Businesses are always seeking new ways to better build customer loyalty and benefit from repeat business to grow profits. January is the perfect time to review your approach to loyalty building and consider new approaches if yours aren’t quite hitting the mark.
Invest in Analytics
At the heart of your marketing activity, you should have serious resources and investment geared towards your analytics. Make sure you really understand your customers’ life cycle. Segment your customer groups by their stage in that cycle and understand what their behaviours are at each of those stages.
Make sure your research is using data from customer feedback, product purchase and usage, support and complaint cases and payment data in order to pinpoint indicators of churn. It can be well worth using an agency to help you to create a strong data capture and analytics framework, and you may need to train your staff and invest in the right systems to allow you to do this. The results will be powerful, however, and ensure that everything you do is measurable and can be justified.
Develop a Strong Communications Programme
Your customers should be given the opportunity to tell you how and when they want to hear from you, and this information must be leveraged. Create a programme of events, letters, special offers, phone contacts, loyalty rewards and other engagement points to communicate your offer and its value and build profitable relationships with your customers. Seek ways to create communities as part of this to bring your customers together and share their ideas and feedback on your products. Social networks and online communities are a great way of doing this. Try business loyalty apps such as http://mynt-apps.co.uk/ for support with this.
Align Your Operations
Make sure your business marketing function is aligned with your product, support and customer service teams. This is essential to ensure that the promises you are making as a marketer are being delivered by the operation. Remember that business reputation is key and delivery against promises will result in long-term profits and success. Your customers must understand what they can expect from you through your messaging and positioning, and then you must commit to delivering that to them in the most compelling, value-adding way – one that ensures they come back time and time again.