Building a good relationship with your customers comes with a plethora of benefits to your business; you’ll retain more customers, experience high ROIs and even have your business promoted for you by happy customers to name just a few.
Despite these benefits, many firms struggle to build up a relationship with their customers, or don’t try hard enough. This means that if you can figure out how to become your customers’ friends then you can set yourself well apart from the competition. This post is the first in our series on how to be your customer’s friend.
Surprise Your Customers With Gifts
People like to be surprised with good things, so if you can find a way to surprise your customers then you’ll quickly develop a relationship with them. Presents don’t need to be substantial to be valuable, perhaps just giving your customer a freebie or a discount to say thank you for being loyal.
Two key elements of giving gifts to your customers are the element of surprise and no clear call for reciprocity. Customers will be far more flattered by a gift out of the blue rather than just a generic gift that you give to everybody who makes ten or more purchases.
With gifts, it is always important that there is no clear call for reciprocity. If you give a gift that doesn’t depend on your customer making another purchase, for example a free product rather than a 5% basket discount, then your customer will be more likely to think that you care, rather than just after another sale.
Follow Up Messages
Following up with customers after they make a sale or an enquiry is a very simple yet also very effective way of building up a relationship with your customers. This can be something as easy as sending customers a quick message to thank them for making a purchase or an enquiry.
These messages cost nothing if you send them through emails or social media, but sparing a few pence to send a physical letter may be even more effective. Follow ups are one of the cheapest and easiest ways to develop a relationship with a customer.
Go Big Data
You should have heard about big data by now, but if you haven’t then it is basically what it says on the tin: collecting huge amounts of data about your customers.
Big data allows you to understand your customers better. If you have enough data about how customers buy and use your products then you’ll be able to improve your user experience and your customer service. If you know that your customers are having a problem with one feature of your product then you will know how to better adapt it in later versions, or could provide a clearer guide to your consumers.
With big data you always have to be careful that you are protecting the data well enough and not abusing it. If customers find out that your servers were hacked and some of their data stolen, or if you use their information in a way that creeps them out then you’re going to damage rather than help your relationship with them.
Here at Direct Letterbox Marketing we are passionate about marketing, and that’s how we’ve become experts at helping our clients in the area. We offer a whole range of services that will help you get your message out to your customers, including our fantastic leaflet distribution service. If you would like more information on what we offer then don’t hesitate to contact us on 0800 028 6353 or email enquiries@directletterboxmarketing.co.uk and a member of our team will be happy to help.
