Discover how aligning conversational marketing with customer lifecycle management (CLM) enhances customer engagement, boosts retention, and drives advocacy.

Table of Contents
1. Understanding Conversational Marketing and CLM
2. The Power of Alignment
2.1 Optimizing Customer Acquisition with CRM Lifecycle Marketing
2.2 Streamlining Onboarding with Client Lifecycle Management
2.3 Enhancing Retention through Conversational AI Marketing
2.4 Driving Advocacy with Contact Lifecycle Management
3. Leveraging Real-Time Data for Conversational Marketing Success
Conclusion

Consumers’ behavior is constantly changing, and businesses adjust their strategies accordingly in order to meet customer needs and wants. Out of all of these techniques, conversational marketing stands as a particular tool that has appeared to be revolutionary in this regard. When implemented in conjunction with Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM), conversational marketing is not only an effective tool that strengthens customer relations but also promotes customer retention and acquisition. This article looks at how to apply CLM to conversational marketing, leveraging real-time data and samples while including relevant terms like CRM lifecycle marketing, conversational advertisement, and customer success lifecycle.

1. Understanding Conversational Marketing and CLM

Conversational marketing entails marketing to the customers via channels such as chat bots, live chat, and social media and offering prompt personal replies. It remains one of the main components of conversational AI marketing since it allows businesses to interact with customers at every stage. On the other hand, customer lifecycle management (CLM) entails the management of customer touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle. If these strategies are integrated, firms realize conversational marketing success, guaranteeing that the engagements occur at the right time.

2. The Power of Alignment

2.1 Optimizing Customer Acquisition with CRM Lifecycle Marketing

During the customer acquisition process, conversational marketing becomes essential. The CRM lifecycle marketing can incorporate conversational AI marketing to capture leads and properly nurture such leads. For instance, while using conversational advertising strategies adopted from technologies such as Drift, there was a 67% improvement in lead generation. Chatbots on the landing pages allow businesses to immediately capture the attention of potential customers and open a line of communication with them, offering help in choosing the desired product; Sephora is an example of using a chatbot on Facebook Messenger in order to assist customers.

2.2 Streamlining Onboarding with Client Lifecycle Management

The onboarding phase is an essential part of the whole process as it creates the foundation for the customer relationship. The integration of client lifecycle management tools alongside conversational marketing can further enrich this process. For instance, HubSpot’s CLM platform has a conversational approach to support new users by answering questions and guiding them through the onboarding process with a customized onboarding flow. This eliminates waste, expedites time-to-value, and results in a happy customer, a key element in the customer success model.

2.3 Enhancing Retention through Conversational AI Marketing

Customer retention is a crucial strategic factor for business growth, and integrating conversational AI marketing with customer lifecycle management software can reduce churn rates. Using some features similar to regular conversational tools, such as in-app messaging, companies can gather feedback and address problems on their own. For instance, the use of such strategies can be seen by Slack to increase customer retention, noting that retention can enhance profitability figures by 25–95% when retention rates are raised by 5%, as highlighted by Gartner.

2.4 Driving Advocacy with Contact Lifecycle Management

This is a stage where the customers who are fully satisfied with the products or services provided turn into promoters of the business. This can be done through conversational marketing since it makes it easier for customers to share positive experiences. For instance, Airbnb uses conversational advertising and marketing to encourage guests to submit reviews on the platform and share their experiences on social media, making user-generated content act as social proof.

3. Leveraging Real-Time Data for Conversational Marketing Success

If properly implemented, the use of real-time data is the primary focus that holds the secret to success in regards to alignment. CLM applications and CLM solutions help organizations monitor the interactions with customers and interpret the gathered information about customers. Salesforce states that 72% of buyers expect companies to understand them, which highlights the significance of data-driven personalization in conversational AI in marketing.

The integration of real-time data analysis with a client lifecycle management system ensures the provision of relevant information based on the current status of the lifecycle relationship a client is in, hence the development of appropriate strategies to ensure that all the relevant interactions are contextualized to create a long-lasting relationship and loyalty.

