The story behind the new and improved Freshmarketer
“You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level”. – Albert Einstein
Think of any thriving company in today’s day and age.
LinkedIn is no longer just an online resume.
Amazon is no longer just an online bookstore.
Google is no longer just a web-based search engine.
They have morphed into what they are today because they’ve been reinventing themselves time and again. Consistent innovation is paramount for the growth of any company.
Millions of businesses emerge every year, and technology is evolving at a rapid pace. It’s imperative to cut through the noise by innovating and improving.
I was able to see this in action at Freshmarketer.
Here is the story of how Freshmarketer evolved from a Conversion Rate Optimization tool to the intelligent marketing automation tool it has become today.
Phase 1: Analysis, questioning, and consistent feedback
Over several months, we interacted with our users trying to understand how to improve Freshmarketer, and how to improve and add to the Freshworks customer-for-life experience umbrella. Hundreds of calls were made, thousands of emails were exchanged, surveys were run, and lots of feedback was received. Meanwhile, we dived deep into different marketing automation tools. All of this and more made us question a lot of things, and set the wheels in motion for a rethink – almost an overhaul.
Data was what we thought about first
Data continues to be scattered in the marketing context. Marketing tools capture bytes and bytes of data, but is that data giving anybody the right insights?
As marketers, there are a plethora of tools that we use, and all our data seems to be siloed. The marketing tools don’t really talk to each other. As marketing technology evolves, our dependencies on these tools continues to get more complex. Can marketers truly look into one tool and understand the entire customer journey? Or is that a pipe dream?
Once a visitor converts on your website, then what?
According to old-school marketing, every prospect goes through a funnel – from generating awareness to converting into a customer. But the customer journey doesn’t end as soon as a prospect converts. It goes on and on, and every company wants to keep customers for life. Then why not do more? Why not understand customers better? This became something we started obsessing over. This translated into even more questions for Freshmarketer to answer.
How can marketers interact with the audience with the right message at the right time?
If and when we have contextual insights, how can Freshmarketer users minimize the manual efforts they put into this? How can we automate marketing to the extent that the customer gets the right message at the right time? How can we improve on personalization? How can we give the customers convenience, so that they can spend less time setting things up and more time in analysis and experiments?
Please note the if we have contextual insights at the beginning of the last paragraph. It’s important.
With all of this, how do we provide more value to customers?
Freshworks is transforming itself into a customer experience management platform, and as a part of its suite, Freshmarketer needed to follow suit. Freshworks already had products focusing on communication, chat, phone calls, etc. But we saw this major gap.
We lacked presence in one of the biggest and most robust channels on the Internet – emails. So was it time to add emails as a tool for our customers, and plug any communicational leaks? We had to seize what we now saw as an opportunity, and empower marketers in personalizing their communication throughout the customer lifecycle.
“The average marketer spends about one-third of their week completing repetitive tasks”
All these questions popped up, and we decided to take these up one by one. We had one ultimate goal: to deliver more value.
Phase 2 – Transformation
Since the launch of Freshmarketer, we had covered every aspect to provide full-fledged conversion rate optimization. It was time to amplify the benefits for our customers through better experiences and improved operational efficiencies. Which meant bringing in new functionalities and modules. So the product team started working on the new Freshmarketer.
Read more about how Freshmarketer hit refresh on marketing automation.
Together, we created roadmaps, set markers and milestones, and we ran sprint after sprint. The Freshmarketer tool got a makeover which improved the product’s competencies. We shipped over five big features, over 10 enhancements, and numerous scalability improvements. Now with Freshmarketer, you can:
Send better emails
You can go beyond basic email marketing, and build a loyal email list with the new visual editor. Not only that, there are hundreds of pre-designed templates and a drag-and-drop editor to create your emails within minutes.
Automate emails and map customer journeys
Design customer journeys on Freshmarketer’s beautiful canvas. Never miss an opportunity to communicate with your prospects by scheduling emails with conditions, triggers, and actions. Interact with your audience with the right message at the right time.
Understand customers better with contextual insights and smart segments
Measure critical metrics with detailed campaign analytics. Look into the entire customer journey and understand what your audience is up to. Add more depth and logic to your audience with smart segments, and target your subscribers on a more granular level.
Collaborate with your sales team
Solve the age-old ‘marketing and sales silo’ problem, have all your leads and customers in one place and gain more insights on your buyer’s journey via the Freshmarketer-Freshsales integration.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Meanwhile, we had started testing the new Freshmarketer.
Phase 3 – Testing
We were all very excited about testing out Freshmarketer’s new features. Within Freshworks’ teams, these features started getting a lot of feedback and usage as 12 different product teams started testing and using Freshmarketer’s marketing automation. The internal feedback we received at this time kept us on our toes throughout.
We wanted our other users to be a part of this entire process as well, and so they were given roles to play in the implementation. An Early Access Program (EAP) was started for some of our customers, just to see how they like the new features.
For us, it was all about understanding the scalability of these features we had built, but the results spoke for our success too.
Within as little as four months, two million emails were sent by our marketing automation customers users. We were ecstatic to see how Freshmarketer has added value, and by staying true to its marketing roots.
I am lucky to have been a part of such an incredible process, a one-of-a-kind experience to see something take place on such a large scale. It would give me, and all of us immense satisfaction if marketers out there can take the time to give Freshmarketer a spin, and let us know what you think of the product. We’ll be happy to give you a personalised demo so you can decide if you want to switch from your existing solution.
But if not, we’ll settle for your feedback, and wait until you are.
