When do you engage with your customers? Is it only when you want to sell them something? If so, consider extending the conversation. Customers are more loyal when they feel that you care about them personally, not just the bottom line, so here are three ways to keep the conversation rolling.
1. Find a reason to touch base without a hard sell.
Send personalized notes and postcards at critical anniversaries. Celebrate customers’ birthdays, but also significant business relationship anniversaries, such as the date someone first becomes a customer. Some companies make these touches by email, but personalized cards and letters have far more impact.
2. Provide valuable information.
If you continue to receive real estate postcards even after you’ve purchased a home, it’s not that your realtor forgot to take you out of their database. It’s that they want to keep you informed of what is happening in your local market and allows them to stay in front of you until you are ready to look for a new home. Their postcards might offer suggestions for improving the curb appeal of your home, tricks for spring decluttering, or ideas for winterizing your garage. When your friends are looking for referrals or when your children are looking to purchase their first home, they want to be the first one you recommend. How could you use this strategy to your advantage?
3. Don’t let them get away.
Do you know when customers are starting to fade away? Maybe they buy fewer products from you, or maybe they do so less frequently. Perhaps they stopped engaging on social media or unsubscribed from your newsletter. Having triggers set up to alert you when a customer is in danger of becoming a lapsed customer is a great way to get in front of people before they turn to one of your competitors. Reaching out to those customers and re-engaging them with an enticing offer is much easier than trying to get them back once they’ve moved on.
Finding reasons to keep your customers engaged and to remember you will pay dividends when it’s time for them to buy.
