Social media as a marketing medium is the current rage. Blogs are appearing on corporate websites. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are hot properties adding thousands of new members every day. Most articles or posts suggest that businesses join them as a marketing strategy. Actively participating in them does improve traffic, branding, and opportunity. Using them solely for marketing is shortsighted. They are powerful communication and relationship building tools when used correctly.
Customer Relationships
STOP! Before you reach for the low hanging fruit with another discount or free shipping, did you know that you might be trading tomorrow's lifetime value for today's sales?
One of the privileges of being a consultant is that you get to see the results from a variety of clients. If one client benefits from reducing the number of discount emails, it's an anomaly. When most clients that try it, benefit, it's a best practice.
It is a hard recommendation to sell when people are in the habit of churning out sale emails. It usually involves a little begging on my part. "Just test it. That's all I ask. Please? Pretty please?" are words I've been known to say. Some clients require more persuading than others (you know who you are!), but I digress.
Continuously sending discount emails trains your customers to wait for a better price, reduces your return, and doesn't improve your relationship
Technology provides marketers options that were unimaginable years ago. We can capture every click during a customer's electronic shopping spree. We can combine shopping and buying patterns to create a custom marketing campaign for each customer. We can watch as shoppers browse the website and offer assistance if they loiter too long on a page.
Cross channel shoppers have the reputation for being the most profitable customers. The facts seem to support this. After all, they shop more often and spend more money than their single channel counterparts do. Using RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) metrics, multichannel buyers are always the best.
Will your customers be eager to order from you when the holiday season kicks off in October? Or, will they have forgotten your great products and wonderful service? Times are tough now, but the upturn is just around the corner.
