Katie Morley
Dec 21, 2023
Katie Morley
Dec 21, 2023
By 2027, the marketing automation industry will be worth over $11 billion. Investing in a B2C marketing automation platform is a non-negotiable for brands looking to scale and stay competitive.
The world’s biggest brands already use B2C marketing automation platforms to build and optimize personalized marketing campaigns without manual effort. Global sports retailer, Adidas, increased AOV by 259% in just one month by automating its marketing campaigns with the leading platform, Insider.
This article will explore the importance of B2C marketing automation platforms and identify their key benefits. We’ll also uncover the best platforms for 2024 to help you find a solution to fit your needs and objectives.
What is a B2C marketing automation platform?
The benefits of a B2C marketing automation platform
How do I choose the best B2C marketing automation software?
The best B2C marketing automation platforms in 2024
Finding the best B2C marketing automation platform requires time and research
B2C marketing automation platform FAQs
A B2C marketing automation platform streamlines marketing tasks, offering efficiency and revenue growth for businesses targeting individual consumers. Platforms allow marketers to efficiently segment their audience, manage diverse campaigns from a centralized platform, and deliver personalized experiences tailored to customer preferences. With features like in-depth analytics, marketers can quickly gain valuable insights to adapt and improve campaigns.
Leading B2C marketing automation platforms should also offer cross-channel automation and orchestration. With workflow automation, content generation, and AI-powered features, marketers can build consistent, impactful omnichannel campaigns that they know will reach their customers at the right time, with the right message, without heavy manual effort.
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“Insider’s growth management platform has helped us improve our customer engagement and experience… we recommend it to any brand wishing to improve its cross-channel marketing automation.”
- Digital Marketing Specialist on G2
Marketers who use a marketing automation platform are 46% more likely to report having an effective marketing strategy. With processes automated, automation platforms have a knock-on effect, enabling marketers to work on other high-impact strategies while knowing their customers are automatically being targeted with highly relevant, contextual content.
Here are the other benefits for marketers:
From personalized emails to targeted social media campaigns, automation ensures your brand stays in tune with your audience’s preferences, behaviors, and needs, enhancing customer relationships and building engagement.
Your customers receive hundreds of generic ads every single day. B2C marketing automation software leverages AI and data analytics to create hyper-personalized experiences, boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Precision is the key to increasing acquisition and retention. B2C marketing automation platforms allow you to target specific customer segments with surgical precision. By automating lead nurturing workflows, you’re guiding your audience through the sales funnel with relevant content at each touchpoint.
In 2024, too much data shouldn’t be considered a challenge—it’s an opportunity. Marketing automation platforms sift through your data and analytics to provide actionable insights. With comprehensive analytics, marketers can make informed decisions to optimize their strategies for maximum impact.
5. You can build seamless cross-channel journeys
The modern consumer is everywhere, and your marketing strategy should be too. B2C marketing automation seamlessly integrates across multiple channels, including email, SMS, WhatsApp, and social media, ensuring a cohesive brand presence that reaches your audience consistently.
6. It enhances efficiency and saves time
Automation is the epitome of working smarter, not harder. By automating repetitive tasks, your team can focus on strategic initiatives. This enhances efficiency and frees up valuable time for creativity and innovation.
7. Improve ROI and revenue generation
Marketing automation directly impacts the bottom line. With targeted campaigns, efficient resource allocation, and continuous optimization, businesses see an increase in ROI. For example, world-leading sports retailer, Slazenger, saw a 49X ROI in just eight weeks with Insider’s marketing automation platform.
Finding the right B2C marketing automation software for your business and marketing needs requires research. Here’s what you need to ask yourself when selecting a platform for your brand.
Start by clearly outlining your marketing goals and objectives. Whether it’s increasing customer engagement, driving sales, or improving customer retention, having well-defined goals will help when choosing a marketing automation platform.
Look for a platform that offers an intuitive and user-friendly interface. Flexibility is key, as your marketing needs may evolve. A platform that can adapt to changing strategies without a steep learning curve will save time and resources.
If you want to improve your marketing efforts, your platform needs to integrate seamlessly with other tools and platforms. Consider how the platform will integrate with any other solutions you’re currently using.
