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This business support module looks at strategies to re-engage your customer database and save thousands in marketing costs.
Key learning outcomes:
Hey everybody. It's Andrea Anderson here, Chief Ideas Specialist from Your Marketing Machines. So thanks to MBRIT for the opportunity, just give you a little bit of an overview of Your Marketing Machines. We are a marketing strategy and communications company based here in Brisbane, and we work primarily with small to medium sized businesses, helping them to understand where they should actually be swimming - the best lane for them so that they can have the greatest opportunities.
I look forward to actually being here today with you and sharing with you how to re-engage, repurpose and retain your customer database. I hope you're sitting down. I hope you're taking plenty of notes because it's going to be an exciting time for both of us.
The first thing I'd like to do is acknowledgement of welcome to country. We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of all of this land and pay our respects to the elders past, present and future for they hold the memories, traditions, and culture, and hope of all Indigenous Australians.
Let's start by understanding why you're here. There's going to be probably four main reasons why this kind of information is going to appeal to you.
Increase your sales conversion - you've got a database and you're looking to increase the sales and your particular database.
More referral partners - relationships with other businesses who will end up referring and recommending your services and products to their database.
Develop stronger relationship with current database - perhaps you're not communicating as effectively as you could.
Cross-promotional activities - Perhaps you're looking at wanting to create or to seek cross promotional activities.
Now, if that is you right now, then this is definitely the right place for you to be. First thing I actually want to talk about is the marketing blueprint (download at bottom of this page). This outlines the four core aspects of marketing that you need to be aware of from lead generation through to nurture journey, prospect experience and sales conversion.
In this particular presentation, we're talking about that nurture journey side. When you've actually got a lead or you've obtained somebody's contact information. Where does it go? And how do I now communicate to that person?
Because you need to understand that sometimes when someone reaches out to you, they're not always going to be ready to purchase from you. They may need a bit of conversation. They may need to have a bit of a relationship building opportunity with you. Today's presentation is all about how we re-engage, and repurpose our communication, so that we can retain our customer database.
The first step is to understand the importance of having a CRM system - customer relationship management system, and why all businesses need one.
To give you an idea about database statistics - 51% of marketing influencers segment email list. You could ask the question. Why did they do that? And simply because they want to ensure that not everybody is going to be treated the same, or tarnished by the same brush.
Let's think about it for a moment. Do you like it when you receive general newsletters that mean absolutely nothing to you? They just clog up your email, and you end up unsubscribing.
How about if you receive an email from the company that you've just purchased a product from, and they're trying to sell you the same product you just bought. That's something that you wouldn't want happening to you.
The reason why we segment is so that you can actually have a fulfilling and meaningful conversation with specific aspects of your database. Because recipients are 75% more likely to click on emails from segmented campaigns than they are from non-segmented campaigns. 78% of consumers have unsubscribed from emails because a brand was sending way too many emails with the same generic conversation.
Here's where I want you to go with this. I want you to consider yourself to be a professional. I want you to be in that 86% of professionals who prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes. I want you to understand that active email accounts are expected to reach about 4.3 billion by 2021.
Approximately 18% of your current database will be a client. I have to profess that I like to set myself a competition that I don't just want 18% to be my client. I want 30% of the people in my database to be a client. How cool would that be?
But here's the real concerning thing. You need to know that every $92 spent on lead generation, including advertising that you're doing through social media and offline media. You only invest $1 in conversion. That's frightful team.
This time I really am going to encourage you to really be looking at your database through a new pair of eyes, because if you have invested in lead generation and have received contact information, you must have a CRM system, customer relationship management system.
How else do you propose to communicate to all of those connections? Excel spreadsheets? Come on. Really? We're in the 21st century guys.
- Where are all my contacts kept?
- Do I know who is a hot lead, cold lead, customer, referrer
- What type of relationship do I want with my database?
Perfect. How did you go? Did you answer those questions? Was that a bit shocking? It's okay. You're not alone.
So we're going to go into part two. Re-engagement - how to reconnect with your database. There's four aspects of this that you need to be aware of.
In other words, they've not heard from you since they may have purchased from you. We want to reconnect with our database for any of the following reasons. To see if your customers or your contacts are current. Maybe you've got a lot of dead wood inside your database.
