With the advent of marketing technology, increasing customer engagement has been made a tad bit easier. Marketing automation has played a significant role in enabling companies to provide a better customer experience to their leads and acquire long-lasting loyal customers.

Marketing automation available on content marketing platforms has also enabled businesses to retain their customers, thus providing them with a source of recurring orders. In the MarTech landscape, also referred to as marketing technology, there are numerous MarTech tools that can assist companies in increasing their sales.

In Addition, with the everchanging MarTech trends, the choice of these MarTech tools changes as well. However, to be able to identify the right MarTech tool for your marketing department, one needs to identify how to utilize these marketing automation tools as well.

To help you out, here are five solid ways to leverage marketing automation and enhance customer engagement to drive sales:

 

If you are looking to build a business that endures, you need to provide benefits to your loyal customers. In other words, you should provide great benefits to customers who have been purchasing from you consistently. Rewarding them enables you to gain loyalty and helps you build a long-term relationship.

Loyalty programs or reward points for such customers is one of the most popular MarTech trends today. According to The Wise Marketer, 58.7% of customers feel that loyalty rewards are an incredibly rewarding part of their shopping experience. Identifying these high-purchase customers can be a tough task without any MarTech tools. This is where marketing automation comes into play.

Furthermore, Marketing automation tools can enable businesses to identify the right customer for loyalty benefits. These MarTech tools point out to all customers who have been purchasing from your business. As a result, you can also identify customers who tend to spend more than others.

One can then send out targeted offers, discounts, loyalty programs, and gifts to such customers. To sum up, rewarding your loyal customers this way not only enhances customer engagement but also compels them to recommend your brand to their friends and family.

This is especially true if you have customers in multiple time zones or are looking to target new international customers. The time at which your social media post gets posted plays an important role in determining who sees your posts and engages with it. If you are looking to expand your customer base, you need to familiarize yourself with the global time zones, which will determine the time you post a given post on social media.

Marketing automation tools can help you automate this by scheduling posts. Content marketing platforms like Buffer or Hootsuite enable you to schedule your social media posts. This way, not only do you catch people in different time zones, but also manage your post frequency. Consistent posts on social media are crucial when you are looking to enhance customer engagement.

Now, more than ever, omnichannel marketing is key in providing customers with a seamless customer experience no matter the channel they engage with you on. According to Invespcro, companies utilizing omnichannel marketing strategies retain 89% of their customers. MarTech tools can help you place a solid omnichannel concept in place.

Now, if a customer signs up on your website, marketing automation tools can instantly and automatically send them a welcome email. You might even want to consider adding a first-time discount!

Moreover, if a customer puts something in their cart and abandons it, your marketing automation tool will send a reminder email regarding their abandoned cart. You can even automate shipping confirmation and delivery messages using marketing automation tools, as well as integrate these messages with WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

By providing your customers with a smooth and seamless omnichannel shopping experience, you enhance customer engagement. Thereby boosting your sales without any extra efforts.

 

To enhance customer engagement, you need to know what you are doing wrong and change it. Marketing automation tools integrated with a content management system can help you out with this. An integrated content management system or CMS enables you to identify which type of content performed well and which didn’t.

You can also get automated reports on bad reviews, negative comments, and more. With an integrated CMS system, it can enable you to ensure that you are continuously improving on your social media engagement. Plus, you can avoid doing things that might negatively impact your business.

 

An important part of enhancing customer engagement is improving the customer experience. This is where UX comes into play. While an integrated MarTech stack mostly works directly in relation to increasing sales, an integrated web design content management system works differently.

Using marketing automation on content marketing platforms like Groove, you can send out automated emails to customers who have just joined. In this email, ask them what made them sign up on your website.

In addition, such feedback questions and surveys enable you to build long-term relationships with your customers. According to Finextra, 82% of companies believe that it’s easier to retain customers than acquire new ones.

On the other hand, you can use this feedback in your web design content management system, and utilize it to build a better user experience. Doing so makes your customers feel valued and treasured. This goes a long way in retaining your customers and receiving benefits from it via recurring orders.

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Sources:

[1] https://www.square2marketing.com/blog/how-to-leverage-marketing-automation-and-crm-to-drive-business-results

[2] https://www.omnisend.com/blog/omnichannel-marketing/

[3] https://www.marketpath.com/blog/things-you-can-do-using-cms-marketing-automation

[4] https://www.cloudways.com/blog/ecommerce-marketing-automation/#ux

Martech is part of the digital technology world which has become extremely volatile, especially with the new technology constantly evolving to help develop unique marketing strategies. Revolutionary new marketing technologies come up ever so often and prove to be highly beneficial. When it comes to the ad tech world, marketing automation has been all the rage lately. So we have compiled a list of 5 ways Martech can boost your marketing strategies.

According to the Marketer vs. Machine report by Adestra, 74% of marketers mentioned saving time as the biggest benefit of marketing automation. Other benefits included timely communications, upselling, and increased customer engagement.

Whether it’s integration with natural language processing (NLP) or machine learning (ML), marketing automation is helping businesses outgrow their competitors. In fact, the Lead Generation Marketing Effective Study by Lenskold states that 63% of businesses that are outgrowing their competitors are using marketing automation.

Now, marketing automation is part of a wider fusion of two domains called MarTech. MarTech brings together the concepts of marketing powered by top-notch technology. This marketing tech or adtech helps marketers execute digital strategies faster and more effectively. Here’s how MarTech tools can help you optimize and flourish your business.

 

1. Martech enhances customer engagement and experience

One of the biggest purposes of digital technology has always been enhanced experiences for customers. Digital technology, especially adtech, aims to provide customers with better products and seamless user experiences. With MarTech, businesses can take this purpose to an even higher level.

MarTech tools, with the help of natural language processing and machine learning, provide marketers insights into personal information, subscriptions, customer purchase patterns, demographic, past conversations, market demands, behavioural data, and more. Marketers can then use these insights to develop better and highly-targeted marketing strategies that come with high potential.

Imagine this:

A marketer has automated a lead generation email using a MarTech tool to be sent out to two-thousand subscribers. The content of this email is highly personalized and created by keeping the above insights in mind. Now, when a 30-year-old man receives an email about a good anti-ageing face cream in their inbox, they are more likely to follow through the purchase than a 16-year-old teenager receiving the email.

Clearly, personalized emails enable businesses to find high-quality leads with a higher probability of making a purchase.

With that being said, MarTech is not limited to internal automation but can be adopted into physical hardware to enhance the customer experience. Large financial institutions have utilised this by adding RFID technology to improve their users’ security.

 

2. Smarter content curation and creation with new marketing technology

Companies tend to bring out a new marketing technology after the other without first assessing their content. There are many instances where a company could come up with a great new marketing strategy but couldn’t get good results. They fail to understand that maybe it was their content that was lacking.

According to a report by Digital Trends, 73% of consumers prefer to do business with companies that personalize their shopping experience. MarTech tools powered by natural language processing and machine learning can provide key insights into customer preferences. Businesses can then utilize these to create highly personalized content that speaks very closely to the customer’s personality and needs.

 

3. Marketing automation improves productivity 

Marketing involves many time-consuming tasks, which in some cases can decrease work productivity, but with the recent shift to digitalisation marketing technology has enabled marketers to streamline workflows and processes using marketing automation tools.

One can now automate a particularly redundant task and focus on other high-priority tasks such as automated customer profiling, data collecting, or spreadsheet updating, marketing tech enables you to boost your time efficiency by leaps and bounds. The time saved also allows marketers to dedicate more time to developing new unique ideas.

4. Martech can boost excellent alignment between sales and marketing

A marketing strategy won’t work well unless there’s alignment between the two teams responsible for bringing customers and making sales – the sales team and the marketing team. Often, the company will receive below average results, owing to a choppy alignment between these two teams.

With MarTech tools, businesses can help these teams streamline their workflows and work in harmony. When the marketing team provides high-quality and sales-ready leads to the sales team, they have a better chance of converting them into paying customers. Thus, MarTech tools enable both these teams to work with reduced friction and increased efficiency.

5. Effective measurement strategies using adtech

Often, marketing includes a lot of guesswork. Marketers have to constantly play catch-up and assess which strategy is working and which isn’t. This guesswork is also not based on concrete and proven key performance indicators or KPIs. This is where marketing tech or MarTech tools can lend a helping hand.

Almost all MarTech tools provide marketers with an insight into the KPIs. How many people added a certain product into their shopping carts? Which was the most common touchpoint in the customer’s journey where customers abandoned the purchase?

Now, when marketers know that the customer clicked on an Instagram ad, visited their website, viewed the product, but ditched the purchase at this point, they know their weak point. Once an analysed has been carried out they can choose to optimise the part of their customer journey to achieve business objectives.

Sources:

[1] https://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/articles/marketing/harness-martech-advantage.html

[2] https://www.way2target.com/blog/what-is-martech-and-their-benefits/

[3] https://www.widen.com/blog/what-is-martech

[4] https://martechtoday.com/the-benefits-of-using-marketing-automation-236408

Is your business looking to drive direct customer engagement with Chinese audiences? Whether you want to enter the China market or reach out to Chinese consumers, one of the most effective WeChat marketing strategy is to adopt the region’s most popular multi-purpose app: WeChat. You will learn more about how WeChat’s features can help enterprises market businesses in this article.

WeChat enables companies and individuals to create “WeChat Official Accounts” to promote their company and brand. Anybody can follow them and will then receive push notifications from them. When accessing one of these accounts, business usually click a bottom-menu linking to a HTML5 (H5) website which might sell products or services.

WeChat marketing leverage on the powerfulness of gaining followers to company account, luring them actively engaged with it and eventually converting them to customers to purchase items.

Here are few reasons why businesses should consider using WeChat marketing and WeChat Pay.

Reach out to active users

With more than 1 billion monthly active users, businesses cannot ignore the massive reach of this platform. Being enormously popular in China, WeChat has also penetrated the US, UK and other markets and is growing at rapid pace.

Build up lifestyle platform

Calling WeChat China’s WhatsApp or Facebook would be inaccurate. WeChat is more than that and it is a unique lifestyle platform that has several apps rolled into one.

From shopping online and paying bills to playing games and making video calls, WeChat happens to be the go-to app for almost everything. Aside from favorite social media network Sina Weibo, WeChat allows marketers to gain insights from valuable consumer data, understand which life stage consumers are at, and target them with personalized communication.

Distinctive features

WeChat is innovating and presenting exciting new features to connect brands and customers. One such feature is the Shake function, which lets offline businesses interact with mobile users who are nearby.

Users have to physically shake their phone when they see the screen. The app connects them with other people who shook their phone at the same moment. Marketers can also make use of such a feature on WeChat. WeChat offers other interactive features such as the use of QR codes and mini-programs.

Set up business profile on WeChat

Businesses can set up subscription accounts, service accounts and enterprise accounts on WeChat. Subscription accounts permit a business to send only one broadcast message a day.

Service accounts allows delivery of four messages per month and offer a wide range of services such as WeChat Stores, WeChat Pay, instant customer service, and GPS among others.

Business can open the WeChat Official Accounts Platform page and register to set up a profile.

 

Choose the appropriate account type for business and you will be prompted to enter details about your company such as country, business name, email address, account administrator and others. Under Official Account Info, select an account name and write a short introduction for your business.

Finally, business is required to submit a list of supporting documents such as a business license, signed and stamped official application letter, national ID copies and more for verification.

WeChat is an integral part of customer service strategy

When customers have questions or complaints for businesses, they are no longer likely to call or write an email. Instead, they expect prompt response and prefer social media channels over traditional ones. Businesses are expected to be where their customers are and with WeChat being an all-in-one platform, it can also be an integral part of your customer service strategy.

 

HTML5 campaigns to increase customer engagement

With custom HTML5 (H5) campaigns, brands can host unique experiences from their Official WeChat Accounts. Depending on your WeChat marketing objectives, you could create a survey or quiz to customer leads, or an interactive experience that unlocks promo codes of special information.

NDN Group has helped KURZ Group, a worldwide leader in hot stamping technologies from Germany, to launch a CNY engagement campaign via H5 pages – the most prevalent WeChat interactive platform for campaigns dedicated to branding, events or specific products

KURZ Group is not new to the Chinese Market nor WeChat; it owns an official page and an e-store on the social media platform to drive online sales. Our partner had their eyes on a seasonal campaign, with clear objectives on increasing exposure and engagement with fans during CNY.

A mobile shaking trigger was incorporated to add flavors to the game, meaning that a mobile shake was needed to open the red packet and receive the gift. To enter the giveaway, users were also required to fill in basic contact information for us, providing access to meaningful user data for sales leads.

Meanwhile, NDN Group has also introduced WeChat Pay for global bungee jump business AJ Hackett’s online ticket reservations to streamline sales transactions for mainland tourists.

 

WeChat Pay handles multiple payment methods including Quick Pay, QR code, In-App Web-Based or Native In-App payments. WeChat Pay supports cross-border settlements in all major foreign currencies and is available in over 20 countries. It allows foreign businesses to engage with customers in- and outside of China via their all-in-one services, reaching out to mass audiences.

Leverage WeChat Mini Programs

NDN Group takes pride in enhanced features ranging from e-commerce, games and news within the social networking app. NDN has expanded payment gateways for AJ Hackett with all-in-one platform

The WeChat Mini Programs can serve various purposes including e-commerce, utility, mini-games and news. More advanced features are available such as geolocation, task management, coupon redemption and others.

Banner Ad Campaigns

WeChat offers banner ads appear at the bottom of articles published by other WeChat official accounts. You can target users by gender, age, and location, and specify the types of accounts where the banner ads are displayed.

Business can prompt audiences to follow its WeChat account, buy a product, visit landing pages, download an app, or claim a coupon code.

Pricing is based on either CPC (cost per click), which starts at a minimum bidding price of 0.5 RMB for each click, or CPM, where fees vary depending on the geographic audience.

Standard banner ads consist of the brand logo, official account name, and call to action.

 

Business partner with influencers or KOLs

Businesses need to find the right influencers for their brand — someone who has a similar target audience and is willing to talk about your business. The cost to set up the partnership depends on the popularity of the KOLs.

KOLs are the equivalent of social media influencers. KOL banners require you to work with another official WeChat business account. Both you and the other WeChat official account owner have to come to a deal on the cost per view and the number of times the ad will be shown.

WeChat is a promising marketing tool for business and has great potential to deliver branded content and engage with Chinese consumers. With its growing penetration rate, it works for many international brands and businesses outside of China looking to reach out to consumers in the mainland .

We believe that these are some WeChat marketing approaches to help you get started to support your marketing plan in China and improve your chances of success. If you would like to learn more about WeChat marketing, do contact us at info@ndngroup.com today for a consultation.

1. AJ Hackett Macau Tower

Following our brand-building effort on WeChat and Weibo previously, we’ve helped the bungee and adventure sports operator to launch an account on popular live-streaming app TikTok, achieving up to 1.9 million exposures. Besides ad promotions, we’ve been managing the daily postings of the TikTok account, including video editing and KOL collaborations.

We also helped AJ Hackett launch a mini-program, a sub-application on WeChat to drive a higher conversion rate. Users can now purchase tickets using WeChat Pay on mobile, play games and learn more about bungee jumping within WeChat without having to be directed elsewhere.

2. Cigna

The insurance brand redefined its lead generation strategy by using Facebook ads to direct traffic to both its official site and the Cigna Smart Health lifestyle blog. Another approach involved using Facebook retargeting to display ads to consumers who have previously visited Cigna’s websites. The team also tapped into Facebook’s lookalike audience function to reach new audience using existing audience data.

Besides social media, our omnichannel marketing approach for Cigna includes the monthly e-newsletters to distribute content from the Smart Health blog.

3. uSMART Securities

In September, online securities brokerage uSMART banks on a holistic online strategy for its full-scale brand launch campaign targeting young adults. Facebook blog posts are used to educate its audience about investment, its brand and product offering. Facebook retargeting has also been implemented at later stages to boost conversion for website visitors.

For search, we’ve been improving uSMART’s SEO organic ranking on search engine results. A/B testing is also carried out for SEM in tandem to optimize ad results.

4. SQM

Real estate agents SQM Global Properties targeted prospective property buyers who are looking for information on digital channels as opposed to traditional print ads and trade shows. The online strategy encompassed SEO, media placement and geo-targeting. SQM also utilized social media and messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp for Business functions to engage with buyers.

5. Meraas

Targeting Chinese audience, we helped Dubai-based conglomerate Meraas launch a series of splash ads across 60 online platforms including Tik Tok, Baidu, WPS and SelfieCity for a giveaway contest, promoting UAE as a travel destination and a great place to live and work. The campaign has garnered fantastic results, generating over 10 million impressions and 2 million click-through rates.

6. KATE

Going beyond social media content creation, the Japanese makeup brand rolled out a geo-targeting campaign to promote a special event in March. Location-based ads are more personalized, relevant and thereby leading to a higher conversion rate.

Moreover, we collaborated with one of the most popular online magazines for young women in Hong Kong for a product launch campaign with a professional model shoot.

7. KURZ

German hot stamping technology brand KURZ launched a Chinese New Year red packet giveaway campaign on WeChat that incorporated the hong bao (red packet) and shaking trigger functions of the platform. We developed a festive-themed H5 page for Kurz using interactive graphics and videos for users to share on WeChat moments. The H5 feature allows data tracking and includes several performance indicators such as views and frequency of interactions.

8. McCafé

McCafé launched a geo-targeting campaign across key business districts in Hong Kong to push ads to mobile users, closing the gap between online and offline channels. The consumer data collected provides insights on shopping behavior and the best time to push the ads.

The second phase of the campaign involved Facebook push notifications on sales to the IDs captured from geo-targeting. A/B testing was conducted to boost click-through rates and ROI through better user experience (UX).

9. Galaxy Macau

We’ve worked with the world-class casino resort in developing a powerful loyalty app with superior UX, serving a range of target groups across all stages in the customer journey. Since 2017, our UX team has been coordinating the project from initial user research, design, prototyping, app launch to ongoing maintenance and feature updates until today. The next phase of the project will kick start in early 2020.

10. Pilot

Pilot intends to create some brand differentiation for itself to foster top of the mind awareness. We carried out a series of rebranding exercise for Pilot’s product lines across its owned media through Facebook. The campaign generated significant brand mentions and share of voice across earned media to help Pilot build its digital presence.

Frustrated customers who don’t get quick answers may leave website and never return. Chatbots can eliminate that scenario and help you keep your customers.

Increase Customer Base

There is another benefit of using chatbots in business. They may help enterprises reach more people which can increase your customer base.

Since chatbots can be used in many applications, enterprises can take advantage of that to help businesses grow. Chatbots can answer multiple questions at the same time as well.

Streamline Procedures and Automation

Other benefits of using chatbots in business are that they help businesses streamline procedures and automation. When used on website they can provide fast, automated answers to most questions. Their use prevents customers from waiting a day or longer to receive responses as they would have in the past. This enables business to serve greater numbers of people while saving costs.

NDN Group and Mobinology’s chatbot service and solution

NDN Group and Mobinology, world-class business software developer, has forged global partnership to deliver enterprise-grade chatbot solution to empower enterprises to accelerate business growth. Powered by leading artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies, the industry-leading and end-to-end chatbot solution enables global and regional enterprises with secure, scalable and agile operations, combined with machine learning and data analytics capabilities. The all-in-one chatbot solution defines new pathways for enterprises to deliver seamless and personalized customer experience.

NDN Group and Mobinology’s intelligent chatbot offers distinctive capabilities at scale. We design immersive dialogue flow to chart out extraordinary dialogue and conversational flow to create high-impact and personalised customer experience. We also curate tone of voice and manner to reflect enterprises’ branding for creating maximum customer engagement and loyalty, and bot personality and persona to interact with users and immerse them in conversational journey.

The self-intelligent bot learns from the inputs it experiences and garners deep understanding on the intent behind customer requests as well as provide smart answers. Also, the bot augments the importance of Big Data through their automated data collection that enables enterprises to conduct in-depth analysis on the conversational journey and understand end-user behaviour. The Natural Language Processing (NLP) powers all forms of language recognition including Cantonese and switch languages to enable enterprises extend global reach.

The bot uses their wealth of knowledge to provide comprehensive answers to queries. It is also specially designed to parse documents, crawl website content and convert into rule-defined structure data. It is empowered to use real-time information for accelerating revenue opportunities automatically after conversation with customers.

Types of chatbots

Depending on how the specific bots were programmed, we can divide them into two large groups: working according to pre-prepared commands – simple chatbot and AI-powered chatbot.

 

Simple chatbots work based on pre-written keywords that they understand. Each of these commands must be written by the developer separately using regular expressions or other forms of string analysis.

Smart chatbots rely on artificial intelligence when they communicate with users. Instead of pre-prepared answers, the robot responds with adequate suggestions on the topic. In addition, all the words said by the customers are recorded for later processing.

Many business owners are beginning to understand what benefits chatbots can bring to them. This technology is still in an early stage, its capabilities continue increasing and the best chatbots have yet to be created. Invest in building a chatbot for your business and be at the forefront of innovation.

Enquires on NDN Group and Mobinology’s chatbot solution:

NDN Group email: info@ndngroup.com 

Mobinology email: info@mobinology.com 

What is geo-targeting

Location-based technology – namely location data, geo-targeting and geofilters – is opening up a world of possibilities for marketers. Yet it is also complicated as new capabilities and use cases seem to emerge every day. With the goal of breaking down some of the most important “geo” concepts to provide a better understanding of the basics and a jumping off point for exploring how far the power of location may take us.

What does geo-targeting mean?

Geo-targeting is the practice of delivering content to users based on their geographic locations. This can be done on the city via IP address or device ID or even through GPS signals and geo-fencing.

Marketers geotarget users on their mobile devices, making it easier to deliver relevant and engaging ad content. The idea is that the more relevant an ad or offer is, the more likely it is to drive sales up sharply for businesses.

How does geo-targeting apply?

The central idea behind geo-targeting is that understanding consumer real-time. Location helps marketers achieve an ultimate goal of delivering the right message to precisely the right people at exactly the right time.

Geo-targeting doesn’t have to be solely based on a consumer’s real-time location. Locations or businesses a customer has visited recently can maker marketers accurately predict their interests and intent and therefore adding targeting based on their location can be essential to delivering a captivating message.

For NDN Group, we have worked with McCafé – owned by Mcdonald’s – that piloted coffee delivery service in Hong Kong, exclusively available on the McCafé App. We have helped McCafé to launch a large-scale advertising campaign on social media with geo-targeting, an advertising effort combining online and offline technology based on geographic location.

We have activated seamless touch points in specific areas in Hong Kong to identify target audience in three core business districts – Central, Causeway Bay, and Quarry Bay. Seamless touch points were placed at all the McCafé branches in the above locations, plus some of the nearby commercial buildings and competitor stores, gaining more data on insightful analysis over competitors and mapping out ads campaigns. Whenever someone carrying a mobile device passes by one of the touchpoints, anonymized data of that device will be captured instantly. We’ve captured over 500,000 device ID. Then we pushed McCafé offer “Buy 4 coffee, get 2 free” via Facebook to target audience. We have also conducted A/B testing to maximize ROI and to refine our creative designs and improve user experience.

Meanwhile, we have worked with fast food franchise Subway on the promotion of Everyday Value, a combo launched to compete with fellow fast food chain’s meal set deals. With some 20 stores in Hong Kong, Subway was set for an effective online campaign that reached out to the right customers in the right place with the help of geo-targeting. 

We have activated seamless touch points at 18 of Subway stores and some of its nearby competitor brick and mortar stores, collecting anonymised data from the mobile phones of visitors every day. This system effectively identifies potential customers and classifies them into different segments, allowing us to re-target ads on Google Display Network, Facebook, Line and Weibo accordingly. 

Why geo-targeting is the key to greater ROI

Geo-targeting is key to greater ROI as it offers a personalized customer experience, delivering ads, offers and shopping information to an overwhelming number of high-potential customers. The technology monetizes online social networks and offline location data to drive brand engagement and actual sales at the same time.

