Most marketing automation tools focus on outreach and sales. However, boosting customer engagement is equally important. Without a solid customer engagement strategy, customer satisfaction can plummet and your customers may abandon you for another brand. The cost of finding new customers is around 40 times as high as retaining existing ones, which underscores the importance of a solid customer engagement strategy.
The good news is that there are a number of excellent customer engagement tools that can help you streamline these tasks. Here are some of the best for 2018.
Birdeye
Birdeye is an excellent tool for managing your social media platforms. Here are some of the primary benefits of Birdeye:
- You can manage posts for all of your social media networks on one dashboard.
- You can use the Birdeye split-testing tool to determine which types of posts receive the most engagement.
- You can reply to messages on all of your social media accounts within seconds without having to log into any of those sites.
- You can schedule multiple social media posts ahead of time.
I only discovered this tool fairly recently, but it is clearly one of the most dependable social media engagement tools around.
HootSuite
HootSuite has earned an impeccable reputation for social media automation and analytics. It is the most trusted social media engagement platform for over 80% of Fortune 1000 companies. Depending on the plan they signed up for, users can manage social media profiles on up to 50 different websites. They can use HootSuite to:
- Update all integrated social media platforms from a single, centric dashboard.
- Reply to any users that message them on these networks.
- Determine what factors help them grow their base of followers. This is particularly useful when running social media promotion campaigns to expand their reach on different social networks.
- Figure out which types of posts receive the most traction. You can also determine which hashtags have the most reach and impact.
HootSuite has helped millions of marketers from businesses of all sizes for the past decade.
Campaign Monitor
Campaign monitor is most commonly known for its value as an email marketing solution. However, it can easily be repurposed for other customer engagement goals.
Even if you aren’t trying to meet a specific conversion goal, you can use email to connect with and educate your followers. You can use Campaign Monitor to segment customers according to potential future conversion goals. You can then provide detailed, engaging and informative emails to show that you are in authority in your vertical. Campaign Monitor has a variety of scheduling, content generation and analytics tools to help you optimize your email engagement strategy.
Webengage
Webengage is a great solution for brands that need more insights on their customers. They can use Webengage to collect input from various customer groups to get a better sense of their needs.
Webengage works great with other marketing automation tools that allow you to segment customers. If you have categorized your followers by demographic and interests, you can reach out to them through with other marketing automation tools that allow you to segment customers. If you have categorized your followers by demographic and interests, you can reach out to them through your mailing list to conduct more surveys.
About the author:
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. Chamber specializes in helping small businesses grow their business on the web while facilitating the connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.
As a small business expert, Megan specializes in reporting the latest business news, helpful tips and reliable resources, as well as providing small business advice. She has significant experience with the topic of small business marketing, and has spent several years exploring topics like copywriting, content marketing and social media.
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