Adviso x Heyday roundtable: The future of automation

Adviso has partnered with Heyday to set up a discussion table on marketing automation.

In this first installment of our Roundtable Discussion series, Heyday by Hootsuite’s Director of Partnerships Marie-Claude Levielle and VP, Product Christine Dupuis sit down with CRM Strategist Maxime Philippon and Digital Strategy and Customer Experience Team Lead Meryem Abou El Bal of Adviso to talk all things automation, personalization and CX.

Discover how brands are using automation and conversational AI to deliver 1:1 personalized experiences at scale, why automation is crucial to delivering five-star CX, and how any brand—no matter how big or small—can leverage the power of AI to deliver memorable experiences. 

Marie-Claude: What are some of the most innovative ways you’ve seen automation applied by your clients?

Maxime: That’s an interesting question. We see many brands asking for help in terms of setting up automation strategy. What we see is that personalization is becoming very important, and a lot of companies are not equipped to do personalization. They need help in setting up their technology stack and defining their strategy. 

Our role is often to help them build that vision and then identify what it will take for them to be able to create it. Historically, automation is very tied to email, but now it’s becoming important for other channels. Brands are interested in automating chatbots, push notifications, product recommendations and segmenting their databases, to name a few applications.

Sometimes, a client will want to automate content distribution across touchpoints to create personalization, or automate their A/B message testing strategy. These are some of the ways automation is being applied. 

Marie-Claude: Why is personalization important?

Maxime: Personalized marketing experiences drive more revenue. Which makes sense: the more communication is personalized, the more those messages resonate with customers. 

Meryem: Some studies have shown that up to 80% of consumers are seeking personalized experiences and prefer to work with brands that offer personalization. Usually, you’ll find innovative approaches to personalization happening with more-mature organizations, where there is a strong understanding of the customer journey, and where decisions are data-driven. 

Christine: As an example of how personalization and automation can deliver great experiences at scale, we did a campaign with Make Up For Ever where we ran ads on social media. But instead of having users land on the same generic landing page—where everyone sees the same page—users landed on a chatbot, allowing every user to experience a slightly different conversation. 

Maxime also mentioned product recommendations: in the Make Up For Ever example, users landed on a chatbot page and then engaged in a personalized conversation. For example, the bot would ask what type of skin a person has, to determine what products would be right for them. This is one way we can personalize the entire journey with automation. 

Marie Claude: What does great personalization look like?

Meryem: For brands to succeed at personalization, they need to be very customer-centric. I read a great analysis that explained how brands who want to win at personalization need to do four things, which I agree with: First, they need to see the customer experience through a ‘journey’ lens. Second, they must be receptive and responsive to customers. Third, they need to have a team dedicated to optimizing personalization strategies. And finally, they should focus on leveraging technologies that can help them attain your goals. 

Maxime: Great personalization creates experiences that aren’t recognized as ‘personalized’; meaning, If you’re aware of the personalization, it didn’t work. If it feels automated, you’re not connecting with a brand. The goal is to trigger the wow moments, to trigger emotions in consumers, while also providing value to them. 

Personalization is very broad, and brands won’t be able to create A-to-Z personalized experiences overnight if they are just starting out. We see many brands investing heavily in acquisition, but what we’re seeing is that the acquisition experience may be great and personalized, but as soon as a prospect enters an email, they enter the ‘retention’ phase of the journey, and sometimes the retention experience sucks. This is a common mistake. 

Marie-Claude: There’s a misconception that automation can be expensive and time-consuming, something only for big brands. Is that really true?

Meryem: Some brands ambitions’ are too lofty to start, and they want to do everything at once, which is why I think it can seem too expensive at that stage. 

Companies need to start by defining exactly what they want to do, and asking: do they have the tools and resources to achieve that? They need to define goals first and be real about what they can accomplish with their resources. Often, companies skip this crucial step. 

Christine: Companies that want to jump into automation right now should ask themselves: what can we accomplish today? Being data-driven is a great first step. Every brand has doors open to their customers, whether it’s the phone, email or other source of data. From these data sources, brands can quickly figure out what the most common questions from customers are, and learn precisely what they’re looking for.

The best approach for any brand, regardless of size, is to not try and do everything at once. Use the data you have to get started, and start small.