Vision Advertising’s Julia Becker Collins explains how to personalize marketing in order to retain clients.
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There’s a saying that a loyal customer is worth 10 times their first purchase, and your business undoubtedly has some client retention in place. But do you have the right kind and enough of it? As a business owner, I get it: It’s hard to focus on the clients you’ve sealed deals with when you need to bring in new leads and purchases. However, when you view client retention as a form of marketing and have the right personal engagement tools in place, you can keep your clients close and thinking of you.
Personalize your retention marketing
A big stumbling point for businesses isn’t not investing in this kind of marketing but not providing a personal touch building true loyalty. Thanking someone for a purchase or offering a generic discount lacks the warmth making customers think with their hearts alongside their heads when making purchase decisions. Many companies don’t have the time to handwrite letters to each customer, so you need to couple this with data.
Collecting and using clients’ info
We talked earlier about tools. The first tool you have is your clients’ information. Names, locations, emails, phone numbers, amount of purchases, which kind, etc., are all vital statistics to power your personalized marketing to make them seen and heard by you, including when it makes sense to have someone reach out for the truly personal touch. This data can be pulled from your CRM, filled out forms, or whatever your sales staff has written down.
Tips for personalized engagement in marketing
Once you’ve collected this information, you can implement it to offer personalized engagement in a variety of ways, from email marketing to advertising remarketing. The medium doesn’t matter so much as what you do with it:
• Review and collate the data: What kind of data do you have? Do you have enough emails for email marketing? A cart-tracking e-commerce platform? Information on most-viewed services, social media posts, etc.?
• Provide something of value: Providing valuable information through client emails, ad campaigns, and social media interactions enhances customer experience and positions your business as a trusted partner and expert. When knowledge is used effectively, it can lead to stronger customer relationships.
• Be authentic: Being genuine and honest during interactions is key. Show them your values and what you stand for. Shared values build loyalty.
• React to actions: Sometimes, this means being timely and responding to topical events, but this can be automated, such as items-left-in-cart emails or birthday promo codes.
• Customer satisfaction: Client retention goes hand-in-hand with customer satisfaction, so much of this same information and marketing can be used for asking for feedback, reviews, and other reputation management marketing.
As for the type of marketing, that depends on your specific brand, data, and products, but starting here can let you know your options and where to focus your marketing and data collection. The importance is coupling any automation with sincere content.