Conclusion

Integrating conversational marketing with customer lifecycle management is crucial in this contemporary customer-centric world. With the help of CRM lifecycle marketing, conversational advertising, and customer lifecycle management solutions, companies can improve customer acquisition, the onboarding process, retention, and advocacy. Conversational marketing success is possible when offering timely and relevant communication with customers at every stage of the customer journey.

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Who doesn’t want an impromptu answer while you are looking for one, in a situation that demands a quick answer while you surf the world of the internet? Well, thanks to Artificial Intelligence, or what we call commonly called ‘AI’, it has made this very customer experience flawless, while we aimlessly surf the internet.

Today, online shopping and digital experiences have engulfed our lives tremendously, wherein customers expect instant answers if they are stuck anywhere in the process and those present at the right time with the right solution—win! Hence, when customers get accustomed to such a degree of instant gratification and customisation, especially when they are looking for it, it gives rise to an enterprise. Hence, Conversational AI in Marketing is becoming the trend, especially in the B2B sector.

Successful marketing campaigns with a constant inflow of customer behaviour intelligence help achieve marketing goals faster and more efficiently—for instance, by catering to real-time website visitors, and responding to a user who downloaded a whitepaper, among others.

What is Conversational AI Marketing?
Based on the art and science of customer behaviour, Conversational AI is a type of artificial intelligence platform where users can receive customer support, engage with sales, or enter a marketing funnel.

Marketers use Conversational AI in abundance due to its versatile nature, as it can be used on various social channels, website landing pages, and even your brand’s mobile app. This brings accessibility and personalised conversations to prospects and customers directly from your business.

Conversational AI carries on these functions with the help of machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), natural language understanding (NLU), and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). With the combination of such functions, conversational AI helps streamline questions and answer common and complex queries and objections to provide a superior customer experience.

Conversational AI Chatbots Vs Traditional Chatbots
With time and advancement, the way Conversational AI work, have changed. Traditional Chatbots is a rule-based software, wherein it is designed to automate recurring objections to answering frequently asked questions. They have been designed one-dimensionally, follow a workflow designed by organisations and are relatively easy to build. These aren’t fully equipped with the technology to provide the same information and therefore, do little to improve customer satisfaction.

While traditional Chatbots are one-dimensional, AI Chatbots do way more than just answer FAQs. An AI Chatbot allows customers to communicate with applications, websites, or devices in a more lucid manner, meaning, they converse more in the user’s language—which can be easily understood by sales agents to deliver an appropriate response.

Benefits of Conversational AI in B2B
Today, the more we speak of Conversational AI, the less it is. From our mobile phone devices to our home assistance, almost everything is a part of AI. Today, the B2B digital buying experience has been enhanced with AI as buyers and customers continue to show a preference for self-guided interactions at each stage of their journeys.

Whether buyer, customer, or employee, the ability to reach, engage and enable empowered B2B audiences means something different to every firm based on what they offer, how buyers buy, how customers adopt the solution and the engagement rate post-sale.

According to Forbes’s The State Of Conversation Automation Technology In B2B Marketing report, “More than half of demand and ABM marketers use conversation automation in the tactic mix. Fifty-eight per cent of demand and account-based marketers are leveraging conversation automation technologies, with 43% planning to increase or significantly increase the budget for an online chat as a conversational delivery mechanism.”

One of the major benefits of Chatbots in B2B is promptness. Being automated, bots can respond to customer queries within seconds. There is no limit to the number of questions you can ask, and you will get an answer right away. This automatically heightens the user experience of the buyer.

It is time-saving as it provides a shorter sales cycle. With AI, almost everything is answered in the chat itself, whether it’s signing up, taking a survey or even making payments. So much can be just within minutes saving time and effort for the sales team.

Several clients can be managed at the same time with AI in place. Whether you have a small or large sales/support team, they can handle multiple clients at once regardless of how long each client’s conversation might be.

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