Let your audience know that you are still open for business. In these most unprecedented times, it's really important that your customers know that your contacts know that your doors are open. You're read it a serve and you're ready to come to the party with a solution.
It allows us to clean out your database by allowing contacts the opportunity to no longer want to hear from you. And that's equally just as important, because the last thing you want to be doing is communicating to a database that doesn't actually want to hear from you at all.
Second key aspect of re-engagement and that is, this is an opportunity for you to reestablish the relationship. Perhaps your business has shifted and changed. Maybe you've transitioned as well and it's a great opportunity for you to develop that relationship.
For me in my business, relationship is imperative. It is everything to my business. Not only with my customers - past and present, but also with my referrals and even to new leads who have taken the opportunity to opt in to my business. I always recommend a few key points when you're looking at developing a relationship.
Consider yourself - are you a friend or are you a foe? I'm going to encourage you to be a friend rather than to be the cold hearted salesman down the road who’s trying to sell you a secondhand car. Be the friend. Be someone that people can come to learn to trust know and respect.
Another thing you need to be aware of when you're reengaging is that you're not there to push your products or your services. You're not there to sell. You're there to allow the opportunity for engagement to take place. We all hate it when businesses try to push the hard sell on us. Rather than the hard sell, just provide that opportunity for people to reconnect and decide if they still want to hear from you.
When you are reengaging, make sure that you have no more than three newsworthy items. All of us are super-duper busy. You're really looking at any form of email in a newsletter, or conversation, or communication to be no longer than three to five minutes. As long as it takes for you to brush your teeth, wipe your mouth, and clean your face - three to five minutes.
The reason being is that the length of time that maybe someone's got to spare in between meetings. That gives them time to read that while they're on the bus if they're catching public transport, or it's a great one for them to sit down and relax with. Keep it short, sweet, punchy, friendly, and to the point.
You could also look at other communication channels to align with re-engaging for your customers. For example, you can invite them down to you to book an appointment with you, or you could ask them if you could phone them.
There's a number of other things for ways that you can also include. Maybe you can suggest that they go to your website, or LinkedIn or your Facebook page. Wherever possible, include relevant links for them to reconnect with you, to reengage with you and to find out about how you’re going.
Remember, you're offering them the opportunity to self select whether they're hot or not for you. Ideally you want them to be hot for you, so let them enjoy you.
Here are five ideas to help you re-engage with your audience.
There are examples that you'll see in the video presentation of a re-engagement process. This process is really just sending an email, and then you'll find that four things will happen.
For those that open your email, just tag them with a 're-engage' so that you know which people still want to talk to you.
All 'bounces' and 'unsubscribes' should be removed from the list. Don't hold onto these. It's okay. they'll come back around to you when the time is right.
If people haven't opened your email, don't worry about it. Just resend the email 10 days later. Maybe they're really busy. Maybe they haven't had the opportunity to get to your email. It's really that simple. Don't be afraid if people don't come back to you straight away. It's okay. Remember, your database is just as busy as we are.
So a few things for you to consider:
- What do you want to achieve from re-engaging your audience?
- Which option could you use as the re-engagement offer?
- Who is going to update and maintain this strategy?
- How do you propose to use the data you collect?
You've now gone through re-engaging some of your database. You've had some people opt out. You've had some people bounce. That's fine. You've now got a database of people who have opened, or they have yet to engage with you. Fantastic. I commend you. Now it's time for us here to go into repurposing our contact.
And what does that mean? What does it mean when want to repurpose our database? There's a few key things here for us.
So when you're repurposing through your database segmentation, here's a few key things I want you to be aware of.
For example, you've cleaned up your database and you've realised that actually you've actually got 50 customers out of a database of 500. These are people who have purchased a product or service from you in the past. That's a different kind of conversation you're going to have with that customer database, because they've already invested in you, they purchased your product or your service.
Let's say you find out that you've got a hundred people that have come through to you from your newsletter or they've come through to you from your LinkedIn. These people are yet to really understand the quality of the solutions that you provide. The way that you communicate to these people is going to be very different.
Irrespective of the groups that you're talking to, and irrespective of the message that you're sending them, I'm going to encourage you to personalise it.
This is where you can start to find out more about them. What makes them tick? What kind of sports do they like? What kind of products do they like? Are they into technology. By doing so you create a greater consumer insight and therefore you become much more trusted solution than someone who just wants to constantly sell. This is how you go about increasing your sales conversion.
