Our customers frequently ask us, “Which customer journey management solution is the best fit for our business?”
There are many industry-leading tools offering organisations the ability to automate omnichannel marketing journeys, track communications and content performance. There are allot of platforms in the market with unique flavour of differentiators while strengths and weaknesses between these platforms make it tough to know which platform is the right fit.
B2B solutions vs B2C solutions is another factor. Brands are persistently looking to integrate Marketing, Sales, Service, and Operations into a single platform to seamlessly transfer customers through each stage of their lifecycle in their customer value management. Let’s dive a little deeper into each use case.
B2B platforms provides a range of marketing automation and campaign management tools. They typically offer a comprehensive suite of features that include marketing automation with predictive audiences and segments, tailored personalized experiences with active listening and triggered content. Other use cases focus on account-based marketing to build best-fit account lists using AI. Lead management with top-of-funnel through inbound/outbound scoring models for targeting and retargeting of known and anonymous visitors. It also offers email marketing capabilities such as A/B/n testing leveraging predictive content and triggered emails to improve engagement and conversion. When it comes to creating complex marketing workflows to automate complex marketing processes, this is usually an area that requires careful consideration. Some organisations need to create sophisticated lead scoring models, nurture leads with targeted campaigns across multiple channels. When considering platform suitability for your business needs, baseline the buying journeys for your business and the levels of sophistication needed to enable them. This will help guide the deicsion making process towards a comprehensive marketing automation platform with sales and marketing alignment.
In comparison, B2C use cases require capabilities that can orchestrate journeys across email, SMS, and push channels, while personalizing content based on customer behaviour and preferences, and track marketing, sales, and operational performance metrics in real-time. A key feature to consider is segmentation and how it can be shared across multiple platforms like CDPs to CRM platforms as in most instances there is not a common data structure or automatic data sharing capability – if this is important in your stack consider platforms with extended ecosystems to optimise the ability to personalise 1:1. There are newer platforms that are natively built on top of data foundations which are suited for organisations who have a need for 1:1 personalisation, mobile-centric use cases, and rely on real-time use cases. These platforms can be configured to access connections to external systems via custom data sources and custom actions. Organisations can now enrich journeys with data coming from external services like, compliance, governance policies or external reservation services that are configured within the data foundation. These newer marketing automation platforms have been designed to be everywhere in the ‘moments that matters’ across all customer touchpoints – and the entire journey is optimised with intelligent decisioning and insights.
In conclusion:
Organisations depend on marketing tools to survive. A strong tightly integrated marketing technology stack encourages growth and ensures marketing teams are not spending their valuable time on onerous tasks. Whether it’s managing customer relationships, winning new leads, or uncovering new marketing opportunities, having the right customer journey management tool in your stack is critical.
Whether you need advanced audience segmentation, sophisticated lead management, or powerful analytics and reporting, most leading platforms have you covered. And while each platform has its unique strengths and weaknesses, the good news is that there’s no need to choose just one. By leveraging the strengths of each platform and integrating them into your own ecosystem, you can unleash the full potential of your marketing efforts and drive exceptional results.
If you would like support in deciding which one of these options is the best marketing automation platform for your small business, mid-level company, or enterprise, we can enable the most impactful use cases for your organisation.
