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The art of driving ROI from customer engagement
How can you make the most of all the customers you gain from your website traffic? The answer lies in being able to combine the elements so you can make a return on investment (ROI).
If that sounds difficult or too complex, don’t worry. It’s not nearly as challenging as you might think. Getting an ROI from customers who come to your site and take time to like, comment or share your content, is easy.
This post will help you learn exactly what those are and how you can leverage them to your advantage. Focusing on these elements will help you see an ROI in no time.
Use data to understand your customers
Before you can earn revenue from your customers, you have to take time to understand them. After all, you can’t design anything if you don’t know who you’re talking to.
Fortunately, this is where technology comes to the rescue. With the right tools, you’ll be able to understand more about your customers through data gathering.
For instance, having lots of shares and comments on your site is excellent. But if you’re not tracking the engagement data, the likes and shares don’t give you any insight into your actual customer base. Without this insight, you will not have any direction as to how you can improve your services.
Data gathering can help you uncover details about your visitors and buyers. This can include things like where they’re located, what they’re looking for, the most loyal customers, and the ones who visit your site most frequently.
You can then use this information to target relevant information to your customers. For instance, if the majority of your customers are from the United States, you can use that knowledge to speak more directly to their geographic region, and also tailor your communication in a way that your content is more personalized.
That kind of effort is always noticed and appreciated by your customers, and they will feel more connected to your brand, and are more likely to be loyal to it.
Not only are loyal customers your biggest advocates, it is far more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to retain your existing ones.
Leveraging the right data to make your product more specialized to your audience, means attracting more buyers, which equals more ROI for your business. That’s why when it comes to customer engagement, data talks.
To illustrate, let’s look at this statistic. Medallia collected data that shows that in a single transaction, the most loyal brand customers of a leading apparel chain spend 15% more than those who aren’t brand loyal.
Brand loyalty also carries benefits in the long-term. For instance, brand advocates visit you 10% to 15% more and spend about the same percentage more than customers who feel impartial about their shopping experiences with you.
When you consider these statistics, it only makes sense to use customer experience management tools to understand what customers like, what they don’t, and how to connect with them on a deeper level to foster brand loyalty.
This runs parallel to our next key point.
Know your customers on a personal level
No one likes to be grouped with the masses. Everyone enjoys feeling special and being recognized as an individual. That doesn’t change when it comes to digital interactions. To score an ROI, you’ll need to make every effort to ensure your customers feel appreciated and unique.
The only way to recognize them and appreciate them as individuals is to know them as individuals. While that may seem like it’s a feat too tedious to achieve or much more easily accomplished through in-person interactions, don’t worry. There are tools what will make this process easier, coupled with the help of data-driven engagement platforms. For example, they can tell you how your customers interact with your site.
Are they most frequently contacting you through email? App? Via text?
A good customer engagement management (CEM) system will also give you details about individuals, such as how much they’ve spent with you till date, how frequently they visit your site, how long they’ve been members with you, and what products they routinely purchase from you.
Using this information, you can then design content specifically for the right people and deliver it to them through the proper channels.
For instance, you can personalize rewards for them based on their tastes, like offering them a free box of their favorite donuts on their birthday, because that’s the flavor of donuts your data indicates they routinely buy.
Also, if you know a customer engages most frequently with you through your app versus desktop, you can feed targeted specials or messages to them through these preferred channels.
Doing this also ensures you’re not missing out on communicating with them by sending them messages in one medium when they usually interact with you in another.
Again, being able to know your customers well enough to tailor your approach to them will show them you care. And when they sense your attention and focus on them, they’ll be more likely to give both their loyalty and business to you willingly.
Give your best customers VIP treatment
True, everyone loves to feel special, but the ones you should make feel most special are those most loyal to you.
Data can reveal which of your customers fall into this category. And once you know who they are, you should make every effort to reward them for that loyalty. Why? Because according to statistics, 20% of your customers drive approximately 80% of your revenue. And that 20% is your most loyal customers.
Offering VIP specials, first dibs on sales, and other such exclusive perks can go a long way in making a substantial impact on your ROI.
To do this, first identify your most loyal customers, then leverage data analytics to get to know more about them (age, gender, demographic, location, etc.). Once you have all this information, you can then determine a customized way to offer rewards.
If you’re not sure quite how to choose which customers to reward for their loyalty, you might consider those who fall into the falling categories:
The ones who frequent you the most
The ones who spend the most
The ones who have been around the longest
Once you’re able to categorize your customers into the above groups, you can then choose how to segment them further.
For instance, you can choose to reward groups by spend thresholds. This is particularly a great option if your customer mix comprises mostly of millennials. This generation most enjoys a rewards/loyalty program, which inclines them to continue being loyal to your brand.
In fact, 22% of millennials indicated rewards programs as a brand loyalty driver more than any other generation surveyed.
So if you don’t have a way to reward your top customers just yet, that should definitely be an item on your to-do list. Especially if you want to see a positive impact on your ROI.
