Are You Doing Enough To Engage With Your Customers?

Customer engagement is a tough thing to get absolutely right. There’s a lot that goes on in the background of a successful engagement campaign. A customer engagement platform will make it easier, but there is a balance to it. You want to communicate with customers enough so that they remember you, but not so much that you annoy them.

Aside from a high frequency of communications, what annoys customers is receiving generic, low value, messages. It’s spammy and customers expect more. A lack of personalisation suggests a lack of care. That will lead your customers to the unsubscribe button, rather than clicking, let alone completing a purchase. 

They want to know that you care for and understand them.

The more emphasis you start to put on customer engagement, the more likely they are to enjoy their experience with you. But you need to get to the stage where you know you’re doing enough to engage with them. Not just think you are.

Why Engagement Should Be A Priority

The communication expectations of customers has significantly increased. The modern customer expects that a business understands them. Businesses need to prove that they know who they’re talking to.

The use of customer data platforms and customer engagement platforms has brought customer communication to the next level. As a business, you should be using this technology to create memorable experiences for them.

Your level and quality of engagement with your customers will have an effect on how loyal they are to your brand.

More engagement means more conversions

The more you hear of something, the more likely you will be to remember it. The same goes for customer engagement. The more you connect with them, the more they’ll remember you.

74% of customers are likely to make a purchase with you based on just experience alone. They are also more inclined to spend more with you. Customers will pay a premium if they get a wonderful customer experience.

Engaging with your customers can guide them towards making a purchase. There are times where they might not know what they want to buy or don’t know about particular offers you have. The Single Customer View within your customer data platform can make recommendations based on their purchase history. And create bespoke offers and discounts on products they are likely to buy. 

If they never know, they’ll be less likely to purchase. So the more you entice them with relevant products and offers, the more likely they will take action.

Increase in impulse buying 

The level of trust a customer has in your business increases with consistent and personalised communication. You show that you know and care for the customer.

This build up of trust means that customers will be more likely to make impulse purchases with your business. 

After having a meaningful, personalised experience with a brand, 49% of customers have admitted to making impulse purchases. This can be incredibly beneficial for your business, so it’s important to make sure you are playing your part in providing a great experience. 

Better customer experience

54% of customers believe that businesses need to change the way they communicate with them. The expectations of customers have risen and you need to match them or they’ll find a business who can. It’s not like they are short of options.

The online experience a customer has is incredibly important to the success of your business. In fact a lot of the time, the experience you provide can hold more weight than your price or product. 

If you want to retain your customers and keep them loyal in the long run, giving them a quality experience is something you need to prioritise. It’s also something you need to make sure happens every time. Whether it’s when they browse your site or if you send them a message. Every experience needs to be personalised and meaningful. 

How To Successfully Engage Your Customers

Creating successful engagement campaigns can be a bit of a struggle. There is a lot of groundwork that needs to be done before you start to create. 

A customer data platform, or a customer engagement platform, allows you to understand your customers and put together data driven campaigns. These will be more personalised, more relevant, and overall more successful.

If you’re questioning whether you’re doing enough to engage your customers, you probably aren’t. Consider the following:

Use your data

The quality of your data is linked to how personalised your campaigns can be. You need to consolidate your data. It leads to both a deeper understanding of your customer, and higher quality of message. This is because you will develop an understanding of their behaviours, wants, and needs on a deeper level. Your campaigns will also end up being far more relevant to the receiver.

There is a variety of different data you can include to build your campaign. The more customer data you include, the better your campaign will be. Using demographical, behavioural, or transactional data to build your customer profiles for your campaigns makes for a richer experience.

Segmentation

64% of your customers expect tailored engagements. You can also expect to see a 760% increase in revenue when you use segmentation for your email campaigns. But you won’t experience these numbers if you are sending the same thing to every customer. 

You need to understand that not all your customers are the same or want to hear the same thing.

Segmenting your audience per campaign is more important to driving results than you might think. You need to make sure what you’re sending is relevant to the customer, and segmentation is important to ensure this.

Segmentation is where you can identify a particular group to target with a certain message or offer. Sending an irrelevant campaign will have a major effect on your engagement for that particular promotion.

Using a customer engagement platform can help you send messages that are relevant to specific customer segments.

Personalisation

Using personalisation in your messaging yields results. It may take some work to get there, but the rewards are well worth it. 

Introducing different types of data to inform your messaging and personalisation gives you the power to create some really great campaigns. Things like this goes a long way for both your customer and your business.

Personalisation isn’t always as blatant as using someone’s name in the message. But showing the customer what they have shown interest in in the past. Some of your users may browse your website for shoes. You should use that information to include in your messages to them. 

Even knowing where your customer abandoned their basket and sending a message that takes them right back is really useful. Considerable revenue is lost to abandoned carts every year, so it’s important that you win that back through this method.

A customer engagement platform makes it easy to personalise your messages. They allow you to create message templates using dynamic content snippets and leverage the rich customer data you have. You’ll find that when you go beyond a first name basis your customer relationship will deepen.

Where To Engage Them

The question might begin with “how to engage”, but you should also be thinking “where to” as well. Just like different customers have preferences on what they want to see, they also have preferences on where they want to see it.

There are multiple channels you can communicate with a customer through. So when it comes to sending them out, it can be a case of trial and error.

You should keep an eye on the engagement rates of your customers when it comes to the channel you communicate through. It’s important to understand what is working and what is not. You could be wasting time and resources on a channel that isn’t working if you don’t. Furthermore, you could lose that customer because the message isn’t getting through to them as well as it should be.

There are plenty of ways to get through to your customers.

Social media

Although not a traditional method of communication in the past, social media is massive and you should utilise it.

You can use social media in a more creative way than other channels. Your brand personality and identity should shine through here. In fact, 80% of consumers now expect companies to interact with them on social media platforms. So if you’re lacking here, then it might be worth thinking about.

Email Marketing

There’s a common misconception that email marketing is losing its foothold as a communication channel. But it’s just as relevant as it ever has been.

Email marketing technology has advanced steadily over the years, making it one of the most versatile and engaging marketing tools available. Automation, and data integration means you can build email marketing campaigns that consistently deliver value.

In fact, for every $1 spent on this channel, you can expect $42 in return. That’s a 4,200% ROI.

Subject lines, use of images, dynamic content, and snappy language are all things to remember when sending emails to customers.

SMS Marketing

With an open rate above 90%, SMS remains a powerful channel to engage with users. It allows you to speak to customers who aren’t subscribed to your emails or opted-in for push notifications.

SMS doesn’t allow a massive amount of room for personalisation. But, it allows you to get straight to the point of your message. Which when sent to the right customer can bring some pretty nice returns.

Website and App

The conversation shouldn’t end just because they have made their way to your website or app. There should be a continuous dialogue between the business and customer all the way through the customer journey.

Onsite, or in app messages are a good way to keep customers engaged while on your website. Typical engagement rates with them float at the 25% mark. However introducing personalisation here can bump that number up to 40%. They can come in the form of an alert or a pop up message.

The website, or app inbox can be used as an alternative to email. It gives you a chance to share high-value content with your customers as they browse. It’s a consistently high-performing channel, serving a wide variety of use cases throughout the customer lifecycle. It generally has a rate of engagement of 11%.

Consistency

When you engage with your customers, do it on a consistent basis. Your customers have plenty of options. So make sure you are their number one.

You need to make the effort to make sure your customers don’t forget you. 

To learn more about how a customer engagement platform can help you engage more effectively with your customers, get in touch today and request a demo.