What is real-time marketing?
Real-time marketing refers to the practice of creating and delivering marketing content or campaigns in response to current events, trends, or customer behaviors. It involves rapidly identifying and seizing opportunities to engage with your audience in the moment. It also leverages up-to-the-minute data, social media, and other real-time channels to reach consumers when their interest and attention are most engaged.
Additionally, real-time marketing includes trigger-based customer journeys that use emails, text messages, and push notifications as communication channels to reach your customers. Picking the right channel for each individual and connecting in the moments that matter is crucial. Some triggers include, for example, someone that fills out a form, attends an event, visits a web page, or even connects to a specific Wi-Fi network.
Benefits of real-time marketing
There are numerous benefits of real-time marketing for businesses when executed effectively. A few of the major benefits include:
- Immediate engagement: Real-time marketing allows brands to engage with their audience in the moment. This can lead to increased visibility and interaction when customers are most active and interested.
- Relevance: By responding to current events, trends, or customer behaviors, real-time marketing can make your brand seem more relevant and connected to the world, helping to boost brand perception.
- Increased virality: Timely and relevant content is more likely to be shared by users on social media and other platforms. This can lead to increased brand exposure as users share your content with their networks.
- Enhanced customer engagement: Real-time marketing enables brands to have real conversations with customers. Whether it's responding to comments, answering questions, or participating in trending conversations, it fosters a sense of community and engagement.
- Competitive advantage: Being quick to respond to trends and events can give your brand a competitive edge. It allows you to differentiate yourself from competitors and position your brand as forward-thinking and innovative.
- Personalization: Real-time marketing can be highly personalized based on real-time data and customer behavior. Personalized content tends to resonate better with consumers, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
- Improved customer service: Responding to customer inquiries and issues in real time can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. It demonstrates that your brand is attentive to customer needs.
- Cost effective: Real-time marketing often involves lower costs compared to traditional marketing campaigns, as it doesn't require lengthy planning and production cycles. This can be particularly advantageous for smaller businesses with limited budgets.
- Adaptability: Real-time marketing allows for quick adjustments to strategies and messaging as the situation evolves. This adaptability is essential in today's fast-paced digital landscape.
- Brand loyalty: When done right, real-time marketing can create a sense of community and connection between the brand and its customers. This can lead to increased brand loyalty as customers feel heard and valued.
- Opportunity seizure: Real-time marketing enables brands to seize unexpected opportunities, such as capitalizing on a viral trend or addressing a sudden consumer need or concern.
Successful real-time marketing will strike a balance between responsiveness and sensitivity. If executed correctly, and marketing efforts align with brand values, the numerous benefits listed will be granted to businesses.
Example of increased engagement using D365 real-time marketing capabilities
One key benefit of utilizing real-time marketing is the increased customer engagement with the target audience. It hinges on two critical elements: timeliness and relevance. This dynamic approach can increase engagement by staying connected with your clients and/or audience’s interests and needs.
In a recent webinar recording conducted by Alithya employees, we demonstrated a live example of how using real-time marketing increases customer engagement. To watch the recording, visit this link.
During the webinar, we dove deeper into ways to increase engagement by utilizing real-time marketing functionality in D365, focusing on three main points: the process to generate new contacts and leads using forms, scheduling and publishing social media posts across multiple channels, and immediate responsiveness communication methods like SMS integration, mobile notifications and email.
Using Microsoft Dynamics forms
Microsoft Dynamics has the capability to generate new contacts and leads using forms. The form editor that lives inside of Microsoft Dynamics allows for the capture of information. When building the form, a business can customize what information they want to capture including items such as first name, last name, email, and a consent to sign up for email marketing. Any additional items may be added to a form via the form editor, based on your company’s discretion. After a form is created, a company can then embed Dynamics 365 marketing forms on an external page, like a company website. You can also use the form capture feature to integrate data from a form you’ve created externally in your CMS directly into D365. Overall, the ability to build forms in Dynamics to capture and generate leads, creates opportunity, thus increased engagement for your company. For an example of how to build a form and embed it into Microsoft Dynamics, view the recording.
Benefits of D365 Social Media tools
Another method for increased engagement is by utilizing social media. Scheduling social media posts is a pivotal strategy for boosting customer engagement on various platforms. The consistency it offers by adhering to a predetermined posting schedule is fundamental; when your audience anticipates and relies on your content appearing regularly, they are more likely to engage with it. Additionally, scheduling empowers you to pinpoint the optimal timing for your posts by capitalizing on insights gained from analyzing your audience’s and/or client’s behaviors. By automating the posting process, scheduling tools provide you with more time to focus on the critical aspects of your social media strategy, including community engagement and in-depth analysis of post-performance metrics. When utilizing social media and scheduling tools companies still have access to posting in real-time to stay on trend for when customers are looking for current information. In sum, the balance between posting prescheduled content and real-time content is a balance that increases customer engagement. For a deeper view of the Microsoft Dynamics social tools, view the recording.
Instant communication channels
Immediate communication methods such as SMS, mobile notifications, and email play a pivotal role in enhancing customer engagement by providing real-time, personalized, and convenient avenues for businesses to connect with their audience and/or clients.
- SMS/texting allows for direct and instantaneous communication, making it an effective channel for delivering time-sensitive promotions, order updates, or appointment reminders, thereby keeping customers engaged and informed.
- Email offers a versatile platform for delivering personalized content, including newsletters, fostering a deeper engagement and encouraging customer loyalty.
- Mobile notifications, whether through apps or push notifications, bring businesses closer to their customer by delivering updates, alerts, or personalized recommendations directly to their smartphones’, ensuring information is not overlooked.
Overall, all of these real-time communication channels serve as invaluable tools for increasing customer engagement. To view prebuilt templates for these methods of communication in Microsoft Dynamics, please view this recording.
Partner with Alithya
Alithya leverages Microsoft Dynamics real-time marketing to empower clients in enhancing their engagement strategies. By harnessing the capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, we can assist businesses in creating more personalized and targeted marketing campaigns. Additionally, we aid clients in accessing deeper insights into their customer behaviors and preferences, allowing for the delivery of relevant content at a relevant time. Now is the time to modernize your marketing strategy through automation and customer journey mapping, thus fostering stronger connections. Partner with us to gain expertise and stay ahead in today’s dynamic marketing landscape.