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<\/p>\nRelationship marketing is important in every business. Clients keep your business running. Getting them is one thing, but keeping them is a whole different story.<\/p>\n
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Customer loyalty can ensure a strong long-term relationship with your clients. Having the right tools to manage them and deliver what they need can lead you into that direction. We think that business success relies on the number of satisfied customers, plus other ingredients that make the strategy \u201cspicier\u201d – more elaborated and powerful.<\/p>\n
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Check out these effective relationship marketing strategies to maintain, engage and convert your clients.<\/p>\n
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Before you start building a relationship marketing strategy, you need to know your audience to connect with it. If you\u2019re struggling to figure out your niche, you can follow the following instructions:<\/p>\n
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Your clients are an important asset to your business; they make your business work. Your business will exist as long as you have clients. More benefits come from your loyal customers because they continue to bring monetary value to the company. You need to maintain your customers engaged to keep them loyal.<\/p>\n
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According to Gallup’s customer database<\/strong><\/a>, half of all customers are satisfied and only 38% of them say they are engaged.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Customer engagement doesn’t automatically follow satisfaction.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Loyal customers need attention to keep their engagement rate high. According to Experience Matters<\/strong><\/a>, loyal customers are 5x as likely to repurchase, 5x as likely to forgive, 4x as likely to refer, and 7x as likely to try a new offering. Loyal customers are more likely to create customer lifetime value (CLV).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: Kissmetrics<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n It all starts with building a team to execute quality experience. Helping your customers understand the value of your services is highly important. You need to help them learn your services by making it easier. It\u2019s just like in UX design, the users have a path and your website should follow that path. The picture below is a good representation:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n As we all probably already know, UX is very important for SEO, too. Many experts think that UX is crucial in the future of SEO, especially with all the evolution of machine learning technology. And UX goes beyond SEO, your team must see what the user wants, what they need, how your services benefit them and achieve their goal.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Helping customers understand and value your product over your competitors\u2019 is not a sales tactic.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Your support team is in the first line, talking and keeping contact with your customers. Building a great customer service team is number one in developing relationship marketing. Promote a customer-centric policy to your team and try to engage them in providing high customer support services. Your team should know how to deal with both negative and positive situations and offer satisfaction to the user.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To know how to deal in both negative and positive situations you\u2019ll need a Q&A template, that can be modified depending on the user\u2019s needs. There\u00a0are lots of companies specialized in all sorts of activities, but every single one of them receives lots of questions about what they do, and how they can help the user. A template offers great support.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There might be cases when the conversations can be nuanced and get a little tricky. That\u2019s why it is good to have a plan: you can get some ideas, keep you out of trouble and please the customer at the same time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n HelpScout<\/a> <\/strong>created helpful customer service questions and answer template picturing all sorts of situations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For small businesses, it is easier to talk with customers and you don\u2019t require an elaborated Q&A template. In case you have a SaaS or a business that is more complex, it would be awesome if you had some documentation. It could benefit both your team and your customers for future reference.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are lots of situations when you don\u2019t need to play by the book, and let the master team do the job. Skyscanner did an amazing job responding to a man who got stuck with a 47-year flight connection:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Short for Ask, Categorize, Act, and Follow-up, the ACAF Customer Feedback Loop is a business strategy that centers itself on the customer. It has 4 steps:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: Hubspot<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Feedback is very important in every business. It helps you evolve and correct the mistakes. Ask for valuable and personal customer feedback from your customers to see what you\u2019re doing right and what\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Always thank the customer for the feedback and make them feel appreciated. Not to mention feedback creates innovative opportunities, by hearing what your users need and you could develop in your product. \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Having a plan to provide quality customer support doesn\u2019t require advanced technologies. You need to set up a process: the user sends a message, you need to assign conversations to other people, think about how to engage with the users, how to do the follow-up. After that, think about what to do with the email addresses to send them newsletters or send them special offers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The customer support process tends to be more complex. You\u2019ll need the following:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you\u2019re a small or mid-sized business, then you could use some free options. But an enterprise needs more advanced technologies. Having an automated customer support process can ease your work a lot. Practically, it can be a service such a help center or chatbot or any artificial intelligence, which will elaborate more at point 12. Also, you might need a more general business process management system<\/a> if you would like to automate and ease more workflows in your company<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Think of this: happy clients that had a good experience will return, unhappy clients that had unsatisfactory experience won\u2019t return and can spread the bad word about the company. Studies show that almost 13% of unhappy clients<\/strong><\/a> tell to over 20 people about their bad experience.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Knowing what to say to your customers can be a daunting task. You can always improve your customer experience by\u00a0providing excellent customer service using the right tools<\/a><\/strong>, quickly offering answers, solutions and trying to maintain a strong relationship with your customers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t really matter if your product or services are impeccable if user experience is shitty. It is highly important to resolve issues when they appear and provide a clean experience on site without any problems and errors.