Reading minds: How to boost sales by working out what makes your customers tick

Using customer automation technology to analyse the behaviour of browsers and buyers can help your enterprise market its products and services more effectively, writes Shahid Nizami, Regional Vice President Asia Pacific and Japan, ActiveCampaign.

Do you have a great handle on how your customers think and feel, and what leads them to spend their hard earned money with your small business?

If you answered in the affirmative, congratulations, carry on as you are and all the very best for a bumper 2022!

If you answered in the negative and you’re keen to do something about it, read on.

What motivates your customers?

For many Australian business owners and marketing executives, customer motivation can be something of a mystery, albeit one they’re very anxious to solve. So much so that, according to a recent ActiveCampaign poll, more of them say they’d prefer to be able to predict customer behaviour than pick the winning Gold Lotto numbers.

While, alas, software may not yet be able to help with the latter exercise, the good news is, it’s very good at the former. Customer experience automation makes it possible to take a very deep dive into the hearts and minds of each and every one of your customers.

By analysing their digital interactions with your organisation, you can better predict when and how they’re likely to make a purchase from you.

Here are three ways you can use that intelligence to send your sales soaring in 2022.

1. Picking the perfect moment to hit send

Timing is everything, as the old saying has it. Determining the optimum moment to fire off marketing messages to customers, via email and other digital channels, has been a challenge that’s preoccupied marketing professionals these past two decades and more.

For some companies, it’s first thing in the morning, so their communiques are ready and waiting for customers when they log on for the day. Others do better sending their missives late in the evening.

Customer experience automation software allows you to customise the sending process, at an individual customer level. By tracking and modelling the times at which a contact engages with your business, you’re able to determine when they’re most likely to be receptive to messages.

Schedule your messages to arrive at exactly those times and, odds are, they’ll be opened or viewed and actioned upon.

2. Sorting the browsers from the buyers

Every business sees its fair share of tyre kickers and every business owner knows that expending time and effort trying to steer them towards a sale can be a colossal, and expensive, waste of time.

Customer experience automation technology can help you give them a wide berth, by allowing you to predict the probability of individual deals closing. By considering multiple factors, including whether prospects open or ignore emails, follow your business on social media and schedule demonstrations, it’s possible to flag the customers most likely to open their wallets.

Focusing your personal sales efforts on these organisations and individuals – and leaving the ‘window shoppers’ to browse in peace – will help your enterprise win more business, more easily.

3. Using the channels favoured by your customers

A couple of decades ago, the options were pretty limited when it came to marketing channels. In the digital era, businesses are spoilt for choice with a plethora of means with which to reach customers. Choosing the best one, or ones, can be quite the challenge.

Researching what your target market likes to read and watch, who they follow and where they spend time online will help you determine whether you should be focusing your marketing efforts on old school emails, Instagram messaging or TikTok clips.

Once you’ve made that call and invested in cogent, persuasive campaigns, you can use customer automation technology to disseminate them to customers and prospects at the times when they’re most likely to resonate – and result in sales.

Pursuing profitability and growth in 2022

Harnessing the power of automation technology to enhance your understanding of your customers – how they think and behave – will help you optimise your marketing strategy and drive sales and growth.

At a time when business owners around the country continue to face significant uncertainty and challenge, it’s an investment in your future profitability and prosperity that’s likely to pay for itself.

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