Prove Marketing ROI, Amplify Your Brand, and Drive Sales

Transportation and logistics companies are facing a host of challenges, namely inflation, a freight recession, economic uncertainty, and increased customer demands. Customers expect more, despite the fact that transportation and logistics companies have less.

At present, instability in the market has resulted in decreased demand. Reduced resources and dwindling loyalty combined with increased competition and general market volatility require that companies find a way to efficiently and effectively build resilience against current and future disruption.

Leveraging data and AI can help transportation and logistics companies get ahead of these challenges and drive new business. How? Combining AI, data, and CRM helps power personalized marketing journeys, and enables companies to drive (and retain) more revenue, close deals faster, and handle more shippers in less time.

Ultimately, the goal is to create seamless, personalized experiences that exceed customer expectations and keep people loyal to the brand. The right tools and technology not only accomplish this goal, they do so while also making employees more productive, the end result of their work more successful, and the entire operation more efficient.

Harmonizing data across your organization, combining it with CRM, and then layering AI on top streamlines processes and paves the way for true operational excellence.

Let’s take a closer look at how.

• Initial engagement
• Lead generation
• Building long-term loyalty through ongoing engagement
• Conclusion

An effective digital advertisement can only take you so far. What happens on the other side of that is just as, if not more, important. Assuming an ad has been properly created, targeted, and deployed, the next step is for the target audience to see the ad and take action.

For example, let’s imagine a shipping manager is served an ad for an upcoming webinar. Now let’s see how the process might play out:

1. Upon seeing the ad, the shipping manager wants to learn more so they click the ad which, in an ideal world takes them to an experience built on a platform natively integrated with the rest of the company’s data and solutions.
2. The shipper lands on a registration page where they can learn more about the logistics company and its services.
3. The shipper likes what they see, and decides to register for the webinar.
4. Once registered they receive an automated notification asking whether they’d like to save the date in their calendar. They click yes.
5. Because they’ve saved the date, the shipping manager remembers to attend the webinar, after which they decide they want to learn even more.
6. They are fed a series of prompts which guide them through the step-by-step process to get a quote. During this process, they enter information like origin, destination, weight, equipment type, pickup/delivery date, and contact info.
7. They also receive a survey inquiring about how helpful they found the webinar which they answer with a 5 star rating.

Every one of the above interactions works to both continually engage the shipping manager and build their customer profile. This profile contains both the information they’ve provided, as well as what the company has learned about them from the way they engage (frequency of engagement, website visits, emails interaction, survey responses, etc). It can now be used by various departments across the organization. Marketing teams can add them to a dedicated marketing journey, sales teams can reach out with services that might interest them, and AI built into the system can automatically generate upsell ideas and/or highlight products and services that might appeal to them. This enables teams to work efficiently and effectively in a way that feels personal and meaningful.

When a customer creates a profile upon their first engagement, it results in a logistics company having all sorts of data they can use to continue to nurture the relationship. This is especially valuable from a lead generation standpoint. Once a new profile has been created, the system can automatically notify the sales team so that a salesperson can follow up.

In the case of our shipping manager, the salesperson could open their profile inside a dashboard to view insights about their behavior as well as any past interactions they’ve already had with the company. This includes their visits to the website, the webinar they attended, and how they responded to the survey. Because they’ve had so many positive interactions with the company, the lead score awarded by the system is high, indicating to the salesperson that this is a valuable lead that is likely very interested in working with the company. This type of lead scoring and ranking helps sales teams prioritize properly, ensuring that they don't waste time on weak leads. It can also provide insights as to why certain leads are stronger than others, and use generative AI to create a script the salesperson can use to make the sale.

Once the system has flagged a lead as worth pursuing, it will immediately alert the salesperson everytime the customer engages. This means that every e-mail interaction, website visit, or phone call will trigger a notification with the customer’s name, e-mail, and phone number along with additional relevant information like freight volumes or type of TML required. This allows them to reach out using the customer’s preferred form of communication to provide service recommendations, quotes, and product advice that is personally relevant to the individual at hand. And, because all action is taken on an integrated platform, the salesperson doesn't need to click between screens, look up data, or alternate between systems. Everything they need is there, on one screen, at their fingertips. What’s more, all action can be taken directly from the platform. This means the salesperson can call the customer at the simple click of a button. Throughout that phone call they can be shown key talking points that ensure they don't miss any important information, and once the call has been completed they can then use an email template already populated with all pertinent information to send a customized quote. The salesperson can also initiate a credit check, or even generate a contract at the click of a button. And because all this is automated, they don’t need to spend valuable time on manual tasks like data entry or creating forms.

The convenience and efficiency experienced by the salesperson is reflected in the customer experience as well. A customer receiving a quote via email can simply click a link and immediately book. Once everything is good to go, scheduling is efficiently and easily handled directly on the platform (which also takes care of routing and scheduling on the back end). This saves time by negating the need for the customer to call into a call center to make the appointment. After booking, the customer will receive a personalized message providing shipment status along with any necessary follow up notifications about status changes. They will also be alerted on the day of delivery, and are provided with pickup details such as the driver name, arrival window, and follow up phone number. This continuous communication keeps the customer in the know at every step of the process. It also exceeds expectations, differentiating this particular transportation and logistics company from the competition, and delivering the personalized, transparent, and convenient experience that people crave.

Once the sales team has turned a lead from a prospect into a happy customer, that customer can be placed into a specific automated campaign with the goal of trying to grow their business through the marketing of additional products and services. The marketing team can continue to review the performance of this campaign in order to optimize processes. This will also enable them to evaluate marketing ROI as well as impact to sales, pipeline, and revenue. These results can be also shared broadly across the organization as well as with executives.

This type of transparency gives both the marketing team and the wider organization the ability to holistically evaluate metrics and KPI's. It enables them to not only highlight what's working, but also what can be improved. And, because all information is available in real time, it’s easy for teams to pivot and course correct in cases where they notice something is not quite right.

The ability to organize, harmonize and activate data across the organization enables companies to truly refine their customer segments. It allows for better, more targeted marketing and makes the marketing and sales cycles not only more efficient, but the customer experience more seamless.

Creating personalized, seamless experiences that are connected across channels, allows transportation and logistics companies to reach out and continually engage their customers where they already are, spread their message, and then use automation and AI to continue that experience in a way that feels personal and unique. Furthermore, automating (and thereby standardizing) processes creates a more operationally efficient environment and increases productivity amongst employees. Together, this results in increased revenue as well as customer satisfaction.

Creating the ecosystem of solutions described above may seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be. An integrated technology partner like Salesforce can help. Our unique array of solutions are specifically designed to help organizations meet the challenges of today. Whether it’s harmonizing data through Data Cloud, using Einstein to empower teams with AI, personalizing engagement with Marketing Cloud, or a host of other targeted solutions, we understand how to help organizations drive business forward. Furthermore, we not only understand the technology that supports these solutions and how to implement them, we also have a deep knowledge of the transportation and logistics industry and its inherent opportunities and challenges. Together we can harness the power of data, automation, and AI to exceed expectations, unlock productivity and achieve operational excellence.