Don’t you wish engaging all your customers, and potential customers, was easy? These days it seems like there are a million different channels and tactics you can use for customer engagement and retention. But how do you know what works best so you don’t feel like you are just throwing money in a hole and hoping something works?
If you’re looking for smarter ways to engage all customers, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll discuss how you can go from unknown to personal relationships with your customers all while not breaking the bank.
How to engage Unknown customers
Let’s review what Unknown customers are. Unknown customers are individuals that are totally anonymous and you have little to no data about them. Surprisingly, the vast majority of many businesses customers fall into the “unknown customers” bucket.
For example, an Unknown customer may be someone who walks into your location and makes a purchase, but you don’t have a way of capturing any data about them. No name, no email address, no purchase tracking, no SKU level detail.
Businesses with an abundance of Unknown customers find customer engagement and retention difficult and may spend more time, energy, and money on customer acquisition costs.
You may be wondering, “wait…isn’t it important to have a solid new customer acquisition program?” Well, yes and no.
Every business must start somewhere and acquiring new customers can affect your bottom line, especially in the initial phases of your business. However, without a plan to turn new customers into repeat customers, you’re essentially throwing money down the drain.
In fact, 61% of SMBs report that more than half of their revenue comes from repeat customers, rather than new business. And, recruiting new customers costs five times as much as retaining current customers.
In short, the goal for Unknown customers should be turning them into Known customers. Companies that have a strong online presence have more tools accessible for learning about Unknown customers. This includes tracking with website cookies, promoting email subscriber forms, and pushing social sign-ins where it’s easy to collect data?
But, what about the brick and mortar stores? The best way to turn those Unknown customers into Known customers is to provide them with points of engagement where you can capture relevant data on.
We’ll talk about this more in a moment. For now, just remember to increase your bottom line, you must focus on capturing robust data about your Unknown customers so you can further engage them. The ultimate hope is to turn these customers into loyal customers because, on average, loyal customers are worth up to 10x as much as their first purchase.
How to engage Known customers
Known customers are customers you are connected to with the help of basic data like name, email address, and social media handles. For example, you may have an email marketing subscriber list, phone numbers, and/or a social media following. Each piece of data provides you with some insight into who your customers are as well as a way to connect with them (e.g., email, SMS, and social media).
With the help of basic data and digital marketing tools, you can connect with Known customers and send messages and offer promotions to engage them and have the opportunity to capture deeper insights and data about them so you can offer the most relevant and personalized experiences.
It’s easier to market to Known customers than it is to Unknown customers. However, without robust data, it remains difficult to identify your best and most loyal customers, create highly personalized messages, and to understand how your Known customers contribute to your bottom line.
As such, turning customers into Known customers is only half the battle.
To truly create a loyal customer base, you must delve a little deeper and create Personal Relationships.
How to get to Personal Relationships to engage your customers
Now that you’re familiar with the terms “Unknown” and “Known” customers, let’s explore what Personal Relationships are in the context of your business.
With the advent of smarter marketing technology and better data capture methods all rolled into intelligent customer engagement software, it’s now possible to truly understand your customers—so much so that it’s easy to not only identify your best customers but to engage them in a hyper-targeted and personal way that makes sense to both your business and your customers.
In other words, it’s now possible to build personal and ongoing relationships with your customers. When you have a personal relationship with customers, it’s easy to engage them individually, using data-driven, segmented communication to send the right message to the right person at the right time—and measure whether it actually worked in terms of revenue not just vanity metrics like opens and clicks.
With the help of a customer engagement platform like Thanx, you can easily turn those Unknown customers into Known customers, Known customers into Personal Relationships and into loyal, repeat business.
Wrap up
It’s no secret that the smartest way to engage customers is to develop personal relationships and brand advocates. Without robust data your customers and without a way to create relevant and personalized messages and experiences, your efforts can only get you so far.
To effectively grow your business and increase revenue, it’s time to stop flying blind and go from the unknown to personal relationships with your customers.
