Tag: brand loyalty

5 ways to use SMS text marketing for customer retention

SMS text message marketing is a great way to reach mobile-first consumers, but you can use it to boost your customer retention rate as well.

Customer retention refers to the rate at which customers stay with a business for a given period of time. Increasing your customer retention rate by just 5 percent can increase your profit by 25 percent to 95 percent.

Text messages can help you foster trusting relationships with your customers, which can grow brand loyalty and ultimately customer retention. In fact, more than 55 percent of consumers say they prefer SMS to other marketing channels because it’s immediate and convenient.

In addition, about 70 percent of consumers prefer to use their phones to engage with loyalty programs. So, if you have one (or are thinking of creating one), you’ll want text messages to be a part of your customer loyalty rewards program strategy.

Of course, loyalty doesn’t happen overnight. You have to earn it while standing out from the competition. But the effort is worthwhile. The stronger your customer retention, the stronger your business revenue.

The following are five ways that you can use SMS text message marketing to improve customer retention.

Offer (and engage through) customer loyalty rewards programs

Loyalty programs offer rewards, discounts, and other special incentives as a way to attract and retain customers. They are designed to encourage repeat business, offering people a reward for store or brand loyalty.

These programs are a natural fit for SMS text messages. You can encourage sign-ups by making it easy to text a keyword to a specific phone number. You also can regularly engage with your loyalty program members with texts that offer the perks of your program. 

Just make sure that you’re being respectful of your loyalty rewards customers in both the timing of your text messages and the frequency of those texts.

Provide helpful information

Consider all the frequent questions your business typically answers from customers and potential customers. You can get ahead of at least some of these questions by creating an educational SMS text message drip campaign for new customers.

Think through concise pieces of information that will benefit (and not annoy) your customers. You likely won’t want to send more often than every five to seven days.

The goal is to educate your customers so that you can get ahead of any confusion that could deter them from staying with you. Plus, they’ll appreciate if they can reply to your texts with any follow-up questions.

Request feedback from customers

Soliciting customer feedback is necessary for any business. It’s how you can find out whether you’re delivering on expectations or if there are opportunities to improve (or maybe a mix of both).

Collecting feedback through text messages makes it that much easier for your customer to deliver it to you. You can text questions directly or even a link to a survey.

Check out our eight tips to create a successful customer survey for your business.

Deliver excellent customer service

Quick yet empathetic communication is key to excellent customer service. Text messaging is a fantastic way to level up your customer service experience for customers. This directly impacts your customer retention rate.

However, you can be proactive about it as well. You can text payment reminders, appointment reminders, order confirmations and shipping updates. All of these options deliver value for your customers. They also can be automated. Check out our five tips for automated text message marketing.

Plus, dive deeper into customer service best practices with our five tips.

Leverage personalization in your text messages

By using segmentation and personalization in your text messages, you’re not only getting the right message to the right person at the right time, but you’re also making the customer feel special. The more special they feel, the higher your customer retention rate.

Using their first name, for example, and telling them that you miss them since they haven’t purchased from you in a few months can more effectively compel them to return to your business. It also could be as simple as wishing your customer a happy birthday and offering a special discount.

Strategically speaking, the more you can group your contact list into relevant segments, the better. When you speak too broadly to everyone at the same time, you lose the effectiveness of your efforts.

In conclusion

SMS text message marketing offers many benefits, including boosting your customer retention rate. But you want to make sure that you’re engaging with your customers and not annoying them.

Keep your messages short and to the point. Focus on delivering value in every text message you send. And make sure that you’re not texting at inappropriate times or too much in general.

As you’re working to improve your customer retention through SMS text messages, consider leveling up your overall digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 signs that your branding is broken

Your brand is your business’s identity. So, your branding is the reflection and culmination of your business’s personality, appearance, voice and overall vibe.

It takes about seven seconds for consumers to make an instant decision about whether or not they like and trust your brand. Keep in mind that consistent branding across all channels can increase your revenue between 10 percent and 20 percent. Brand consistency means that consumers get the same impression and experience when interacting with your business regardless of the marketing or communication channel.

A successful brand is clear, compelling and consistent.

Check out our nine tips if you need to build your brand from scratch.

But it’s entirely possible for a brand to not work how it’s intended, which can impact your overall consumer engagement and sales conversion rate. The following are five signs that your branding is broken.

