Marketing

6 Ways to use Marketing Automation for Sales and Customer Service

Last updated: 28 August, 2024

Marketing is often focused on attracting new customers to your business.

However, research shows that it costs 5X as much to land a new customer than to retain a current one—and that you have a 70% chance of selling more to them, too.

So, have you considered how you can enhance your overall customer journey by applying marketing principles to other areas like sales and support?

Using a more unified approach like this, with help from automation tools, means marketers can build bridges between sales and customer service to build better customer relationships.

But why should B2B marketers be looking at ways to support the rest of the customer journey?

Why should you integrate marketing automation across the customer journey?

Marketing across the customer journey is critical to the success of your business.

By integrating marketing with sales and service and combining it with automation, you’ll be able to achieve things like;

A more cohesive customer journey that retains your customers for the long term
An increase in productivity across your sales and service teams, increasing revenue
A reduction in time spent servicing and selling to customers, improving profitability
Maximizing revenue opportunities for each customer, not leaving money on the table
Building stronger customer relationships, with help from AI and automation

Let’s see how you can integrate marketing and automation with sales and service.

How to integrate marketing with sales and customer service through automation

One of the best ways you can integrate marketing and automation approaches across the customer journey is by focusing on email marketing.

Why email marketing?

73% of B2B marketers say that email marketing is their most effective way of contacting a prospect - and 77% of B2B buyers prefer to be contacted this way.

So, it makes sense for marketers to continue using email marketing across the customer journey to promote products, services, events, and even actions to customers.

Creating an email campaign can be time-consuming - even for experienced marketers - so you’ll need help from AI and automation to do it efficiently.

How automated email marketing helps build better customer relationships

Writing compelling content, inspirational headlines, and calls to action that creates a sense of urgency typically involves a significant amount of effort to get right.

On top of that, marketers then have to design images to help bring their messages to life.

This doesn’t all happen automatically… until now.

With AI technology built into CRM platforms like SuperOffice, one of the most effective yet time-consuming marketing communication methods can be run on autopilot.

These tools will allow you to create content drafts - including headlines, calls to action, and images - at the touch of a button that matches your company’s tone and voice.

The biggest advantage of having access to these tools is that it’ll make B2B marketing more productive and efficient than ever before.

As a result, your marketing team will have more time to produce automated email marketing campaigns that can complement the work of B2B sales and customer service.

With marketing automation, once the email content has been created, marketers can set up these emails to be automatically sent at various points in the customer journey.

Treating each step of the customer journey as something to be marketed and promoted to customers offers a huge opportunity for marketing to integrate with sales and service teams.

So, how can marketers use email marketing like this to enhance the entire customer journey?

6 ways you can use automated email marketing across the customer journey

Marketing doesn’t need to stop at generating leads.

In fact, marketing can (and should) have a huge impact on revenue.

Integrating marketing, in this case, email marketing, with your sales and customer service efforts will help you unlock value for your customers and boost retention and expansion.

To help you leverage the power of email marketing and automation, here are 6 campaigns you can try today.

1. Sales follow-up sequences

If sales leads have gone cold, your marketing team can create email sequences to warm them back up and turn prospects into customers.

These can include everything from the classic emails sent offering ‘end of month quota’ discounts to sign up now, through to case studies and success stories to help close the deal.

2. Product feature launches

Marketers can help service teams increase customer adoption by creating email marketing campaigns to launch new products, features, or services.

Using marketing campaigns to promote features like this will help your customers unlock more value from your product, making it stickier and retaining your customers longer.

3. Customer event promotion

One way that marketers can deliver a great customer experience is by creating customer events like webinars, roundtable discussions, and even conferences.

Promoting these events to your existing customers via email marketing campaigns is a great way to help your customers feel special, want to renew, and advocate for your brand.

automation

4. Onboarding sequences

Once your customers have signed up to use your product or service, they will typically need to undergo onboarding to get started. If Onboarding fails, then the customer will churn.

To prevent unnecessary churn, your marketing team can create email sequences that convince customers to follow specific steps and follow up if they don’t.

5. Customer success emails

Marketers can help customer success teams by creating evergreen email sequences that include hints, tips, and information about your product or service.

This kind of customer marketing content will help your company to ensure your customers are getting maximum value from your product, will renew, and potentially expand over time.

6. Upsell and Cross-sell emails

Marketers can help to generate leads, not just for new customers, but for upsell and cross-sell opportunities from existing customers, too.

This presents your marketing team with another chance to impact revenue growth and retention by integrating with sales and service teams across the customer journey.

These are just a few examples of the types of email campaigns that your marketing team can use to better integrate with your sales and service teams - there are countless more, too.

Marketing automation campaigns for sales and service

We’ve put together a ‘cheat sheet’ table to help you get started creating and scheduling email marketing campaigns that convert across the customer journey.

This can serve as a reference point for inspiration as you begin integrating and automating marketing with sales and customer service.

‘cheat sheet’ table

You’re now set to set up your next campaign.

But, what can you do to maximize your chances of success when integrating email marketing and automation across the customer journey?

How to maximize your success with integrated email marketing

Before you get started with your next customer journey-integrated email marketing campaign, there are 4 key approaches you should also consider;

Segmentation: use data filters in your CRM to focus your email messages on particular groups of customers rather than sending the exact same email to everyone.
Automation: Take advantage of automation options that can trigger emails to be sent based on specific events or actions that the customer has taken for maximum impact and results.
Personalization: As marketers, you’ll understand the value of customer data, so make the most of it. Use personalization based on customer data so your emails resonate.
Iteration: No email campaign or sequence is ever perfect. Use the results data you collect to make iterative improvements over time to ensure optimum results.

Above all, though, you'll need a CRM to leverage email marketing and automation across the customer journey and maximize the customer relationships you’re building.

But how can a CRM platform help you integrate marketing and build better relationships across the customer journey?

How a CRM platform can help you integrate marketing and automation across the customer journey

Applying the marketing principles of timely, targeted communication and combining it with automation can have a hugely positive impact on your entire customer journey.

Service teams can avoid burnout by reducing repetitive busy work, while customers benefit from quicker and more consistent support.

Meanwhile, sales teams can benefit from upsell and cross-sell leads generated on autopilot, as well as email sequences and content campaigns designed to help them win new deals.

This all helps to strengthen your relationships with your customers - and increase revenue - making it an essential consideration for B2B companies in Europe.

However, to achieve the benefits of marketing automation, you’ll need the right tools.

A unified CRM platform will help marketers integrate their communications approach with the work of your sales and customer service teams.

Designed to help marketing, sales, and customer service to better serve your customers, SuperOffice offers several features designed to help you build better relationships: