Printing Money: Why Marketing Automation is a Value Added Service for Printers

By JOHN FOLEY – August 6, 2018

If you are in the printing business, you could be printing money. Well, not literally. But, by adding marketing automation to your list of internal processes, as a printer, you could boost customer engagement, upsell your existing customers, turn new leads into eager buyers and create new lines of profit for your organization.

What is Marketing Automation?

So, what is marketing automation, and how can you incorporate it into your printing business? In simple terms, marketing automation refers to the use of software and web-based services to automate the manual steps that are typically used throughout the marketing process.

Think about the way your marketing department currently operates. Then, outline the number of manual steps required to gather leads, contact prospects, upsell existing customers on new products and services and follow up with buyers. Chances are there are lots of steps in that process, and the failure of one could put the entire process at risk.

With marketing automation, all those steps are automated, largely removing the human element and greatly increasing efficiency. You can think of marketing automation as a value-added service, one that takes what you are already doing and makes it more valuable for you and your customers.

Marketing Automation as a Value-Added Service

There are many reasons why marketing automation is the ultimate value-added service for printers and other business owners. starting with the fact that it greatly increases customer engagement. Customer engagement does not end when your office hours do – your customers are out and about, and they may still be thinking about your business and what it has to offer. By engaging your customers where they are and reaching them outside office hours, marketing automation can build on the relationships you have already built and make your efforts far more valuable.

Marketing automation can also help you commemorate customer milestones, something that can be very important to building brand and company loyalty. No matter how good your sales staff may be, they probably do not know the anniversary dates and birth dates of every customer in their Rolodex. Your marketing automation software, on the other hand, does contain this information, and it can send birthday and anniversary greetings when those milestone dates arrive.

It may seem like a small thing, but it can be a very valuable value-added service. Even if it gets you a couple of extra sales a year, this kind of customer outreach can be extremely valuable for printers. At the very least, reaching out to customers on their birthdays and anniversaries is a great way to keep your company fresh in their minds.

You can also use marketing automation to provide real rewards to your most loyal customers, something that is key for any printer these days. With the wide range of printing services available, keeping customers loyal can be a real challenge, but marketing automation can help close the gap. By offering rewards on a rolling basis, your marketing automation software can provide a value-added service, one that you and your customers are sure to appreciate.

If you have not yet experienced the power of marketing automation, now is the perfect time to get going. More and more printers have been shifting their marketing efforts from their current manual processes to a more automated format. The easy availability of marketing automation software and its lower cost has put this value-added service within reach for even the smallest printers, so there is no reason not to enjoy its many benefits.