No brand style guide

Think of a brand style guide as the rulebook for how your business presents itself to the world.

You can use your style guide as a reference to help maintain branding consistency no matter which of your team members is involved. About 59 percent of consumers prefer to buy from brands they trust, and consistency is a huge part of that.

Your style guide would include key branding elements, a collection of visual examples and more, depending on what you want and need.

Check out our five tips to create a brand style guide for your small business.

Your branding is visually inconsistent

Your visual brand identity includes your logo, company colors, chosen typography and any imagery that exudes the look and feel of your brand across all marketing channels. That includes your website, social media accounts and anything else.

As previously mentioned, a brand style guide can make a big difference on this front.

When done right, your company becomes unique and recognizable among your competitors. Visual branding consistency helps put your target audience at ease and builds trusting relationships over time.

Ask yourself:

  • Does your website reflect who your business truly is?
  • Are your typography, photo selections, colors and logos matching across all channels?
  • How do your visuals make your audience feel? Positive or negative?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” then you know where to start.

Visuals are powerful. Check out these six ways that visuals can increase your email conversions.

Big drop in the middle of your sales funnel

Acquiring leads simply feels good for any small business. But if your increase in leads doesn’t result in an increase in revenue, there’s a disconnect.

If you’re noticing a drop within your sales funnel, it could mean that what you’re saying in your marketing is different than what you’re actually offering. Your messaging could be too aspirational. Take a look at where that conflict could be happening. Something inconsistent is happening in the messaging with your leads.

That being said, if you’re struggling to even get leads into your sales funnel, that’s a signal that your branding is broken as well. It means that your brand is not resonating at all with your target audience.

Check out the seven benefits of using a sales funnel in your digital marketing.

Obsession with your competition

Understanding your competition can benefit your business and marketing strategies. But there’s a difference between understanding your competition and obsessing over your competition.

If your branding exists mostly in relation to your competitors, who they are and what they’re doing, then you’re living in their shadow and not creating your own presence and identity.

Some signs of this include citing your competition in your marketing messages or spending a majority of your marketing planning discussing your competition.

But again, there is a time and place for analyzing your competition. Find out more about what a proper competitive analysis is and how you can start yours.

Lack of repeat business

If you’re bringing in new business but can’t build customer loyalty, this is another sign that your branding is broken.

Just a 5 percent increase in customer retention can lead to at least a 25 percent increase in profit. You want to keep your customers purchasing from you once you acquire them. But as important as it is, customer retention is a big challenge for many businesses.

There could be a brand disconnect that is holding your growth potential back.

Check out our six tips to improve your customer retention rate and grow your revenue as a result.

In conclusion

If your brand is broken, you can definitely fix it. You don’t have to ride it until the wheels fall off of it and your small business. While rebranding may cost some time and money upfront, the potential to reach more clients and generate more revenue is worth it.

Just make sure that you:

  • Define your business’s purpose, vision, mission and values.
  • Identify better, compelling brand messaging.
  • Upgrade all visual elements as needed.
  • Develop (and use) a brand style guide.

As you’re evaluating the effectiveness of your branding, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

6 ways to grow consumer trust (and your resulting sales)

Consumer trust matters. As a business, it’s in your best interest to invest resources into building trusting relationships with potential and current customers.

Consumers do hold businesses to certain standards and want to build relationships with the ones that they believe in. They don’t want to be let down.

About 44 percent of global consumers will spend at least $500 or more each year with the brands they trust most, with nearly 29 percent saying they will spend more than $1,000 per year.

The more consumer trust you grow, the better off your business will be.

The following are six ways to grow consumer trust, as well as your resulting sales.

Deliver a quality product and/or service

Truly, the first step to building consumer trust is to sell a quality product and/or service. The higher the quality, the more your customer can trust you and purchase from you again.

Consider the needs of your target customers. Your products and services should reflect those needs. 

It’s important to consistently audit the quality of what you’re selling so that you can ensure that your expected quality is maintained for the benefit of the customer.

Deliver surprisingly good customer service

Customer service is a powerful tool to grow consumer trust in your business. This is your opportunity to demonstrate value and legitimacy to your customers and potential customers.

Don’t just exude good customer service. You want to deliver great customer service that impresses consumers and makes them want to come back to you again (and again).

This includes committing to customer interests, compassion and accountability. You have to show that you care in all your communications and interactions. Make it easy to reach your customer service team. Patience is imperative, but responsiveness also matters.

