As the world strives to bounce back to the new normal, businesses are prioritizing their investments in disruptive technologies to constantly innovate and deliver unmatched value to their customers. With the dynamic customer needs in the digital age, product and service marketing needs to modernize to build business resiliency and tap new opportunities.

According to a recent study, companies using marketing automation to nurture prospects see a 451% increase in qualified leads. Those nurtured leads, make purchases 47% larger than their non-nurtured counterparts.

Marketing automation has emerged as a must-have technology for brands to drive personalized marketing campaigns at scale and achieve exponential growth potential. In this blog, we will discuss how Sitecore’s marketing automation helps brands deliver personalized CX at scale.

The Top Usecases of Sitecore Marketing Automation

Sitecore's Marketing Automation capabilities help businesses optimize the following activities:

• Promoting Digital Events & Webinars
• Drive Proactive & Multi-channel Communications including Email, Text & App Notifications
• Efficient Customer Journey Mapping and Personalization
• Rules/Action based Profiling of contacts
• Nurturing Qualified Leads
• Seamless Contacts enrollment in your marketing campaigns
• Sending contextual reminders to contacts within specified time gaps

Why Sitecore?

Legacy digital experience platforms require extensive enhancements to deploy latest marketing automation features, which is not only time consuming but also has hefty cost implications. Sitecore, on the other hand, seamlessly integrates customer data to drive personalized communications to be delivered across multiple channels and craft awe-inspiring digital experiences.

Apart from seamless integration of customer data, email templates and a detailed automation plan, Sitecore provides marketers with additional features of data segmentation, AI-ML based personalization scenarios, real-time communication triggers and BI reporting. Let's look at some of Sitcore's marketing automation features that distinguish Sitecore from other DXP platforms:

1. Custom Facets :

A facet is piece of information that enriches a contact or an interaction with the customers. Users leverage facets to seamlessly filter information and limit their search results to improve customer experience and showcase what they are looking for.

Marketers can develop Custom facets to add some additional information to the existing collection model.

• OOTB Facets include :
  • Personal
  • Addresses
  • Emails
  • Phone Numbers
• Sitecore deployment teams must audit the solution to check what additional information and features need to be saved in Sitecore xDB to drive contextual digital experiences for different sectors like:
• Insurance -> Policy Number, Quote Number
• Education -> Student ID, Course Enrolled
• Retail -> Customer ID, Customer status

2. Import Customer Data by leveraging APIs :

Sitecore allows marketers to easily import and export customer data and contacts using the following simple steps:

• Import Approach
  • List Manager CSV import
  • Data exchange framework
• Using xConnect APIs - develop utility
• xConnect Client Web API
  • The xConnect Client API is a portable web API that allows trusted clients to create, read, update, and search contacts and interactions over HTTPS
  • The xConnect Client API implements the Data protocol
• Working with xConnect
  • To start working with xConnect and to create contacts, interactions, we should get a client config into local using client certificate thumbprint
• The client configuration gets the sitecore xconnect context into your .NET based independent application

3. Create Custom Rules (Predicates) for Segmented List

To filter contacts based on business rules and save they must be saved in the list. The List Manager passes the predicate to the segmentation engine, by using the IContactSearchQueryFactory to fetch a list of matching contacts. This is based on Sitecore.Framework.Rules assembly of the rule engine. Marketrs can use the List Manager to create a segmented list, as and when they need.

4. Custom Rules for Automation Engine

There are elements in Marketing Automation where marketers can specify a rule to identify how a contact should proceed through the automation campaign. Based on the Sitecore.Framework.Rules assembly of the rule engine, it enables marketers to add predicates and implement the Sitecore.Framework.Rules.ICondition interfaces. The Marketing Automation Engine evaluates the ICondition and uses the result to determine where a contact should move within a plan. It is advisable to update the copy of conditions and segmentation query DLL in the Marketing Automation Engine so as to map and evaluate contacts within the custom rules for better results.

With the recent acquisition of Moosend, Sitecore has strengthened its marketing automation capabilities with an aim to deliver innovative campaigns across all customer touchpoints with the tap of a button. Switch to Sitecore marketing automation today to deliver exceptional digital experiences to your customers, improve lead generation and bolster growth.

As an award winning DXP service provider, Espire has partnered with Sitecore, to help brands drive exceptional customer experience across touchpoints. Over the past 2 decades, we have served over 50+ global business, won the Sitecore Best Personalized Experience Award, and have multiple MVPs, along with 100+ certified resources. Espire can help your brand deploy scalable marketing automation solutions to drive exceptional growth. Get in touch with us for a free assessment> here

For more queries, get in touch with us at marketing@espire.com