ever before. Taking control of your data enables you to uncover the most remarkable insights and opportunities that had never been possible before!
Seismic digital shift
The shift in activity from store and office to digital shopfront and virtual collaboration is clear as day. Some may see this as temporary, but customer and staff habits have changed forever. There is clear evidence now that the pandemic has accelerated a long term trend towards a data-first digital lifestyle and marketers are at the forefront of that change.
The move from in-person events to virtual ones has come as no surprise as a key trend of 2020. CloudShift, for example, held our Annual Property Summit again in September which is the largest UK Salesforce event for the real estate and property sector. The switch to running virtual events presented many questions at first; how will the tech work? Will people dial in? Will this be engaging? To name just a few. But then we started to explore the incredible opportunity this provided us. We had no limit for guests, we could record some elements in advance and, most importantly, we could collect some incredible data, insight and knowledge on everyone who attended.
We evolved from one in-person room, into a virtual space where we were able to host 13 separate sessions over 4 hours. We were able to inspire people with some amazing Customer stories and show some insightful Salesforce demos tailored for the property and real estate industry as well as offer advice on how to successfully implement Salesforce. We were able to provide a truly tailored event experience for everyone and valuably see who attended which session to help shape future conversations.
The role of marketing in 2021
We are now a digital-first, work from anywhere world which will continue to constantly evolve at speed in 2021. We are witnessing a transformation, not a translation which is a challenge but an exciting one for many businesses and marketers.
The most extensive opportunities will be within achieving true digital transformation at a pace which will let you effectively serve your Customers, staff and partners. The role of the marketer in business to help bring about significant and meaningful change is only accelerating so it’s time to buckle up and power up now with data and insight for 2021!