Check out our six ways to become more responsive to your customers.

Highlight (positive) reviews and testimonials

Of course, you’re going to talk about your businesses positively. But what about your customers? 

Not surprisingly, consumers give more weight to customer reviews and testimonials than what a business says about itself. These are forms of social proof, which refers to potential customers assuming that what others are doing is correct based on how often they see those actions. In other words, social proof is about looking to others to figure out the right way to interact in any given situation.

Real customer experiences are often seen as more objective. By acquiring and sharing those experiences, you’re leveraging the credibility of your customers to build consumer trust with your target audience.

Check out 17 of the best social proof tools to help you boost trust and resulting sales.

Embrace honesty and transparency

No company wants to be viewed as shady or dishonest. To help show your honesty and transparency, make sure that your marketing is not misleading or making promises that you can’t (or won’t) deliver on. Be very clear in both your copy and your images. 

Of course, all your business practices should be straightforward and ethical. Be upfront about your pricing and how your products and/or services can actually help potential customers.

If your business makes a mistake, own it and fix it as soon as possible. It’s all about working in the best interest of consumers. 

Check out our six tips to create brand loyalty for your business.

Ask for feedback (and act on it)

When you ask for feedback from your customers, you’re giving them a stake in your business and showing that they matter. You’re letting them know that they matter beyond the money they’re paying you.

This can involve sending out customer surveys, asking for feedback after a customer service interaction or even handing a sign with a QR code in your physical business location for customers to scan and easily submit feedback through, among other methods.

Of course, if you’re getting consistent feedback about something that needs to change or could be improved, it’s important to act on that. Being asked for feedback builds consumer trust, but making changes based on that feedback goes even further with your customers.

Share your company values

What are your company values? Do your customers know what they are? Understanding what’s important to your company can help grow consumer trust. 

Make sure that you have a clear statement of your company values that’s easy for consumers to find. It can be on your website, as well as featured on your social media accounts in various ways.

Granted, it’s one thing to talk about your company values and something else to actually act according to your values. In those moments of action, you can share that across your digital marketing.

In conclusion

There’s no magic bullet when it comes to consumer trust. Consider the customer’s purchasing journey with your business and address any missed opportunities that you can leverage to support that relationship. In addition, remember to walk your talk. If there’s something that you promise in your marketing, deliver on it. If there’s something that you say your company cares about, show it.

As you’re boosting consumer trust for your business, consider leveling up your digital marketing process. DailyStory features automation, dynamic audience segmentation, email marketing, SMS text message marketing and so much more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

6 tips to boost your customer referrals

Businesses invest a lot into marketing efforts that bring in new customers, but what are you doing to increase your customer referrals?

With more than 2.4 million brand-related conversations happening in the U.S., consumers are obviously already talking about their experiences with brands, for better or for worse.

Customer referrals are when existing customers introduce their family, friends and contacts to become new customers with your company.

After all, consumers view other consumers as about 14 percent more credible than a brand itself (or its employees).

If you’re providing great customer experiences with your products and/or services, then word-of-mouth customer referrals should be happening naturally. However, investing effort into encouraging referrals will only build on that.

The following are six tips to help you boost your customer referrals and grow your business.

Create a customer loyalty program

Your most loyal customers are the most likely to refer others to your business. You can embrace and nourish this with a customer loyalty rewards program, which is a marketing approach that recognizes and rewards customers who purchase or engage with a brand in some way on a recurring basis. 

As part of your progam, you would give out points, perks, free products and coupons, even graduating customers to higher levels of loyalty the more they buy if you want. However you structure it, the overall goal is to encourage the customer to become a more regular consumer or (even better) a brand promoter. Customers who are so loyal that they are actively promoting your brand are exactly what you want.

You also can have a very simple referral program (as opposed to a full customer loyalty rewards program), where your customer refers a friend in exchange for an incentive. And that’s it. Just think about what works best for your brand.

Check out our five tips to successfully promote your loyalty rewards program, and see our six tips to grow to create brand loyalty for your business.

Exceed expectations

While seemingly a general tip, delighting your customers during every step of their customer experience with your brand can play into your overall customer referrals.

