How NOW Are You?

How now are you? – A recent Forrester Wave on Real-Time Interaction Management named Salesforce a leader in the space. These real-time interaction management capabilities are powered by Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which gives companies the ability to identify key information about their customers, hyper personalise messages to them, and engage across a multitude of different channels in real time.

As Bob Stutz, former CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud said “Customers are engaging with brands across more channels than ever before. That’s why marketers are challenged with delivering the right messages to the right customers at the right time,”

Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows you to analyse the real-time behaviour of your customers, visualise the lifecycle meaningfully and take action at the right time for the next best communication, be it a relevant promotional message via triggered email or a targeted digital ad.

In my long history of working in real-time marketing, across many different and fascinating tools, one thing has always remained true about the best time to talk to your customers. Is it when you want to talk to them (aka traditional outbound), or when they want to talk to you? Hopefully the answer is clear from the framing of the question as to why an organisation that focuses only on the outbound will do so at the cost of a significant amount of lost incoming business.

According to a recent eMarketer survey, two-thirds of shoppers check their phone for product information while browsing in-store. A smart retail marketer could exploit this habit by enriching the customers experience, perhaps offering them a free cup of coffee as one notable high street retailer is known for. Customers who enjoy the experience of being your customer, who feel valued and respected come back, again and again.

It is known that customer experience is a huge priority for customers. In fact, according to a 2018 State of the Connected Customer report, 66% of customers are prepared to actually pay more for a better experience.

In these interesting times we currently find ourselves in, perhaps there is no better time for an uninterrupted focus on customer experience in the 21^st century, and there’s never going to be a better time to dive into the real-time world.

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