Author: Marketing Team

Denial followed by fear and panic are the three feelings that were experienced by mostly everyone and every business during the first week. Now that it is a month plus into it, the only thing constant is change. We’re all learning to quickly adapt, both personally and professionally. But if we learned anything from previous crises (no matter how different they were), businesses that acted fast and stayed engaged with their customers ended up big-time winners.

With that in mind, we thought that it might be useful to share some general marketing, CRM and loyalty guidelines during these unusual times.

1. Exercise Generosity with your Loyalty Program
   If you are running one, try to be more generous and extend the expiry dates. If you don’t have one, now is the time to start thinking about one.
2. Sense-Check your Automated Marketing
   If you have any automated communication switched-on, now it is time to sense-check it and make sure that it is relevant to this period. Don’t ignore to tackle the new customer journeys that were created during this period.
3. Review your Scheduled Marketing Campaigns
   Acknowledging that your customers (like all of us) are dealing with major disruptions, you need to review the creative and copy of your scheduled marketing campaigns and consider instead sending more empathetic and less opportunistic messages. Determine which ones to pause now, and which ones to pivot or prioritize.
4. Switch Part of your Promotional Budget to Creating Useful Content
   Try to educate, entertain, or inspire your customers with useful content that will help them in their everyday #staying-in life. We have seen and are currently evaluating many catchy and engaging ideas with our partners, across all industries.
5. Re-Imagine with your Customers the World Post-Covid-19
   I am sure you are spending a lot of time and energy imagining that world. Who isn’t? It might be worth it to survey your customers and include them in this thought process.  The answers might surprise you and will definitely provide you with invaluable insights for the upcoming period.
6. Plan…plan…plan
   Remember the quarantine and lockdown won’t last forever. So start preparing for the following period thoughtfully and proactively. Make use of your partners resources to bounce ideas, brainstorm and plan; in order to be fully ready when things go back to normality.
   

We wish everyone health and safety during this unusual time. Don’t forget to get in touch with us here if you would like to brainstorm ideas related to your specific business.

If your brand sells consumable products in any way, then automated replenishment one-to-one campaigns should be your best friend.

Replenishment campaigns is a proven tactic to encourage customers in a highly personalized and relevant manner to re-purchase or re-order before they run out.
They drive higher engagement and therefore increased revenues from loyal customers.

What are the types of purchases that benefit from replenishment campaigns? 

• Sanitizing products (especially these days 😉)
• Cosmetics, makeup and beauty products
• Pet food
• Toiletries
• Certain types of apparels that need replacements like running shoes, sports apparel, underwear
• Office supplies
• Household products
• Edible products
• Many more

Why set up automated replenishment communication?

They provide a significant lift in revenues from returning customers and offer an EXCEPTIONAL customer experience at the same time. Who hasn’t felt frustrated
upon running out of something they now need?

Replenishment campaigns keep customers loyal. They remind them to buy from your brand vs your competitor. Such automated one-to-one campaigns are part of
the post-purchase product specific journey.

Here are a few tips to deliver an effective replenishment automated one-to-one campaign:

1. Send them a few days before the product needs to be replaced.
   How can you determine that period? You can start by sending them using the average purchase cycle of loyal customers, and then enhance along the way. Whatever you do, don’t leave it until the customer actually runs out. It’s best to send your replenishment campaign before your customers have a chance to buy competitors’ products.
2. Make sure the content of your replenishment campaign is relevant and with a call-to-action (re-purchase or re-order)
   The campaign has to personalized, clear that it is for product replenishment with full details and eye-catching pictures about the product, clear links to customer support, and clearer Call-To-Action (CTA) to re-purchase or re-order.
3. Include other related products
   Use this opportunity to cross-sell other related products or alternatives. You can personalize your campaign with dynamic content based on previous purchases.
4. Use multi-channel campaign manager
   Multi-channel in this case has proved to be 30% more effective. You can coordinate such campaigns through SMS (with links), Emails, Web and Social to have maximum impact.

If you’re looking to increase customer retention rate, more efficiently, make sure you’ve got replenishment automated campaigns sorted. They’re the most cost-efficient way to prompt a purchase and promote loyalty.

Want to find out more on how you can initiate replenishment automated campaigns? Contact us here, and don’t forget to keep safe and healthy!

You may be doing your best to attain the highest ROI on your marketing efforts. As a result of this, you are successful in getting your brand name out there and increase awareness on social media channels. But may be you are still struggling – like most brands – to effectively acquire, retain customers and turn them into loyalists and brand ambassadors.

Well the good news is that’s what Customer Lifecycle Marketing Automation is there for. Even though it was proven that it is the most effective tool to increase customer engagement, customer lifetime value, long-term retention and loyalty; a recent research by DemandMetric shows that only 20% of marketers are using this strategy today.

So, what is Customer Lifecycle Marketing Automation after all?

The Customer Lifecycle Marketing Automation starts by identifying the different stages of your customer lifecycle, then follow through by recognizing the stages customers are in their journey, and finally nurture them by providing the highest value at each stage they are at, in order to achieve your ultimate objective for each stage.

Each business or brand will have its own different customer lifecycle stages. However, this is a list of the most common ones, with marketing objective and some actionable tips for each:

Stage 1: Lead

• Definition: Showed interest by either visiting the store, or registered on the website, or attended an event, or clicked on your ad; but never purchased.
• Objective & actionable tips: The main objective is to encourage the leads to make their first purchase. This can be achieved through a series of welcoming or nurturing personalized messages, maybe with some incentives to encourage them to become customers.

Stage 2: New customer

• Definition: Made their first purchase through one of the brand channels whether offline or online.
• Objective & actionable tips: The main objective here is to make those customers buy again and become loyal.
  This can be achieved through a series of personalized “thank you” messages with certain incentives and relevant product/service recommendations based on their first purchase.

Stage 3: Frequent Customer

• Definition: Most important and valuable customers. They buy often.
• Objective & actionable tips: The main objective is to strengthen the relationship with these customers, make them feel special and appreciated. This can be achieved through inspirational be-spoke incentives, benefits or loyalty programs. Keep them engaged through personalized feedback.

Stage 4: At Risk Customer

• Definition: Used to be frequent customers but have not purchased for some time.
• Objective & actionable tips: The main objective is not to lose them. This can be achieved through a series of re-activation campaigns to win them back. Surveys can be very useful at this stage as well.

Stage 5: Lapsed Customer

• Definition: Lost customer who has not purchased for a very specific period of time.
• Objective & actionable tips: The main objective is to bring them back. This can be achieved through aggressive re-activation personalized campaigns to win them back.

Stage 6: Reactivated Customer

• Definition: Lost customer who responded to one of the reactivation campaigns and purchased for the first time after a long time.
• Objective & actionable tips: The main objective is similar to that of the new customer. The same tactic of the new customer stage can be used.

It is not accepted anymore to keep inundating our customers with irrelevant texts and offers. Customer Lifecycle Marketing Automation will immediately enable you to engage with your customers in a more personalized, relevant, timely, consistent and rewarding manner; which will warrant increased engagement and ultimately higher customer lifetime value.

Get started NOW and start seeing the BENEFITS immediately!