11 Practical Steps To Re-Engage Your Online Customers
Best strategies to re-activate unengaged customers
17th November 2021 by Amrapali Rai
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.
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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.
Promotional offers
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.
2. Contests and Giveaways
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.
3. Send targeted emails
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.
4. Surveys
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.
5. Loyalty programs
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.
6. Email Newsletters
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.
7. Create a community for your customers
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.
8. Say Thank you
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.
9. Share customer feedback
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.
10. Stay engaged on social media
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.
11. Provide great customer service
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.
Interactive Content Templates 200+ Editable Drag & Drop Templates
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Final Thoughts
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.