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Everybody talks about how essential customer engagement is. But when it comes to real, applicable strategies to improve customer engagement, it’s a challenge to find them. And if yours is a new business, the whole thing is probably even more confusing.
To solve this pain point, we’ve collected 14 ideas to strengthen your customer engagement strategy. Most of these ideas come with specific tool recommendations to help you implement them.
We’ve also broken down these ideas into 6 categories – feel free to jump to the one you find most appealing:
That’s plenty of ideas for you to try right away. So, without further ado, let’s just dive right in.
Customer engagement can be defined in a variety of ways. In essence, it covers all successful connections between a customer and the brand held through different channels. These connections aim to foster loyalty and manifest themselves in the form of:
Reactions
Interactions
Overall customer experience
All of them are conducive to increasing sales, but this is not always an immediate goal. It is more often about establishing a long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationship between your consumers and your company.
Engaged customers offer a good deal of value for business.
Gallup research shows that doing business with fully engaged customers will get you roughly 23% more revenue than if you were dealing with average consumers.
Engaged customers are big spenders who dedicate a lot of time to your brand and can easily be retained. They also spread the word about your company and attract potential customers. For this reason, strengthening customer engagement is essential. Below we are going to give you some insights on how to do that.
With so many competitors out there, keeping your customers focused on your brand is becoming increasingly challenging. Let’s start with a few proven ways to make your customers more engaged and get them invested in your brand.
Reward programs allow you to offer additional value that encourages customers to engage with your brand. Some of the most common tactics are:
Purchase reward system
Referral reward system
Survey reward system
Customers who have redeemable points at their disposal are more likely to buy from you again.
Start presenting redeemable points every time one makes a purchase via your website. The need to redeem accumulated points will push your customers to place another order – which leads to higher chances that they will come back to you in the future.
The purchase reward system works well because it encourages repeat visits, promotes a higher purchase rate, and provides added value to customers with each purchase.
Adding a reward system to your customer engagement strategy is easy with automated platforms like Fivestars or Loyalty S. Once you launch it, drive your customers’ attention to the offer using sticky bars or eye-catching popups like the one below:
This particular popup was created in Getsitecontrol, an app that allows you to create different kinds of popups without any coding skills. The platform also offers a variety of templates you can grab and customize for your purposes.
Apart from tracking sales, you can tell whether your reward system piques customers’ interest by analyzing the click-through-rate of the announcement popup. In other words, the more people click on the “Join the club” button, the more customers are willing to get engaged. The Getsitecontrol report system allows you to view this data right from the Statistics section of the dashboard.
Buyapowa estimates that 28% of people refer products more if they get rewarded for it.
By encouraging your top customers to share your brand with their friends, you create a win-win situation. First, you expand brand awareness using the word of mouth. Second, your existing customers get points they’ll be motivated to spend.
With the power of referral marketing, you:
Build trust and loyalty among customers
Reach audiences that you may not be able to access otherwise
Save on advertising
Now, the best referral programs are the easiest ones. With most of them, you send a discount coupon to a friend and get a bonus when your friend makes a purchase. Here is how HelloFresh, a meal kit delivery company, does it:
Timing matters, too. The best moment to invite your customers to referral programs is right after they complete checkout – while the purchase-related excitement is still there. You may want to display a popup straight after purchase and then top it off with an email just like HelloFresh does.
If you decide to use dedicated software to implement a referral program, you’ll get automated reports showing how many shares your offer has received, and how many of them turned into sales.
Here is an example of a report generated in Referral Candy, customer referral program software:
Here is another idea for your customer engagement strategy.
Do you ever run online surveys on your website? Then you know how low the typical engagement rate is. That’s because no one likes completing surveys without getting anything in return. But, given that the information you gather from responses may help you boost sales, why not offer value in return?
If you start giving away discounts, gift cards, or some extra perks for providing feedback, customers will be more eager to participate. To strengthen the incentive, you can even add an element of a lottery game like in the example below.
This tactic helps you boost customer engagement and also allows you to:
Attract new potential customers and get their emails, if you add an email capture field at some point in the survey
Leverage sales, since people will look for ways to redeem gift cards, use discounts, etc.
Get insights into customer experience and preferences
The online survey in the example above was created with the Getsitecontrol survey popup builder. As we mentioned earlier, you can check out the dedicated Statistics tab to know how engaged your customers are. The app shows you how many of your website visitors who saw the survey went ahead and completed it, and how many just closed it right away.
Kayako reports that around 41% of consumers favor live chats over alternatives like social media, emails, and phone calls.
