At the core of every customer experience is customer engagement. Do you keep your customers captivated? Are they enjoying and furthering the experience? It not only helps your marketing reach a wider audience, it helps customers truly connect with the brand.
Just think about it—when a brand offers you points to get a discount on your next order, aren’t you more likely to avail that by becoming a return customer?
So it’s safe to say that customer engagement and customer experience management is an essential aspect of any successful marketing strategy.
It helps businesses build relationships with their customers, foster loyalty, and drive sales. So how do you go about getting started?
Here are 7 ways to engage your customers and get them to take action!
- Personalization
We all love when things are tailored just for us. In fact, Amazon does this brilliantly!
Personalization is all about tailoring marketing efforts to the specific needs and interests of individual customers.
As you’ve probably noticed, the recommendations you often get for products are based on what you purchased earlier, often intriguing you by showing you products that are relevant to your interests, but that you may not have thought about. This is a great way to cross-sell more products while offering customers value.
The best way to get started? Leverage data and technology to help you give your customers what they want! Start with tracking customer browsing and purchase history, and use that information to create personalized emails, recommendations, and other marketing materials.
Doing so helps customers feel seen and valued, increasing their satisfaction with the experience. Moreover, when done right, it makes you indispensable to them, aiding customer loyalty as well!
- Social media engagement
Want to build an authentic relationship with your customers? Social media allows you to do just that! Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram provide an excellent opportunity for businesses to connect with their customers in real-time.
By actively participating in conversations, responding to comments and messages, and sharing valuable content, businesses can build relationships with their customers and establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry. Today, social media has become a critical tool to not just connect with customers, but also address concerns.
So businesses can actually also use it to gather feedback and insights from their customers, identifying their blindspots and realigning priorities to improve experiences!
While social media engagement is critical, be sure to do your research first. Not all platforms are created equal, so depending on your business and target audience, one might be more valuable than the other.
For example, Instagram is more for a younger audience, whereas Facebook serves well with the older generation. LinkedIn is great for B2B customers, while TikTok is all about connecting authentically with the newer generation.
- Email marketing
Need to give customers an update? Do you have a new launch brewing?
Email marketing is a tried-and-true customer engagement strategy that can be highly effective when done well.
By sending targeted and personalized emails to customers, businesses can keep them informed about new products, promotions, and other important updates. To maximize the impact, start with segmenting your email lists based on customer interests and behaviors, and ensure that their emails are timely, relevant, and valuable.
However, one of the biggest dangers of email marketing is going overboard. If you’re sending your customers too many emails, especially irrelevant ones, you’re going to quickly see a drop in engagement with people unsubscribing from the list, or even marking the email as spam. This directly affects your server reputation and makes it difficult to reach new customers (even when they willingly sign up!)
- Customer loyalty programs
Make your customers feel like they can gain as much as they give.
Customer loyalty programs are a great way to reward customers for their ongoing business and encourage them to continue shopping with your brand.
You can do this in many ways, including rewards points, personalized discounts, or even exclusive offers.
After all, who doesn’t want to get a great discount, especially when it’s just for them?
Customer loyalty programs are a great way for customers to feel valued, helping businesses drive repeat business.
- Customer service
How often have you faced an issue with a brand or product and immediately reached out to customer support? In the age of getting things instantly resolved, we’re all used to getting the best customers service at the click of a button.
Today, it has become an essential for customer engagement. Great customer service – whether in store or online, can help address grievances immediately, aid customers in finding just what they’re looking for, and drive business.
When done right, it will build trust and establish your business as a customer-centric organization that customers can rely on.
The best customer service today goes beyond the traditional channels. After all, it’s important to be where the customers are. So in addition to phone and email routes, make it easy for your customers to reach out and connect with you via social media, chatbots, and other digital channels.
Not only will this increase your range of insights, you will also improve customer satisfaction and loyalty!
- User-generated content
User-generated content (UGC) is content that is created by customers and shared on social media or other platforms.
This can include reviews, ratings, pictures of your products, videos, and just about anything else pertaining to your brand.
By promoting and sharing UGC on your page, you can showcase the experiences and opinions of real customers, increasing the trust and reliability for potential customers. After all, customers are more likely to trust others’ experiences before trusting your marketing.
Additionally, UGC can help you gather valuable feedback and insights from your customers, helping you address experience gaps and create a better, more impressive experience.
- Gamification
There’s a reason video games are so addictive. We’ve all been there, and seen the hold games can have on us.
It’s all about understanding what drives people to engage. By gamifying your customer experience, you can leverage game-like elements in non-game contexts to engage and motivate customers.
Customers can win points, badges, and other rewards based on specific actions, such as making a purchase, leaving a review, or sharing content on social media – all of this can then culminate in discounts, offers, and even freebies!
Gamification is an effective way to encourage customer engagement and build loyalty, particularly for younger audiences.
Final word
When it comes to improving customer engagement and driving the customer experience, it’s all about truly understanding your audience. Without that, even the most popular strategy can prove ineffective. That’s why it’s essential to leverage a powerful customer experience solution to get critical customer feedback, understand preferences and expectations, and much more!