When customers are spoilt for choices, you cannot take customer loyalty for granted. You have to work extra hard to earn the loyalty of your customers because your competition is actively marketing to your customers and trying to win them over. With the multitude of choices available to customers, they'll jump ship if they don't see value in your brand.
So how can you keep the customers that you have worked so hard to earn? Re-engage them when they seem to lose interest in your products. Let's look at some of the ways in which you can re-engage your customers.
First, you have to identify why your customers became disengaged in the first place. There could be various reasons such as pricing, a new competitor in your space, or some other specific reason for their dissatisfaction.
Assuming that you already have collected customer contact information such as email, address, and phone number when customers sign up for your product or service, you can turn to one of these re-engagement campaigns to win back your customers.
Customers know you already, so you can bring them back by giving deals on the products that are of interest to your customers. You can offer new features or services or a discount on the price, or a promotional offer such as a buy one get one free offer. You should analyze the data you have and offer customers what they value.
Flash sales, coupon codes, recurring sales, giveaways or limited time offers are all creative marketing strategies to create urgency and increase customer engagement. As long as your offers are balanced and sustainable, they are a great way to nurture your customers. Here's an example of a promotional offer that Duolingo promotes.
Contests and Giveaways are great ways to infuse a little fun into your brand and build your business. You can run a Facebook giveaway that provides a rewarding experience for your customers, increasing attention, engagement, sales, and ultimately brand loyalty.
Social media contests and giveaways are successful because they offer something for free, making customers happy and creating a sense of urgency, causing customers to take action quickly.
Contests should always be part of your marketing strategy and not only be relied upon only when you want a spike in sales. If you want to re-engage your customers, you can easily do that with a contest, offering something that is perceived as being of high value to your customers and aligning with the theme of your contest.
With all the data you have about your customers, sending a targeted email is easy to do. You should segment your customers based on their age, location, etc. and send highly personalized and relevant emails that increase their interest.
If you use a customer data platform, you’ll be able to tailor your email campaigns even more precisely. For example, a software product may wish to trigger a helpful email after a certain feature was used for the first time, or prompt them to use a feature they haven’t yet discovered.
When you really personalize your messages, like using a happy birthday video maker to send the best wishes on their birthday, or, even better, a physical card in the mail, you have a strong chance of standing out from your competition. Here's an example of a customer who is delighted with Chewy's physical card.
If you still need more information from customers on how you're doing, you can run an NPS survey. Several NPS software products are available for sending NPS surveys. They collect information after a transaction or in a defined period. Running an NPS survey will give you the analytics to gauge how your customers feel about your brand and improvise your strategy to improve customer loyalty.
NPS surveys help you identify promoters or those you are loyal to your brand, customers who feel neutral about you and detractors, or those who are unhappy with your product or service.
For each of these categories, you can strategize your marketing efforts accordingly. For example, you can send Thank you emails to your most loyal customers and show your appreciation, run a promotion for those to feel neutral about your brand and convert them to loyal customers.
You should pay close attention to detractors or those who have a negative brand perception. By gathering more information about what makes them unhappy with your product or service and setting things right, you will reduce the number of detractors.
Another way of surveying your customers or prospects is running a poll. This could be especially effective during a webinar. The best webinar platforms include an integrated polling tool, so you can launch a poll or a survey on the go, or after the webinar.
Loyalty programs are a great way to make customers feel engaged and appreciated. You can set up a program with tiers based on a certain spend level or engagement with your brand.
Upgrading a customer to a higher tier where they receive exclusive benefits will encourage them to buy more to reach the next level. Several industries, such as airlines, food, beauty, etc., have great loyalty programs to drive customer behavior.
A critical part of creating an outstanding loyalty program is understanding your customer needs and catering to them. Price-sensitive customers can be offered discounts and lower prices. In contrast, customers who care about the experience and less about the cost can get perks.
These provide better experiences with your brand, such as VIP customer service, lower waiting times, faster delivery, etc. For example, Northface's loyalty program, XPLR Pass, is much loved by customers.
You can keep your customers engaged by periodically providing them valuable information with Newsletters. Newsletters help your brand stay top of mind for customers and help you share updates on your products and company without sounding too sales-oriented.
You can send your Newsletters on a bi-weekly or monthly basis, and they should provide informative content to your customers. They can either be about a single topic or several topics and should be an essential part of your content marketing strategy.
Along with newsletters, you can send messages to your subscribers on WhatsApp using WhatsApp chatbots like SendPulse. Your email subscribers might not be opening email all the time but they should be frequently using WhatsApp which can help your customers engage.
Creating a community for your prospective and current customers helps you engage with them in a non-transactional way and helps you promote your brand. You can build a relationship with your customers by answering questions about your products or services and bringing solutions to your customers' problems.
This can be a simple Facebook group or an all-encompassing community software.
You should also look at the demographics of your customer to see where they spend the most time. If they spend a lot of time online, you can engage them using an online community. If not, you should look into alternatives to engage them in the real world.
Highly personalized Thank You emails are a great way to show appreciation for your customer and make them feel valued. Don't send run-of-the-mill, general thank you emails, but make sure you send a highly targeted email that will make the customer feel that you've put some thought into the communication and truly value them as a customer.
Even better, if you can send a handwritten note, the customer will feel appreciated because they know you took the extra effort to show you care. They know you had a choice you made between sending a comparatively easier thank you email and a personal thank you note, and you chose the one that took more effort because they are special.
Customers look to the feedback of other customers when they decide on a product or service. That's the primary reason that reviews are powerful. Reviews give social proof that a product or service is worth purchasing.
When your customers give you good feedback, make sure you share it on your website, in your newsletter, social media, etc. This will help to get your brand noticed by your customers and encourage them to engage with you.
With social media, you always have people watching and evaluating your brand. By staying engaged with your customers on social media, proactively addressing issues before they blow up, and keeping a positive and supportive attitude towards your customers, both potential and existing customers will view you favorably.
Social media is great to promote your contests, solicit feedback, update customers on upcoming offers, and create a buzz around your brand. It can also be used to build key influencers and advocates and a whole ecosystem around your brand. A simple and efficient way to organize these content initiatives on social media is to have a social media calendar that will save your time and energy.
When customers feel that you're not always about the sale but are about providing the right product for their needs, they will be more than happy to transact with you. One way to do that is by providing excellent customer service. When a customer brings up a problem, make sure that you don't rush the conversation but take time to listen to their issue and go the extra mile in solving their problem.
Customers will never forget great customer service, and they will become your brand advocates. On the other hand, when you repeatedly ignore customer issues, customers are more likely to leave poor reviews, which will negatively impact your brand. An exemplary example of customer service is Amazon, which was built around the idea of customer first.
By applying the strategies outlined above, you'll be able to re-engage your customers and build rapport with them. Your efforts in being attentive towards customer needs will not go unnoticed, creating a great brand and earning loyal brand advocates.
Amrapali is a digital marketing consultant who blogs about business and marketing at Bazaar Expert.