As part of our Marketing in May webinar series, the Marketing department here at CompanyCam is contributing some fresh material to help guide you in your marketing efforts!
Company A sends a mass email. We’ve all been on the receiving end of one of those. It is completely irrelevant to us, our lives, our businesses, and our needs. It’s annoying — there is a reason we call it junk mail and throw it in our “trash” folder. We don’t think about Company A again, or if we do, we remember that they spam us.
Company B sends a much more customized, perfectly timed email — where it seems like they were reading your mind and offered you a deal on EXACTLY what you were already going to purchase. “How great!”, you think to yourself, “I was already going to do this and now I get a deal.” Before you even sign-up with Company B, you already have a positive experience with them and feel that they “get” you.
So how can you make sure that when you are talking to your customers that you come across like Company B, and not like Company A?
We here at CompanyCam don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk. We’ve been sending out t‑shrits, referral rewards, handwritten thank you notes, and more for years — and we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.
But it’s not all fun merch, surprise packages, and free shirts. We place a ton of value on customer feedback, so we routinely reach out to folks and ask what we can improve on, if they’re satisfied with the product, what can we do to make their work easier, etc.
And you know what we do next? We use it! We take that customer feedback and we act on it, constantly making improvements to our product, how we educate and engage our customers, and so on.
So, how exactly do you “be nice to your customers”?
In order to tailor a unique customer experience relevant to your customers’ exact needs, you need great (not just good) customer data.
Long gone are the days when collecting their email was a big win. You’ll need new tools and creative strategies to pick up on all the clues your customer base is leaving you about what they want, and how they want to be communicated with.
How can you customize or segment customers from each other using data? Here are a few ways (I’m sure you and your teams can get creative and come up with more):
- Segment by industry
- Segment by job role
- Segment by longevity with your company (anniversary emails, maybe?)
- Target people who’ve bought specific products from you
- Look at people who live in a particular area
- Make a list of people who always watch your webinars
- Sort your customers by age group
- Have a re-targeting campaign for people who have gotten a quote but never purchased
Feeling overwhelmed? Don’t worry, there are some simple ways to get started:
- Invest in CRM. Having a Customer Relationship Management Tool will be LIFE CHANGING for your business. You don’t have to start huge. Many CRM tools allow you to add modules and seats as your business grows. Start with a CRM that allows you to track your leads, customer journey, and gives you actionable insights.
- Know what you are looking for. All the data in the world isn’t going to do you much good if you don’t know what to look for. If we are talking about emails you want to be analyzing open rates, click-thru rates, etc. When looking at the customer journey you need to be looking at churn data, customer life cycle…the list goes on. If you don’t know what you are looking at — bring in someone on your team who does and who can put the data together to tell the story of your customers.
- Start Testing. This is my favorite piece of advice for all business owners everywhere. Don’t be afraid to test your hypotheses. You’ve put in a CRM, you’ve looked at some of the data and now you have a theory — you HAVE to test it. You might be wrong, but you won’t know until you try. Don’t be afraid to be wrong and go back to the data and the drawing board. Thinking about starting to segment your customers by industry, do it! Want to get that anniversary offer going? Make it happen! Whatever you are thinking, start!
This just skims the very surface of what you could begin to accomplish within the customer experience if you start incorporating data and segmentation into your business. There are so many great resources available to help you dive much deeper into this and I strongly believe (and the data backs me up) that investing in your current customers and enhancing your customer experience will yield huge returns for your business.