Throughout geo-targeting, businesses lure consumers in a highly targeted area rather than wasting money on people outside region. Consumers generally want ads customized to their specific location.

When consumers want to know more about a business, they expect to find them on the major social networks – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. This boosts credibility and trust. Make choosing you easier by being visible and attainable.

With a location-based marketing platform, businesses have the power to build these custom audiences to achieve their goal to deliver the right message to precisely the right people at exactly the right time. A great geo-targeting campaign requires excellent creative and messaging. Without a relevant and engaging message, audience targeting may produce less impactful results.

Digital transformation is forcing enterprises to change their business strategies and adapt to the new market models. Digital technology has transformed customers’ habits. Mobile devices, chatbot, apps, machine learning, automation allow customers to get what they want almost exactly at the moment they need it. Customers expect relevant content in relation to what they’re doing and on the device of their choosing. Enterprises must embrace technology to deliver a good customer experience.

In this era of disruptive technological change, products and services that are cutting edge one day are outdated the next. In this context, the unmatched customer experience a company offers is increasingly its differentiator. Advanced digital technologies have caused a shift in customer expectations, leading to the sharp rise of new kind of modern buyers. Due to the opportunities that rise from using modern technology, consumers rank businesses based on digital customer experience. Digital first requires entrepreneurs to rethink how they better interact with their customers and offer good customer support.

Mr. Andy Ann, Founder and CEO of NDN Group, said, “It is of utmost priority for entrepreneurs and business leaders to fully understand the customers’ unique needs and enhance their customer experience through the adoption of digital marketing and technologies. Businesses have to deploy right technologies to understand and get a whole picture of why a customer made a certain decision as well as garner consumer insight.”

Leverage right technology to power up digital strategies

Having the right technology to power up digital strategies is fundamental in business world. By easily connecting SaaS applications such as customer databases, Big Data analytics, web and mobile apps, companies can digitally record all touch-points to create a holistic view of customers and deliver customer experience strategy.

At NDN Group, one such campaign we have successfully launched is for Blue, a digital insurer partnership by Aviva, Hillhouse Capital and Tencent. We have deployed 360-degree touchpoints covering social media, video production, web/mobile production, SEO/SEM, as well as innovative technologies namely cognitive ads, an AI chatbot capable of suggesting interest-based offers to engage users individually and generate sales leads. Cognitive Ad helps us understand consumers’ needs and interests by deploying the latest AI-enabled interactive advertising on websites and WeChat.

With our Cognitive Ad technology, we use massive consumer data and a powerful AI-engine to build industry specific ads that are easy to implement and customize. Our ready-to-go and pre-configured dialogues allow your campaigns to run smarter, engage customers faster and improve conversions over 300%.

Seamless omni-channel customer experience

Technology has empowered customers to get what they want, whenever they want, and how they want it. Omni-channel customer experience involves using multiple channels to engage customers. When businesses use social media, blogs, the web, videos and other channels to engage customers, they must ensure delivery of a seamless message across all touchpoints to maximize customer experience.

In fact, content types are versatile and diverse content can be specially curated to fit into different channels. Sites like YouTube will provide a better video sharing experience, Pinterest offers a brilliant experience to users interested in product photographs and other kinds of images, and you can find other website aimed at other types of contents. A blog is a very versatile tool, as it allows you to publish all kinds of contents, from text contents to embedded videos, audio images.

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. It is the process of using digital technologies to create new business processes, models, culture, and customer experiences to meet ever-changing market demands.

Digital transformation is imperative for all businesses, from the startups to the giant enterprises. Thinking, planning and building digitally sets your business up to be agile, flexible, and ready to grow. What’s not clear to many enterprises is what digital transformation means.

Technology plays a crucial role in an organization’s’ ability to evolve with the market and continually increase value to customers. Organizations are in different places on the road to digital transformation. One of the hardest questions in digital transformation is how to get over the initial humps from vision to execution.