One can easily explain the popularity of live chats: real-time communication improves your website experience by creating a sense of urgency and building customers’ confidence during shopping. Successful brand interactions lead to higher customer satisfaction rates, which, consequently, leads to higher engagement.
Here is a great example of a live chat by Unity, an online store specialized in cutting-edge tools for graphic designers:
Here are the practices you may want to borrow from Unity:
Eye-catching chat icon. Your customers and prospects should see how to start the chat right away.
The pricing page location. The pricing page is usually the highest purchase-intent page on the website, so a prominent live chat button is a must-have there.
Real names and faces. By showing that there are people, not robots, responding to queries, you increase the level of trust in your brand. Freshworks has established that 73% of people prefer communicating with customer service representatives with a believable name and image of a real person.
Estimated reply time. Informing your customers about the possible wait is a great way to show that you respect them and their time.
Link to an F.A.Q. section Live chat is a perfect place to embed a link to your Help page, because it may cut the wait time while still providing customers with a response.
No need to invent the wheel here. After a live chat has been added to your website, you should see an increase in interactions – that’s how you know customers are eager to engage.
Next, you may want to connect the live chat to your helpdesk software and measure its performance by tracking closed tickets and the number of generated leads.
Website personalization is probably the most surefire strategy to increase customer engagement. A better experience leads to a longer visit time and higher engagement with your website – which often drives more sales. Just by personalizing calls to action, you may be able to convert 202% better, says HubSpot.
Although the actual personalization tactics will depend on what type of business you’re in, some fit most niches.
Recommending related items to your customers is one of the most basic tactics, and if you own an ecommerce store, you’ve probably already thought of it.
Good news: you don’t need any coding skills to implement it. There are dozens of apps to help you automate product recommendations, whether your website is built on Shopify, BigCommerce, or any other platform.
More than half of consumers expect brands to anticipate their needs and send out relevant purchase-related suggestions.
Check out Also Bought, one of the best Shopify apps from our list of recommended tools for ecommerce.
Another way to win the product recommendation game is via email. There are 2 ways to implement this tactic:
1) You can generate an automated email sequence using the email marketing software of your choice.
2) Or, if your selection of products is smaller, you can survey website visitors and segment your email lists based on their preferences.
You can use your customers’ location to personalize their experience on your website. When you target the international market, language and currency are the most obvious parameters. But even if you operate countrywide, you can go granular and announce location-based deals.
For example, with Getsitecontrol, you can incentivize visitors from specific states or cities with targeted popups like this one:
Or, if a customer’s location affects the end pricing in your case, you can automatically adjust it, as Grindhouse Skateshop does:
The price tag for Argentina is in the screenshot above, and the price tag for Germany is in the one below.
Another easy way to personalize your customer communication is to adjust messaging based on whether they are new or returning visitors to your website.
For example, to show your appreciation to the returning visitors, you can display a nice welcome-back message with a discount offer.
There is no simple answer to this question, because way too many factors may contribute to the success of any given call to action.
An approach worth trying, however, is a popup A/B test. An A/B test allows you to test 2+ popups against each other to determine which one is most effective.
For example, you can test a generic discount popup against a location-based one. In such test, equal percentages of your audience will see the popups, and you’ll be able to assess their effectiveness by checking the popups’ Statistics.
At the end of the test, you’ll only keep the winning popup.
Social media are but an extension of your brand that enables you to connect with your audience on a long-term basis. And it should be a crucial part of your customer engagement strategy.
Here are some tips for you to make these social connections pay off in the future.
Most customers expect nearly immediate responses from brands when they contact them for support on social media. And this is directly related to sales, because 70% of customers who received help through social media will come back to you as customers in the future, according to Ambassador.
By keeping your response rate high and response time low on Facebook, for example, you receive a badge that encourages more people to start communicating with you.
As reported by Gartner, companies that leave their customers’ inquiries unaddressed on social media see their churn rate increase by 15%.
Want to go further? Use the app called Mention to track your brand name mentions on social media and react timely.
If you really want to boost customer engagement, you’ll have to go beyond publishing company news and promotions. Share lifehacks to make the most of your products or services. Ask questions, aim for the topics that may spark a discussion. Most importantly, make sure that the content you share brings value to your followers, not just to your brand.
Here is a great example from the Bike-Discount Facebook page:
Although this is a review of a product sold in the Bike-Discount store, it brings a great deal of value to the readers by being based on thorough research and a real-life test-drive. And Facebook is a great choice of platform to share visual content like this.
If we had to pick one great thing about social media, that’d be potential exposure. Due to the algorithms of social media platforms, a post that receives a lot of engagement gets highly visible – therefore gaining even more engagement. And what are the most attention-driving types of posts? That’s right, contests and giveaways.