There are three things for us when we're data segmenting,
Outline how you want the database to be segmented. Do you want it to be customers current/past? Are they multiple buyers from you? Have they only bought once from you and never again.
Maybe you've got a database that's all about referrers. These are people who are absolutely raving lunatics for you. They love your business and they tell everybody about your business. Just on this point, you need to have quite a lot of referrers in your business. These are the people who are selling you to their contacts and their connections. They're a free sales rep. The more referrals that you've got inside your business, the more profitable your business can be.
Create tags to establish more specific targeting. For example, where are they based geographically? Are they a small business? Are they in tourism? Do they have staff? What are their interests? You create this so that you can have a greater understanding.
The final part is to gather customer data. We're talking about demographic data, geographic data, psychographic data. The psychographic is their buying behavior, and consumer insights. What makes them tick? What motivates them to actually want to buy from you? What's the driving force behind that?
Then they're activity data. How often do they engage with you and do they open up your conversations or communications? Have they transferred onto your LinkedIn page or your Facebook page? And they're now engaging with you there.
In the presentation you'll find an example of what the database segment actually looks like. I've mapped this out for you in a way where you can look at this for your own business and see what you have regarding: customers, previous customers, prospects, etc.
Also included in the presentation (download below) is an example of Your Marketing Machines database. We've broken this down into five key areas: Subscribers, Leads, Opportunities, Customers, Referrers.
Let's say for example, you build websites, or you're a marketing company, and you may charge $5,000 for a website build. You can now then potentially sell Facebook advertising. They may now refer a colleague to you. So not only are they a customer they're now also a referrer and then so on and so on.
So the key here is remember, love on your customers. Cause I can guarantee it. They will love on you.
- Identify how you want your database to be segmented
- Which contacts belong in which segment (start with customers first)
- Where does my leads currently come from?
- What are the cross-purpose opportunities in your business?
Now we come to, how do you retain your customer database? Remember you've spent thousands of dollars to get the starter base. You have worked hard. You've done countless hours of networking events. So it's time to get in there.
So let's strengthen that communication. Why would you want to retain your database? Simply because it's the potential for you to add on new products or services for your current customers. Think of the previous example of the website built, and now adding on Facebook advertising. You can transition from a one off buy to suddenly having a customers become multiple purchases from you. That's how you increase your profitability inside your business.
It's a great way for you to gain recommendations and testimonials to build your reputation. The key here guys is credibility and reputation go hand in hand.
Customers actually transitioned into becoming referrers for you. Because I want you to understand that the lifetime value of a new referral customer is 16% higher than that of your average customer.
Examples of retention strategies
Examples of retention strategies for your customers can include:
- Follow up post product service delivery: How did they go? That's something you should always do within the first 10 to 14 days of actually selling your product or service.
- Promote your customer: This is a great retention strategy. Promote your customer, talk about their business, what they do and the solutions they bring to the market space. Not only will your customer thank you, but because you've now taken the proverbial eye off you and you've put the spotlight on your customer, anybody else who's watching you is going to notice what you are doing to promote your clients.
- Set up reminders to check in on a regular basis: As mentioned before, check in every 14 to 30 days with your clients to make sure that they're going okay.
- Start gathering additional information: Think about their hobbies, the places that they like to travel, personal interests
- Invite to special events and ask them to bring a friend.
Other examples of retention strategies could include:
- What retention strategies could I put in place today for my current and ex customers?
- What retention strategies could I put in place today to communicate effectively to my contacts?
- What automation options are available for me within my current CRM System?
Automation is the key. There's just a few software integrations that I'm going to encourage that you look at to help streamline your communication.
Why are you here? I'm hoping that you're wanting to increase your sales conversion from your current database. I'm really hoping that you want to create more referral partners through your database, because that is a sure way of being able to create longevity in your business. I'm really hoping that you want to establish stronger relationships with your database, so that they're not just a contact, but they're actually somebody that you will invariably end up doing business with. And I hope that you're wanting to seek cross promotional opportunities with what you've got.
As I mentioned the marketing blueprint, which will be a part of these presentations. You can go back and refer to the marketing blueprint and identify where it is that you're actually positioning your marketing inside your business using the marketing blueprint.