So you got a prospective customer or client lead to give you their email address and your email campaigns have begun their automated routine… “Take Our Survey”, “This Weeks Newsletter”, “New Product. 20% OFF”. Is that a good “customer experience”?

All too often a companies marketing strategy with their leads are to ask, ask, ask, sell, sell, sell. This creates a scenario where your emails fall into the same category as the rest of them, the junk folder. In order to stand out and create a stellar customer experience, you need to make yourself stand out. Going above and beyond on this simple idea can pay back in dividends. In this article, our founder Brent Bardales shares his three ways to improve your customers experience.

Ruining Your Customer Experience – What Not To Do:

The typical customer experience laid out by companies large or small are very simple and similar. They consist of 3 main components: Newsletters, Sales Calls/Emails, and Invoices.

1. Newsletters

Newsletters can be a great way to keep your company top of mind and stay in front of your customers on a consistent basis. You can deliver awesome content that engages the reader. Now lets assume that the reader clicks a link in the newsletter. Your website opens, and the page takes 15 seconds to load. That is an immediate deterrent for the user and they will likely leave your site before the pages loads, or they will leave the website after they have to wait for another page to load.
This is where SEO plays a major role in your user experience. Having specific parameters in place on your website to optimize page load speeds improves usability and customer experience is a necessity to any successful website and marketing strategy.

2. Sales Calls/Emails

We get it, sales calls and emails are a necessary evil. Even we do them from time to time. However, you know how annoying these can be. For obvious reasons, they shouldn’t be your only sales tactic.

Get out a pen and paper, because this is one of the best tips that we can give you. A piece of advice that I received years ago was to never start a sales campaign with a sale. Instead of starting your customer experience journey trying to sell something to the customer, try first delivering valuable content for free to the customer on the initial touchpoint. More on that below when we talk about creating engaging content.

3. Invoices

You may be asking, why are invoices bad? The short answer is, they aren’t. You need money to continue operating a business. However, these emails can be extremely impersonal and create an awkward tension between your company and your customers. The best thing you can do with invoices is to personalize the delivery and make it less about asking for the bill to be paid, and more about your appreciation for their patronage.

Improving Your Customer Experience – What To Do:

1. Connect With Your Prospective Customer On A Personal Level

When your customers are still a “lead” and have not yet converted, you have to make yourself stand out against the rest of the companies. There are countless ways to do this, but here are a few of my favorite ways to convert your leads into paying customers.

• You may have heard the term, “put a face to the name” – Call your customers on the phone and introduce yourself personally. This will give you the opportunity to learn more about them and create a bond that entices them to want to support.
• Walk the fine line of getting personal – Connect with them or follow them on social media. This exposes your company or yourself to your customers which gains their trust.

2. Stay In Touch With The Customer Even After The Sale

One of the most common reasons companies can’t retain long term customers is because they focus on the sale and forget to focus on their paying customers. These customers pay your bills, pay attention to them!

• Continue the positive, personal experience they initially bought into.
• Continue to provide regular updates whether it is by phone or via email marketing.

3. Create Engaging Content

Spamming your customers with useless content is going to do nothing for your sales but hurt them. Customers want what they are paying for, and what they aren’t paying for.

• When sharing any content with your customers, it needs to be valuable. If you’re sending a newsletter, make sure it is content that will tech them something new (like our Blog). If it’s a sales email, be sure that it is a product that will solve a problem for them.
• Providing “free” value can be a great driver of customer retention. That means going above and beyond what they are paying for. Also described as giving your customers “what they are not paying for”. Deliver them a eBook, or a free sample of your product. This will create customer satisfaction beyond their expectation.

Get Advice From The Experts

Customer experience is a crucial component to any businesses ability to effectively market and promote their products or services.
If you need help with the digital customer experience within your company, contact us here.
We will help you build your customer experience process effectively and increase customer acquisition and retention. Who doesn’t like a little bit more business? We know you do!