Leveraging AI and machine learning gives you a significant edge. Choose a platform that incorporates these technologies and uses them to provide actionable insights, such as predictive behaviors, to enhance your marketing strategies.
Personalization is a customer expectation. Look for a platform that allows you to tailor your messages and campaigns based on deep data, including customer behavior, preferences, and demographics.
In the era of omnichannel marketing, your chosen platform should support multiple channels such as email, social media, SMS, and more. This ensures a consistent and cohesive customer experience across different touchpoints.
Your business will hopefully grow, and your marketing automation platform should evolve with it. Choose a scalable solution in terms of customer data capacity and the complexity of your campaigns.
A robust analytics and reporting feature is essential for measuring the success of your campaigns. Look for a platform that provides detailed insights into customer behavior, campaign performance, and ROI.
Even the most user-friendly platforms can encounter hiccups. A responsive customer support team and comprehensive training resources are invaluable when you need assistance or want to explore advanced features.
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“Insider’s support team gave us a very detailed analysis of our customer base and recommendations based on that analysis. As a result, we saw increased engagement, sign-up rates, and transactions.”
- CRM Manager on G2
The best B2C marketing automation platforms are built to make your life easier. Here are our favorite options:
Insider offers the most extensive personalization and automation capabilities on the market. A #1 leader across all key analysts, marketers can effectively leverage data insights to build omnichannel journeys across 12+ channels and hundreds of integrations powered by AI and machine learning to increase efficiency.
Insider’s B2c marketing automation platform enables marketers to:
Braze is a marketing automation platform with cross-channel capabilities, email, push notifications, and in-app messages. While recognized for its user-friendly interface, setting up and launching campaigns requires heavy time and resource allocation. Braze is also missing pre-built templates and channel recommendations as part of its automation capabilities.
Learn: 11 Best Braze Competitors and Alternatives
ActiveCampaign offers customer experience personalization, email marketing, and sales automation. While marketers can operate primarily from its dashboard, the platform does require third-party integration for some of its more advanced functionalities.
Klaviyo specializes in eCommerce-focused marketing, leveraging data for highly targeted campaigns. It only operates across email and SMS, so it may not suit marketers looking to encompass a wider range of channels.
Learn: 11 Best Klaviyo Competitors and Alternatives
Iterable is a comprehensive cross-channel marketing automation platform with a huge range of capabilities to automate processes and decrease campaign launch times. However, the platform lacks template customization options, which would enable marketers to tailor campaigns more precisely.
Learn: 10 Best Iterable Competitors and Alternatives
Understanding the capabilities of the different B2C marketing automation platforms and how they will integrate with your business is the key to finding the best one for your needs. Your platform should encompass multiple channels, empower marketers to build and launch journeys in the quickest time to value, and offer advanced, AI-powered personalization capabilities.
Book a demo to discover how world-leading brands like NA-KD, Slazenger, MAC Cosmetics, choose Insider to automate their marketing efforts and reach customers with engaging, relevant content every time.
B2C marketing automation is a technology-driven strategy that streamlines and automates marketing tasks, enabling businesses to engage with individual consumers efficiently.
While both involve automating marketing processes, B2B marketing automation focuses on longer sales cycles and relationship-building, whereas B2C marketing automation is geared towards shorter, transactional interactions.
Challenges in B2C marketing include customer data management, maintaining personalized experiences at scale, and adapting to rapidly changing consumer behaviors.
Personalization is crucial in B2C marketing as it enhances customer engagement, increases brand loyalty, and boosts conversion rates by delivering tailored experiences based on individual preferences.
Marketing automation is vital for B2C businesses to streamline workflows, personalize interactions, and enhance efficiency, leading to increased revenue and improved customer satisfaction.
B2C marketing automation can automate email campaigns, social media posting, customer segmentation, lead scoring, and personalized content delivery.
To start with B2C marketing automation, define your goals, choose a suitable platform, segment your audience, create personalized content, and gradually implement automation features to optimize your marketing efforts.
Written by
Katie Morley
Katie is an award-winning content marketer with over eight years of experience in content strategy, development, and copywriting. As Global Content Director at Insider, she currently oversees content strategy across 26 regions. Fun fact: Katie read 64 books last year (for which she owes a long commute and two week-long holidays where she spent approximately six hours a day with her nose in a book).