Take the time to audit what your true customer experience is like for a brand new customer. Consider:

  • How easy your website is to navigate?
  • Is it easy to contact your business with questions?
  • How thorough and responsive is your customer service?
  • Is there a clear path for purchasing?
  • Are you offering a quality product or service?
  • What if there needs to be a refund or return?
  • How do you follow up after the purchase is complete?

The happier your customers are, the more they’ll tell others about your brand. And always remember that you never want any customer to be a “one and done.” Think through how you can keep bringing them back.

Make referrals easy

Your customers are busy people. The harder it is to effectively refer another to your business (especially in exchange for a perk or discount), the less likely that the customer referral will happen. (Even with an incentive offered.)

You can offer email templates for them to send, links to easy-to-fill-out web forms or fliers with QR codes that direct to an informative landing page. The sky’s the limit.

Just make sure to identify the best method that works for your customers and communicate it clearly.

Identify and target customer referral opportunities

If you’re interested in identifying key customers who are worth their weight in customer referral gold (rather than asking for referrals blindly and aimlessly), it’s helpful to start with a little research.

LinkedIn can be a great assist with this. At its most basic level, you can identify your customer, his or her company and other networked connections. 

By doing this, not only can you limit your targeting to the potential referrals that will have the biggest ROI (return on investment), but you can “do the work” within your ask by letting the customer know who and/or what you’re hoping to connect with.

Flip any negative reviews

Negative online reviews are a reality for every business and something that you already should have a plan for to monitor and address.

However, what’s important to remember is that every negative review is simply an opportunity to make that customer happy and hopefully that follow-up service not only converts them into a happy customer but a loyal customer who tells others about your brand.

Check out our 11 tips to best respond to negative reviews.

Offer different methods of customer referrals

Word-of-mouth referrals aren’t the only way your customers can help spread the word about your brand. 

Make sure that you’re encouraging a variety of ways that your customers can “refer,” including (but not limited to):

  • Writing a review
  • Submitting a customer testimonial
  • Serving as a case study

Of course, if you’re asking your customers for referrals of any kind, be respectful if they’re saying no or not acting on it yet. Space out your requests and continue to give different methods. No one reacts well to pushiness, and you’ll never know when it happens to be the right suggestion at the right time for the right customer.

In conclusion

Customer referrals are powerful. Take the time to ensure that you’re doing everything possible throughout your brand’s customer journey to delight and encourage your customers to spread the word.

As you begin evaluating customer referral opportunities, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

5 tips to successfully promote your loyalty rewards program

Regardless of whether you’re about to launch a loyalty rewards program or already have an existing one, promotion is everything.

Loyalty rewards programs can help grow your business.

In fact, consumers who engage in high-performing loyalty programs are twice as likely to increase their frequency of purchases. More than 90 percent of companies have some sort of loyalty program.

Clearly, the more members you can drive to join and engage with your loyalty rewards program, the better.

The following are five tips to successfully promote your loyalty rewards program and do just that.

Start with an invitation

It sounds simple, but sometimes, the best place to start with growing your loyalty rewards membership is to invite your customers to join.

This can be done in a number of different ways:

Remember that the easiest thing to do is to ask. Customers (new or existing) can’t join something they’re not aware exists. You might be surprised by the response. 

Offer a welcome gift

To reinforce the value of your loyalty rewards program, consider offering a “welcome gift” for all new members. 

This gives immediate gratification to your members as well and can be used as an incentive for joining.

The gift can be anything that makes sense for your business and your bottom line.

Cross-promote everywhere possible

You can leverage the power of digital marketing by bringing all your available channels together to share one message that can engage your target audience in different ways.

Cross-promotion is critical for any loyalty rewards program promotion. Customers appreciate (and expect) their favorite brands to keep pace with them.

Start with a simple, clear and consistent message, and then, consider how best to convey that through every social media platform and digital marketing medium you have available to you.

Dive deeper with our seven tips to level up your content marketing.

Incentivize all loyalty rewards program referrals

Word of mouth is powerful, and you can take advantage of that by giving your loyalty rewards program members an incentive to invite their friends and/or family to join.

It’s about turning your brand advocates into brand ambassadors. About 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know directly.

Depending on the setup of your program, you can do this by offering bonus points, a free product, a free service, a discount toward a future purchase or something else.

Go ‘old school’ with display advertisements

Whether you have one physical business location or multiple, consider designing and displaying various display options promoting your loyalty rewards program. This can include: 

  • Flyers
  • Posters
  • Promo cards
  • Inclusion on all printed receipts

You can make it easy for interested customers to act on your display promotions by requesting a code be texted to a number, having an available tablet where they can sign up or by using a QR code.

