Staying connected is one of the hardest but, at the same time, most straightforward things to do today. On the one hand, you can just take out your phone and call someone or quickly pop over a text on Instagram. On the other hand, our brain is full of ideas and tasks, so when we can find the time to reconnect, we often forget to do so or use the time for ourselves.
Covid showed us how fragile our personal connections are and how much effort it can take to stay in contact.
Instead of calling all your colleagues and family members regularly, you focus on the closest ones. The same goes for brand loyalty. About 60% of people say they are loyal to 1 to 5 brands. The pressure of standing out is high, but by making sure to stay connected to your customers, you can quickly become one of these.
Staying connected right after the purchase
The purchase is made, the item is shipped, now the process of forgetting slowly begins. The longer out of sight, the more out of mind. But with some simple tricks and clever timing, you can stay in your customer's head.
Delivery updates
Providing your customers with branded delivery updates takes the recent brand recognition customers got from your website and drags it further on throughout the post-purchase process. Give your customers the chance to plan ahead, by providing them with tracking updates while connecting this positive feeling with your brand. Branded tracking pages can effortlessly close the gap between the purchase and the arrival of the item. Marketing emails after the purchase can easily be seen as annoying or unliked. On the other hand, a branded tracking page and delivery updates give the customer the information they want with an outstanding design they won't forget.
Personalised experience
You can implement a personalised experience in pretty much every stage of the purchase, including the post-purchase process. Personalisation doesn't have to be based on insane amounts of data and programming to determine one's slightest personal detail. Personalisation can just be mentioning a name or sending over a coupon on their birthday. Combined with a delivery update, it could mean sending over the tracking link in an email addressed to the customer by name.
Simple things like that are going to make your business stand out against your competitors. They will stick in the customer's heads.
Follow up survey
Staying connected doesn't mean pestering your customers day in day out. Getting overwhelmed by messages isn't fun for anyone. No matter if it's a group chat that is kicking off or marketing emails rolling in. Staying connected to your customers means having a conversation. Talking as well as reacting to their reply are all parts of it. Follow-up surveys are a great way to determine how your customer feels about your business and what you could improve. Suppose they don't fit into your target group and maybe just bought one of your items as a gift for someone else. In that case, the retention efforts might find more success with another customer. Follow up surveys help you improve your business, find out more about your customer base and stay in contact. It is one of the easiest and straightforward possibilities of improvement.
Longterm connection
A customer doesn't become a loyal customer in a matter of two days. You don't need a new hoover every month. Requiring a loyal customer takes time. Staying in contact with the customer from the purchase on makes it more accessible in the long run. However, later on, you can still take action to remind your customers and stay connected more.
Social Media
How can you write a blog post about staying connected without mentioning social media!? Social media is the connecting link between short term connections and long-term connections. By providing your customers with your social media channels right from the beginning on, social media can become your way of showing off new products, giving business insights and interacting with customers in comments, likes or dm's right away. Social media allows you to become a part of your customers every day to day life. When you appear again and again in their newsfeed, they keep getting reminded of your brand and might purchase rather sooner than later.
Your branded tracking page is the best place to add your social media channels. The purchase is made, so the person getting the tracking link already is a customer. The branded tracking page reminds them of your business and your brand. The social media channels on this branded tracking page give them the last final push to finally start to follow you.
Entertainment
Entertainment can be seen as part of social media. Still, all social media might be a form of entertainment, but not all entertainment is social media. By offering online workshops or having a podcast, you provide your customers with more reasons why they would stay connected to your business. Especially when your business is based on a seasonal sale, staying connected throughout the rest can be very hard. By entertaining, you can keep your customers hooked even without a deal on Christmas tree decoration. Just like personalisation, you don't need a million-dollar studio to provide your customers with some great content. Trim videos, how-to's or a podcast can easily do the job.
Be Transparent
Entertainment and transparency can be closely connected by giving your customers a view behind the scenes. Stay true to your brand and your brand values and be brave with it. Show what you do, why you do it and solidify your core values.
Being transparent doesn't mean showing all company secrets and numbers to the world. Just like you wouldn't publish your personal bank account details, neither should you publish your businesses finances.
Being transparent talks more about your experience, your personality, your team and your work process. When people are interested in your product, chances are they are also interested in how the product is made.
Good Customer Service
Customer service is one of the most critical and yet overlooked parts of owning a business. It's not uncommon for people to remember a company that offered them an outstanding customer service experience. You don't need tons of money to do so either. Self-serving solutions like an updated FAQ page help improve your customer service a lot. Heaving a seamless post-purchase process would, of course, do so too, but sometimes errors happen to everyone. You know that and so do your customers. Keep them updated if an error occurs and allow them to react to it. With Siid, you can message the buyer at every stage of the process. You can give the customer further updates and offer them the best post-purchase experience they can imagine.
Book a demo now and stay connected to your customers at every step of the way with Siid.