Leverage engagement to your advantage by encouraging feedback
When customers are on your site engaging with you, collecting their feedback can really help boost your business and your ROI. A best practice is to collect this feedback in real-time, when it’s most effectively given and received. Chat boxes or pop up ratings, for example, allow customers to quickly offer their thoughts. Plus they’re tools that are affordable, simple, effective, and easy-to-implement.
Aside from providing you with insight into how you can drive customer satisfaction and improve your business, feedback has another positive perk. Generally, those who you’re able to gather feedback from are those who end up spending more with your company.
Also, by collecting feedback to drive future improvements, you can ensure future customer satisfaction, which is also proven to boost ROI. On average, a whopping 86% of customers are willing to pay more for great customer experience. And you won’t know their definition of a great experience unless you ask.
Keep up with your data to track your progress with ROI
You now know several different ways you can boost your ROI for the long term. But perhaps the most important of all is to test your efforts.
As you’re implementing different tactics to increase your returns, keep track of whether those tactics are actually working and also how well they’re working. That way you’ll know which ones to keep up with and which ones, potentially, to abandon in exchange for another tactic.
Here are some metrics to track so you can measure improvements over your past performances:
- Return customers: track how much you’ve made from customers who left for a while but who you won back through your customer engagement efforts.
- The number of loyalty customers: see how many of your customers have stayed with you for a considerable period (defined by you).
- Number of high-spend customers: count the number of customers who are spending the most at your business.
- Number of frequent visitors: customers who regularly pay you a visit are likely to buy more regularly from you as well, so keep up with them. But also be sure to track how/whether their visits correlate with their spend levels.
Conclusion
As you can see, earning an ROI from people who are already loyal to your site and brand isn’t nearly as difficult as it may initially appear. All it takes is a little strategy, the right customer engagement analytics
tools, and some patience. Ultimately, you’ll be surprised at how far these things can go.
Earning ROI from your customer engagement basically boils down to a few key factors: being able to leverage data, knowing your customers personally, rewarding the ones most loyal (remember, the ones who spend the most account for the majority of your ROI), soliciting feedback (preferably in real-time, like through live chat) and keeping up with your progress.
Stick true to these tips, and you’ll see your customer engagements reward you in the form of ROI in no time.
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Texting is one of the most used forms of communication. In the United States alone, 5.5 billion text messages are sent daily. So maybe it’s not so much of a surprise that your customers want to be able to text your business when they need support. Few things are more frustrating than when you’re trying to solve a problem and just end up sitting on hold. And texting offers an alternative for you and your customers. If your business doesn’t already offer texting support, then here are the nine reasons you should.. 1. Customers spend a lot of time on their phones People in the U.S. spend an average of 3 hours and 10 minutes on their cell phones each day. Mobile commerce, or purchases made on mobile devices, is expected to account for 45 percent of the total market in the U.S. by the end of 2020, according to Business Insider . Besides people using their phones for more than personal communication and shopping, they are also working from their phones. All of this points to the fact that your customers are already spending more time on mobile than anywhere else. And nothing is more accessible to a mobile user than texting. So it is high time that your business starts texting your existing support. Meet your customers where they are. 2. Your customers prefer texting Now that we know customers are already on their phones, but does that also mean they want to text businesses? Yes. Customers want to be able to text your support team simply because they prefer texting over long-winded support calls. Reportedly, 52 percent of customers prefer texting over other support communication channels. Another reason why texting should be preferred is that it has a 98 percent open rate . That means your customers will read your message nearly every time, which only makes it easier for you to resolve all of your customers’ support questions. If you meet your customers where they want to talk they’ll view your business more favorably too. Research shows that 65 percent of consumers feel positive toward businesses that they have the option to message. 3. Speed The average response time for texting is just 90 seconds. On top of that, 95 percent of texts are read within the first three minutes of being received. This is way quicker than your average email response time and thus will make your customer feel valued. Part of what can help to speed this process up is a good texting platform that your customer support team can work with. Such a platform can host all of the support messages, where they can see, respond to, or share messages. Some texting platforms like Textline can even integrate with your favorite customer support tools like Freshdesk and Slack. These integrations make responding and managing customer support requests easier. Another reason why texting is simply better when it comes to speed is that texts are inherently short. You’re limited to 160 characters and so are your customers. Realistically, there’s only so much one can squeeze into one text that naturally forces the sender to keep the message simple and clear. 4. Reduced active wait Customers don’t like waiting. Nearly 60 percent of customers said they would hang up if put on hold for more than a minute. Texting eliminates that hold time and gives your customers more of their day back. The beauty of texting is that it’s quick, convenient, and doesn’t interrupt your customer’s day. Texting also comes with built-in expectations around timing and the natural flow of conversations. While responses are expected, there’s an understanding that it may take a bit of time. This differs from live chat, which expects near-instant replies. With texting, even if you think there might be a wait for getting your customers some help, you can use a simple text to let your customers know that you are working on an answer but it might take a bit of time. This will help them to continue with their day without sitting by the phone waiting. Let’s look at the following example of one such situation.
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