Marketing has never been easy, but it has undoubtedly become more complicated in recent decades. In many ways, this is a good thing. Companies are not limited to print-and-distribute models anymore; business communication can take place across a wide range of channels while measuring effectiveness every step of the way. But of course, more communication methods mean more factors and criteria to assess:
- Is the communication one-way or two-way?
- Are the messages across channels integrated?
- Is the brand voice consistent?
- Are consumers engaging?
- Are the most effective channels being used?
- Is automation being leveraged to increase efficiency?
This is where Communication-Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) comes in. Keep reading to learn about how CPaaS helps marketers answer these questions.
What is CPaaS?
CPaaS is an innovative cloud service that offers companies multiple integrated channels - voice, SMS, email, social media, and more - for communicating with prospects and customers while tracking their interactions. It incorporates sophisticated technology like artificial intelligence and machine learning to build efficiency into the communications landscape and enable organizations to move from multichannel to omnichannel.
While it might be tempting to think of CPaaS as a customer-service-driven platform, it has a powerful role to play in marketing communications as well. In fact, it’s difficult to run effective campaigns without the help of CPaaS. It makes the difference between unified omnichannel messaging that is recognized and remembered by prospects, and disparate messaging that struggles to engage and inform even when the right audience is being reached.
Six benefits of CPaaS for marketers
So how does CPaaS directly impact marketing campaigns? Here are six benefits companies can take advantage of by investing in this cloud service.
1) Turning campaigns into conversations
People want to be spoken “to,” not spoken “at”. Organizations can now accomplish this without a trade show floor or even a phone conversation. CPaaS offers multiple avenues to enter a give-and-take conversation with a prospect - rather than sending an email and analyzing opens and clicks to see if the offer hit the right notes. And the communication method is simple for the prospect - with embedded APIs in any application or service, the conversation can begin through any digital channel. By staying consistent with the brand voice, even a one-way conversation can feel interactive.
2) Reducing reliance on emails
While email is still a legitimate and effective business communication channel (in 2019, 89% of marketers considered their email marketing strategy successful), it's clear that it is not one to be solely relied upon. Having the option to reach prospects using a variety of methods is a game-changer for most organizations. More potential buyers will knock on the door if they can choose how they enter the conversation. The icing on the cake is that if email is an essential piece of the marketing mix, supplementing it with targeted, clear voice, SMS, and social communications will bolster and validate the messages that prospects are already receiving.
3) Delivering real-time metrics for analysis
Being able to track marketing campaign metrics in real-time is the holy grail for marketers everywhere. By using a CPaaS platform, marketers can not only track impressions, conversations, and conversions from start to finish, they can also observe them in real-time, pull trend reports, and make the adjustments to respond to customer and prospect feedback. In addition, they can integrate the varying communications channels into their website to better understand which pages are converting, and track the origins of the customer inquiries across the web.
4) Offering multiple communication channels
Email was the “big thing” twenty years ago, and while its effectiveness is continually shrinking, it still is the most effective channel to reach certain target demographics. For other demographics, it’s SMS text. Still some people hate both email and text but respond to phone calls. Many only want to receive communications through social media. With so much variety, a multichannel campaign strategy is necessary for any organization.
CPaaS gives companies access to all of these channels while delivering a unified platform from which prospects can choose their communication method of choice. It’s truly a complete omnichannel solution. Even with market research and demographic information, it’s impossible to know how an individual might prefer to receive marketing ads. A campaign that leverages CPaaS to communicate through multiple opted-in channels has the greatest possibility for success.
5) Enabling flexibility and experimentation
Like any software as a service platform, CPaaS offers a lot of flexibility to organizations that adopt it. This could mean using the software out-of-the-box, or it could mean customizing it to the specific needs of the business. And this customization can be adjusted at any point along the adoption cycle without extensive development work.
But the flexibility of CPaaS doesn’t end there; it can also flex in response to prospect feedback. If a campaign isn’t performing as expected, the real-time monitoring that CPaaS provides gives marketers the insight they need to make immediate changes to digital campaigns, chat scripts, and social media messaging. This also gives marketers the ability to experiment with their campaigns, taking a “fail fast” approach that gets to the best, most concise message as quickly as possible by testing a number of different avenues first.
6) Automation, Automation, Automation
Automation makes the world go round these days; this is no different for marketers. Most companies need to send confirmations, follow-ups, appointment reminders, and other notifications that prospects and customers rely on to keep them on track in a very digitally busy world. CPaaS offers automation through push, SMS, social, and other channels that not only keeps campaigns running and prospects engaged but also makes sure that they fulfill their appointments and purchases through the end of the sales cycle and then return for follow-up purchases later.
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of reasons CPaaS delivers benefits to marketers; these six are just the beginning. An investment in such a continually innovating technology will come with increasing returns as further technological advances allow for creating more meaningful conversations across web platforms.
CEQUENS is a cutting-edge CPaaS platform that manages communication APIs on a global scale. For companies targeting customers in any region, this reliable, customizable, and robust omnichannel platform can deliver swift communications using SMS, Voice, Email, Chat Apps, and more.
To learn more about how CEQUENS enables campaign management and prospect marketing communications, reach out to us for a demo. CEQUENS is ready to lead you to the future of smarter business communication.
About CEQUENS
We're a Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) provider. Our mission is to bridge communication gaps in a communication-driven world.
Born in the digital era, CEQUENS was founded in response to the increasing challenges facing enterprise communication. We started as an SMS aggregator and gradually crafted a path toward omnichannel CPaaS solutions.
For 10 years, our innovation has empowered thousands of businesses create and deliver communication experiences finetuned to their industries. Our cloud-based, PCI/DSS compliant Communication Platform is the award-winning, end-to-end solution helping businesses realize their full potential and go digital.
As an Endeavor member and industry player, CEQUENS plays a pivotal role in transforming business communication worldwide.
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