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n More than that, you should actively engage customers on social media or blogs. It will strengthen the customer relationship and they can promote your business afterward. \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Customer retention shows the companies\u2019 ability to keep their customers for a period of time. A high retention rate means people (users, customers) that continue to bring revenue to the company and buy products.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Studies show that acquiring a new customer, however, is anywhere from 5 to 25 times<\/strong><\/a> more expensive than retaining existing ones. Retaining customers is a pretty important thing. Every single person thinks about the benefits they have when choosing a brand, a product or certain services. And the brand must think about how to keep those customers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are lots of customer retention strategies you can personalize for your clients to keep and bring ROI, but some of the most profitable are:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These actions can be developed into campaigns and create something really interesting depending on your niche and business. These may come in addition to the strategies we\u2019ve elaborated in the whole article to lead you into setting up a more specific customer retention plan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Since we\u2019ve mentioned brand loyalty, you must know it is a good strategy for relationship marketing. Customer loyalty works very well and can strengthen the relationship you have with your clients. Basically, a loyalty program shows you care about your customers first. Loyal customers are hard to acquire, but once you got them, it costs the business about 5-25x less<\/a><\/strong> to sell to an existing client than to acquire a new customer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Every business should aspire to customer loyalty. It is a virtue of their existence. There are lots of ideas you could generate by building a loyalty program. You can send the message by email, using an App (if your business has something like that), to the user\u2019s account and so on. It can be a discount, a gift, or something else depending on your creativity. You can also find lots of ways to reward loyal customers in the digital marketing space. Even something as simple as a scannable code on a loyalty card or product insert, created with Uniqode’s dynamic QR codes<\/a>, can give customers a frictionless way to claim rewards or access exclusive offers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Uber, for example, rewarded Gold members<\/strong><\/a> with some interesting perks, not available for all members. The membership levels are Blue (0 points to qualify), Gold (500 points to qualify), Platinum (2500 points to qualify), and Diamond (7500 points to qualify). So, all the member that hit 500 points and join Uber Gold get flexible cancellations that refund your $5 cancellation fee if you rebook within 15 minutes. In addition, members get priority support.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Platinum and Diamond get a lot more services that make the ride more pleasant, such as:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Loyalty programs can boost your ROI and keep the customers that really matter.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Creating a referral program is born from customer satisfaction. People that are pleased with the services might tell other people about their experience, so why not take advantage of that? Encourage them and don\u2019t leave room for second thoughts. Satisfied customers are willing to make referrals. Those who receive such referrals are more likely to pay attention to them rather than to the brand.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you got the referrals engaged, then you\u2019ll get some of the best new customers you can get.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n If you want, we can set aside our reasons why you should use a referral program, and listen to the studies. R&G Technologies discovered that referral leads convert 30% better<\/strong><\/a> than leads generated from other marketing channels. More than that, referred customers have a 16% higher lifetime value<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are lots of businesses that use the referral program. Booking, for example, gives you $15 if you recommend it to a friend. You have to invite your friends by sending them the referral link. They book and stay at the accommodation, then after their stay, you and your friend both get the $15 for the next booking. \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Your customers can become true advocates, by connecting and sharing your product with others when they have a good experience. Rewarding a satisfied customer through a referral marketing program doesn\u2019t require so much work, and it can bring lots of benefits for everybody involved.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even if you focus on relationships, you shouldn\u2019t miss customer data and numbers. In order to keep track of your business’s success, you\u2019ll have to follow sales numbers and customer feedback metrics.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some of the most important metrics in this situation is customer lifetime value (CLV)<\/strong>. The formula for the metric is:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Estimated Average Lifetime Value = (Average Sale) x (Estimated Number of times customers purchased)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are free tools that calculate the metric. Google Analytics, for example, measures lifetime value for users acquired through different channels. You need to select two Google Analytics metrics and compare them to identify the date range during which you acquired users. These are the metrics available:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can compare LTV in relation to the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) to measure how long it takes to regain the investment to get a new customer.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
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<\/div>\n2. Build a Great Customer Service Team<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\n3. Create Customer Service Q&A Templates<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n4. Implement the A.C.A.F. Customer Feedback Loop<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\n5. Build a Customer Support Process<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\n6. Always Improve Customer Experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n7. Set up Specific Customer Retention Actions<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\n8. Reward Loyal Customers<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\n9. Set up a Referral Program<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n <\/div>\n10. Follow Sales Number and Customer Feedback Metrics<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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