What is digital transformation?
As digital transformation will look different for every company, it can be difficult to pinpoint a definition that applies to all. Digital transformation can be defined as the integration of digital technology into all areas of business operations and delivering good customer experiences. The Agile Elephant emphasizes the ways businesses need to adjust their practices: “Digital transformation involves a change in leadership, mindset, business models, and digital assets to improve the experience of the organization’s employees, customers, suppliers, partners and stakeholders.”Andy Ann, Founder and CEO of NDN Group, said, “Every digital transformation is going to begin and end with the customer experiences. Businesses don’t transform by choice because it is expensive and risky. Businesses go through transformation when they have to innovate and evolve. Seamless customer experience is one of the most important discriminating factors for how a business will perform and succeed.”

Why does digital transformation matter?
A business may take on digital transformation for various reasons. But by far, the most likely reason is that they have to: It’s a survival issue for many. Digital transformation does not simply mean changing how you do business or creating new types of businesses. It’s about keeping the core competence, and using faster and better ways to instantly access customer data and not trapped somewhere in an archive.

Think of customer service, whether in retail or a call centre. Digitalization changed service forever by making customer records easily and quickly retrievable via automation. Customer service has not changed, but the process of searching customer data and offering a resolution became much more efficient with automation.

For example, deploying an automated customer Chatbot will allow businesses to automate customer service live chat conversations. According to IBM, up to 80% of routine customer service questions could be answered by a simple AI Chatbot. Chatbots can be trained to respond to customer service questions and provide fast solutions, 24/7.

Enterprise leaders have largely gotten the message and are prioritizing accordingly. At NDN, we have deployed and used AI technologies including machine learning and natural language processing for a local bank (Hang Seng Bank), creating a virtual assistant that is able to simulate human-like contextual conversations and interact with the bank’s customers. The Chatbot can communicate in Chinese and English, and can also understand Cantonese as well as the mixing of English and Chinese. Through interacting with customers, the Chatbot will continuously improve their ability to address customer inquiries.

It is widely expected that worldwide spending on technologies services that enable digital transformation will reach US$1.97 trillion in 2022, per the (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Digital Transformation Spending Guide. IDC predicts that digital transformation spending will grow steadily, achieving a five-year compound annual growth rate of 16.7 percent between 2017 and 2022.

IDC predicts that, by 2020, 30 percent of Global 2000 companies will have allocated capital budget equal to at least 10 percent of revenue to fuel their digital strategies. Advanced analytics is the number-one digital investment – with enterprises planning to increase related deployments by 75 percent during the next 12 to 18 months.

Organizations are at different places in the digital transformation journey. Business leaders face pressure to show that digital transformation initiatives and strategies continue to translate to increased agility and speed for the entire organization. Fostering seamless customer experience has become a crucial goal and thus a crucial part of digital transformation.

What does digital transformation framework look like?

Digital transformation changes widely based on an organization’s challenges and demands. Yet, there are a few constants and common themes among published frameworks that all business leaders should consider when initiating digital transformation.

These digital transformation elements are cited in a wide array of aspects over customer experience, operational agility, culture, leadership, workforce enablement and digital integration. Below are a few examples of digital transformation frameworks include:

· MIT Sloan: The Nine Elements of Digital Transformation

· Cognizant: A Framework for Digital Business Transformation

· Ionology: A Step-By-Step Guide to Digital Transformation

· IDEO: The Human-Centered Design Toolkit

While each guide has its own recommendations and varying considerations, leaders should look for those important themes when mapping out their own digital strategy.

Adapt business to leverage digital transformation

Digital transformations have reshaped how companies approach customer service and enhance user experience. The rise of social media has changed service much like it’s changed advertising, marketing, and even sales and customer service. Forward-thinking companies embrace technologies, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data, and social media to extend their service offerings to customers on their platforms.

What happens when Digital Transformation creates Exponential Growth?

It is not that we don’t know exponential growth is coming due to digital transformation. What we misunderstand is the speed at which it comes. At Singularity University, Peter Diamandis talks about the Moore’s Law and the speed of technology accelerating our entire economy. In conclusion, we advise leaders to dive deep into the process of creating powerful tools for scaling the business and stay competitive among competitions.