It's more important
than ever that the last component of your successful internet marketing
mix is being monitored and managed, namely traffic, conversion and.....
R-E-T-E-N-T-I-O-N.
When I talk about
loyalty marketing with clients, they immediately think of Tescos and loyalty
cards. And why not - they're hugely successful!
MKLINK offers card
and cardless loyalty technology by the way - register your interest at
http://www.mklink.net
But for the rest of us, loyalty simply means keeping clients for longer,
spending more with you and recommending more people to your business.
And to do it successfully, online or offline, you firstly need to :
Identify WHAT
you want to achieve (see below).
Do IT.
Track it.
Identifying what you
want to achieve might be a single goal e.g. making people spend more with
you per purchase or it might be several goals :
Increase average
transactional value #1.(Upselling)
Increase average
transactional value #2.(Cross-selling)
Increase frequency
of purchases.
Increase longevity
of average client term.
Increase numbers
of client referrals.
Increase numbers
of client testimonials & feedback score.
(By the way, make
a mental note: try to start calling people who buy from you 'clients'
instead of customers. It forces you to think in terms of a longer term
relationship, rather than a one-off transaction.)
So, once you know
what you want to achieve, you need to put strategies in place (see below)to
achieve them. But like ALL aspects of internet marketing, you need to
test & measure to know which strategies are working and which aren't.
So start measuring your metrics BEFORE you launch a loyalty campaign otherwise
you'll be running blind.
Ok - there's millions
of things you can do to keep clients loyal. Good service and regular contact
are the bywords of course. Here's a quick list of 10 :
1) Keep Your
Website Content Fresh & Useful. The reason that the BBC website does so well is because it's
got so much stuff on it which is constantly being updated. It doesn't
try and sell stuff (But if it did...wow!) it constantly gives great information.
Your clients are looking to you for information. Keep giving it to them
- constantly - and they'll come back again for more.
2) Use Email
to Communicate New Content. This is why I keep harping on that you must capture data about
your clients. The primary purpose of your website is to start a relationship
- not to sell. That way, you can email once a month or so forever and
every time you can encourage people to come back to your website again
and again and again.
Remember to personalise your email.
3) Be Newsworthy
It might be that you run a regular competition and that people can sign
up to see if thieve won or not. You might offer free consultations on
a regular basis.
Perhaps occasional teleseminars or webinars would be worth running.
Whatever business you're in, you can run some kind of "event".
Anything from a cheese and wine evening to a free promo-shoot for weddings.
Anything is possible and everything can be explored.
4) Run an
Affiliate Programme. You can ask people to drive visitors to your website and pay
them per lead, sale, signup or visitor. Each month you can run different
promotions to encourage your affiliates to have an extra push to drive
people to your site.
Reward your hard-working affiliates with bonuses that they weren't expecting.
treat them well - like you would do any other commission-only sales people.
5) Leverage
Social Marketing. Enable clients, suppliers and staff to really engage with your
business. Sites like YouTube enable you to demonstrate people, services,
testimonials, products in fact whatever you want. Setup your own TV channel!
Facebook is great for REAL interaction, polls, quizzes and feedback.
Twitter is good for broadcasting stuff as it happens and helping people
stay in touch with you. All your tweets, YouTube updates etc can link
back to your website if you need to engage with clients on your site.
Try and keep Facebook people within Facebook though - good manners.
6) Offer Incentives
& Loyalty Points Like I said, it works for Tescos. Have a system in place to reward
people to regular purchases. Have a "preferred clients club".
Give people discounts, coupons (virtual or real) or web-tokens for :
Regularly returning
to your website.
Regular purchases.
Regular attendances
to webinars, seminars.
Regularly interacting/participating
on polls, questionnaires, surveys etc.
Regular contributions
to your blog, forum etc.
7) Give Clients
Visibility (Especially B2B Clients)
Promote your clients. Make showcases of them. "This is how we helped
ABC Company" etc.
Link to them on your newsletters, blog etc.
Interview your clients and put the interview on your website/blog/newsletter.
Give them some visibility and they'll reward you with loyalty. Simple.
8) Thank Your
Clients. Often.
Send out a "thank-you" card to all new clients and occasional,
random treats to longer established ones. Or a box of chocolates. Or a
bottle of wine. Or anything applicable.
Brand gifts where possible to get more value over a longer period of time
from them. E.g. a branded pen in a presentation box.
Too tight fisted or too expensive to give real gifts? Just a personalised
email is better than nothing at all and shows that you care.
You can even buy "virtual" gifts. Seriously - Google it.
9) Use Business
Intelligence.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM's) these days are much more powerful,
integrated and affordable. They enables you to intelligently segment your
client base depending on type, spend amount, geographic location, age
of account etc.
You can use business intelligence to largely automate, yet nevertheless
personalise your communications.
So, if you sell insurance, don't just wait a week before the renewal date
is due. Be SMART. You could send people personalised birthday emails/cards/presents
for example. You can send them news items about their type of car, boat
etc.
How impressed would you be if your insurance agent emailed you with news
about a product safety recall about your type of car? Hardly rocket science
but very do-able. Again the list is endless and again MKLINK can help
you if you need it.
10) Become
a Client of Theirs.
You need to buy products and services right? Get them from your clients.
An obvious, if often overlooked strategy.
Not only can you usually negotiate better terms but it makes people think
twice before leaving you for another supplier just because they might
save a couple of quid.
Use your annual supplier/price review sessions to turn the conversation
around and upsell/cross sell to them and deepen your business relationship.
Plenty more loyalty
tips where these came from...why not get in touch and see how we can help
with your client loyalty programmes?
Register for a no-obligation, complimentary consultation today :