MARKETING AI: Going Interactive with Marketing Automation

Whether it’s a poll, a quiz, or a game, people love interactive media. We’re hard-wired to enjoy interaction, in fact; the positive feedback we get when we’re actively engaged lights up the brain’s reward centers. Marketing that’s more than a passive, one-way stream of information flowing from you to your audience instantly wins a bigger share of your audience’s attention because it gives leads an immediate reward for their efforts.

The challenge with interactive marketing is the time sink it can become for marketers. With marketing automation, feedback from your leads can channel quiz-takers to customized content, trigger email that leads to next steps, and drive further interaction via social media – no micro-management required. Here’s a look at some of the ways you can incorporate more interactivity and hold your audience’s attention.

Interactive Questions

Have you ever taken an online personality test? How about an IQ test or maybe a quiz on current events? You know how irresistible quizzes and self-assessments can be, and they’re also an ideal format for learning more about your audience. An introductory quiz, for example, gives you insight into which of your products or services best fills the test-taker’s needs so your marketing automation system can start delivering relevant content along with quiz results.

Other possibilities include troubleshooting forms, worksheets, and FAQs. Even your static content such as white papers and articles could benefit from including a FAQs section that directs readers to the appropriate places to learn more.

Apps and Calculators

One of the surest ways to build interest and offer value to leads is with an on-site calculator or mobile app. Let’s say you’re a supplier for area restaurants, and you’re hoping to capture more of the catering market. A food costing app that lets caterers and personal chefs calculate per-serving prices, generate shopping lists, and scale recipes is an outstanding marketing tool. Combine it with ways to quickly and easily order from your catalog, and you have a fast track to a burgeoning market.

Marketing automation software tracks downloads of any apps you create or distribute and analyzes the data you get in exchange for offering these handy tools. The more useful you make your calculator or industry-specific app, the more data you can ask leads to supply before using it, so go ahead and get details on your leads.

Triggered Marketing Events

Marketing automation excels at handling repetitive or complex tasks so you and your marketing team don’t have to. That means every time your lead takes action, marketing automation technology can take a corresponding reaction. When your leads click through on a blog post, you send email related to the same subject. When they sort catalog pages by ascending price, you make a special offer to these cost-sensitive shoppers. When they download a white paper, you send an invitation to your upcoming trade show so you can demonstrate the paper’s principles in action.

We have an innate interest in anything that asks for our feedback or gives us a reward for interaction. Make the most of it with interactive content that feeds your marketing automation software more data about your leads.

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