Here is just a couple of ideas on what you can run on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram:
Photo caption contest
Hashtag challenge
Comment competition
Sweepstake promotion
There are many affordable tools that make arranging social media contests a no-brainer. Check out Rafflecopter, Gleam, and Shortstack, for example.
When you have a business account on social media, you can see the level of engagement each post receives. For instance, on Facebook, along with likes and views, performance reports include engagement. Plus, you can see whether your metrics are better or worse in comparison with any given period.
If you’re planning to actively use social media for your customer engagement strategy, Buffer is a great app worth your attention. Not only does it allow you to conveniently schedule social media posts, but it also provides a detailed overview of every channel performance in one place.
Testimonials appeal to potential customers because they offer credibility. That’s why asking for testimonials should be an essential part of your customer engagement strategy.
BrightLocal estimates that 88% of people trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts.
And this is good for business. What people say about your brand matters more than what you say about it. People are far more inclined to engage with content that revolves around consumers just like them.
If you are looking for a tool to embed reviews on your website, there are dozens of apps to help you with that. For instance, Flockler allows you to automatically publish your brand's social media feed or display posts with your brand hashtags.
TrustPilot helps you encourage customers to leave a review on the Trustpilot website and then enables you to showcase those reviews.
According to a Flockler case study, displaying social media posts and testimonials can boost conversions by 20-30%. So, if this is the only change made to a website, you should be able to see an uplift without any special analytic tools.
You can also use heatmap tools to see how much attention testimonials drive on your website. CrazyEgg lets you do just that. It also enables you to run A/B tests to compare conversion rates on a webpage with and without testimonials.
Almost 70% of people aged between 18 and 34 prefer companies to establish communication with them through email, according to MarketingSherpa research.
But does it mean every email gets opened and read? Certainly not. Many email marketing campaigns show low ROI because marketers fail to connect with the audience through this channel.
If you’ve already built an email list, but your subscribers engage with your emails less than anticipated, here are 3 basic recommendations:
Try seeing your email subscribers as your brand VIP club where members get exclusive offers. First, it will be a better incentive to subscribe. Second, it will make your customers anticipate your emails, knowing that they may include sweet deals.
A lot of ecommerce brands follow this customer engagement strategy. Here is how Sephora does it, for example:
When shopping online, people can be forgetful. It’s a good practice to guide them through the funnel by sending instructions at each step.
But you don’t need to do anything manually. Automated email campaigns are perfect for this task.
Here is a bare minimum you should consider using:
Order confirmations
Shipping notifications and tracking links
According to SaleCycle, around half of all abandoned cart emails are opened, and over a third of clicks lead to purchases back on site.
To get an idea, take a look at this cart abandonment email by DoorDash, a food delivery service:
The structure is simple and clear, with a big flashy CTA button in plain sight. It has captivating copy and a cute design. It really makes you want to go back to that cart!
Experian reports that birthday mailings have the highest open rates (around 64%) compared to other types of marketing emails.
But you don’t need to limit yourself to birthdays. There are tons of occasions you can come up with, including customer milestones, special events, or even half-birthdays. Everyone likes to be acknowledged, and most will be excited about receiving celebration emails.
Here is a good example by Birchbox, an online beauty shop:
It includes customer recognition, adds value, and even uses scarcity. Well done, Birchbox!
When you start tweaking emails, there is a lot to experiment with: copy, timing, design, personalization. But there are just two key actions you want your customers to take. You want them to open your email and click through your call to action. These are the two most important metrics showing whether your subscribers are willing to engage.
The email marketing software you use will most likely provide you with the numbers on both metrics, and even help you compare them to your industry benchmarks.
Compare numbers after each campaign to see the trend. If your open rate and click-through rate increase – you’re doing everything right. If not – well, there’s room for improvement.
To improve open rate:
Polish your subject line, consider using questions or emojis
Try sending emails at a different time of the day or even on a different day of the week
Make sure there is either your name or your brand's name in the Sender field
To improve your CTA click-through rate:
Write a clear, concise call to action
Make sure there is only one primary call to action in your email
Use personal approach and scarcity tactics to nudge people
Customer engagement improvement is an ongoing process that takes time and dedication.
Some of the ideas we’ve reviewed – such as adding a live chat to your website – will take minutes to implement, and you’ll be able to see results within days. Others may take longer and be just as efficient.
As long as you’re trying new tactics, you’ll get a better understanding of what makes your customers tick. And then you’ll be able to build a stronger customer engagement strategy around that.
You're reading Getsitecontrol blog where marketing experts share proven tactics to grow your online business. This article is a part of Customer engagement section.
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