If you don’t have a physical business location, consider a pop-up display ad on your website and/or a standing loyalty rewards program promotion on your homepage.

Remember, the most important aspect of having a loyalty rewards program is getting the word out. Then, take the time to think about the best incentives you can offer and what the messaging should be around that. 

As you begin promoting your loyalty rewards program, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

6 tips to create brand loyalty for your business

While attracting new customers will always matter, you can’t forget about your existing customers (and building up their loyalty to your brand).

Just a 5 percent increase in customer retention can lead to at least a 25 percent increase in profit.

Fortunately, while consumers do have limitless options when it comes to the items they want to buy, about 90 percent still report being brand loyal.

Brand loyalty is when consumers strongly favor a specific brand over other brands.

Brand loyalty involves more than just retaining your customers, though. It’s about providing an experience that your customers won’t find anywhere else that will keep them coming back.

The following are six tips to create brand loyalty for your business.

Increase your focus on customer service

The quality of your customer service is everything. It can make or break your customers’ loyalty to your brand. 

About 33 percent of customers say they would consider switching companies immediately following just one instance of poor service.

Remember that you want to address every inquiry in a responsive and timely manner. But beyond that, you should make every customer feel valued and appreciated.

Check out our six ways to be more responsive to your customers.

Understand (and share) your brand story and voice

Customers need to have a clear understanding of a brand before they become loyal to it. Your brand personality encompasses what your brand is all about, and it should be approachable to your target audience.

Clearly, you want to be as unique as possible as well so that you stand out from your competition. Take extra time when constructing your mission statement, which explains why your business exists and what makes you different.

See our nine expert tips to help you build your brand from scratch. In addition, check out our five tips for creating a brand style guide that can help you stay consistent in all aspects of your branding.

Success here makes your brand more recognizable and memorable to customers.

Consider a loyalty rewards program

Loyalty rewards programs incentivize your target audience to shop with you again. You can offer discounts, coupons or extra perks to repeat customers for any number of reasons:

  • Customer anniversaries
  • Repeat purchases
  • Early bird perks
  • Customer birthdays

Think about the products and/or services you offer and what makes the most sense for you to create as a loyalty rewards program.

Leverage your social media

You likely already have various strategic goals tied to your social media marketing, such as brand awareness, lead generation and customer service.

But think about what you’re doing on your social media accounts to promote brand loyalty. Sharing announcements and new products isn’t enough. You should dive into your brand story and find ways to share all the facets that come together to make your brand personality what it is. It should permeate every post in even the most subconscious ways.

Start with what matters most on social media: compelling content.

Find out what every startup company should know about social media, as well as what social media platform is right for your company.

In addition, you’ll want to review the difference between social listening and crowdsourcing so that you can better identify the opportunities when customers may not message you directly but will mention you on social media (for better or for worse).

Invest in a brand community

By “invest,” we don’t mean with money per se. Building a community that supports and celebrates your brand at the very least requires a major and consistent investment of time.

It all begins with understanding not only your target audience but your existing customers and what commonalities they share. Consider those engaged within your community as potential brand advocates, who are likely to share your brand with others and give honest reviews of your products and/or services. In the simplest sense, they have your back and are proud to be connected to your brand.

Depending on how your community largely uses social media, it might make the most sense to create a Facebook group or a branded hashtag or even a subreddit board. There’s no right or wrong here. All that matters is that the channel you chose to nurture your community on resonates with your brand advocates. 

Social media is all about engaging with others, but it also requires you to be present for your community to help it grow and thrive.

Check out our 12 tips to use Facebook Groups to help grow your brand. A lot of these tips can be applied to other channels when building an online community.

Deliver value through quality

This may sound obvious, but there is no amount of great social media or incentives that can create brand loyalty if your products and/or services are not high quality.

Make it a priority to deliver on every promise you make and exceed every possible expectation you can think of.

You can regularly conduct customer surveys to better understand what you’re doing well and what could be done better.

In the end, customers will feel loyal to quality in all aspects.

In conclusion

Ultimately, your commitment to creating and maintain brand loyalty among your customers can help boost your profits, so it’s worth the effort.

Consider existing customers just as important as new customers.

As you’re developing a strategy to boost brand loyalty for your business, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.