How “Engaging” Is Your Customer Retention Marketing?
Here’s a quick test, hope you pass. Take a look at these three terms: Customer Data, Customer Engagement, Customer Retention. Which word within these terms is the common denominator? Take a second to think if you need to. And the answer is? Customer, maybe? Yes, definitely.
Even as every marketing generation comes up with a new set of tools and strategies to build their companies, one thing never changes: without customers, none of this matters.
This probably isn’t new either: learning more about your customers – what’s important to them, what they want, how you can serve them better, how you connect with them, and how they connect with you – is a still pretty good approach for keeping customers in the fold. But what has evolved, certainly, are the technological tools to help you get to know them better – and how this knowledge can guide your customer-focused communication.
Dating with Data? Study the Stats
Customer engagement is not exactly like slipping a ring on their finger as it is developing two-way connections built on a growing knowledge about your database. This begins with lists that are segmented by active customers, prospects, inactive customers, unclosed sales, location and so forth. But then the data will help you determine their behavior, which will influence your connections.
Why do customers engage with your company? Unless they’re your family members, it’s probably for reasons that relate to running a household, making sure the systems operate safely, good value, healthy environment, quick repairs, reliability and trustworthiness, just to name a few possibilities.
You know what they want generally, but what do they want, exactly? Research tools that can help with this kind of knowledge are your website and email metrics. Page visits and click-throughs tell you what is of interest. What gets the most clicks? What gets none? In social media, which posts are seen? Are any shared?
In other words, how are your customers engaging with your communications, and what from this can you learn about their interest in your offers, content, helpful advice?
Provide What They Want
As you learn, apply. Develop a content plan that reflects your customers’ interests – and that speaks to your different segments. This is why features on health, money and home improvement work well for online newsletter portals. Homeowners have shown interest in these topics. So make a plan for providing what your customers want.
Also, make a plan for your calls-to-action. What will you fit in where?
Create your plan with a calendar that gives dates for posts and emails. In winter, for example, homeowners are concerned about how weather impacts their household systems – frozen pipes, overworked heating systems, and electrical problems. Addressing these concerns is in your content plan – and how you can solve these concerns is in your calls-to-action.
As you gather your content, look for opportunities to repurpose. Blogs plus sales pages plus social media plus reports are tied together. Reports can be the basis of a video. And especially pull out social media posts from whatever you do. Sometimes the repurposing comes with a different call to action, or using the same content in a different channel.
Monitor How Customers Engage
Customer research is never-ending. As you send out email and post content, you’re doing so because you think that’s what customers want. But stay on top of your stats to make sure. Do you see validation in click-throughs? Is the topic growing tiresome or out-of-season? Does this insight give you more ideas about what customers want to hear and see?