customer service Archives

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 ways to improve your customer service

Great customer service is never set and done. To be great, you have to regularly improve your systems, train your team and collect feedback for future improvements.

The effort is worthwhile. Businesses that deliver excellent customer service can expect sales increases of about 20 percent or more.

How is your customer service? If you’re not sure (or it’s just been a while since you’ve checked in on it), now’s the time to make sure you’re not missing out on any customer service opportunities. The smoother the customer service experience for the customer, the stronger the path to your next sale.

The following are five ways to improve your customer service.

Understand the needs of your customers

Everything your customer service team does should be based on the needs of your customers. Without this, your service will miss the mark.

To learn more about your customers’ needs, simply ask them. You can do this through a survey, email, phone call, text message or any other method you like. Regularly soliciting honest feedback, in general, will only strengthen your customer service efforts.

Allow the information you receive to guide your overall customer service strategy.

Train your team to be empathetic

Whether you have a large customer service team or that team is just you, learning and embracing empathy is critical to delivering excellent customer service.

Simply put, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. This is an important first step in all customer interactions and ultimately will grow customer loyalty over time.

But how do you train (yourself or others) to be more empathetic? Check out these five exercises to help build more empathy.

Keep in mind that if a customer service team member cannot embrace empathy, he or she may not be the best fit for your business.

Set individual and team goals

What do you want to achieve with your customer service efforts? And how does that look for your team at large and for individuals on your team? Involving them in your goal-setting process will naturally encourage the buy-in needed to achieve them. They’ll have ownership and motivation tied to those goals.

These goals should naturally inform service standards that you expect from your team. If anything is unclear about your standards, put it down in writing.

Of course, once goals are set, you must track performance. There are a number of KPIs (key performance indicators) that you could monitor if they reflect your goals, such as:

Customer Satisfaction Scores
Negative Response Rate
First Contact Resolution
Average Resolution Time
Re-open Rate

Again, focus on the metrics that reflect progress toward your decided goals.

Then, as employees hit those goals, consider rewards and recognition. This could be something along the lines of an employee of the month program, splurging on a team lunch or dinner, gift cards, etc. This effort will keep the morale of your team up, which will lead to more buy-in and more future success.

Streamline your process with the right tools, software

While implementing new technology can be intimidating, the key is that you’re streamlining anything that’s unnecessarily being done manually. Manual processes (such as report generation) are slow and can limit the greatness and effectiveness of your customer service.

As you research customer service performance management software options, keep an eye out for user-friendly features and software that falls within your budget. Identify your biggest needs to prioritize the best tools and software your team needs.

The initial research and implementation can require a lot of time and effort, but once your new software (or other tools) are in use, you’ll see big savings in time and more. In other words, your team can spend more time focusing on the customers and less time with tedious tasks that can be done another way.

Embrace omnichannel customer service

Similar to omnichannel marketing, omnichannel customer service is all about leveraging your multiple channels to deliver a seamless customer experience. Truly, the two go hand in hand in many ways.

Omnichannel requires you to think through how each channel can complement another and work together to create a personalized experience for the consumer whether you’re connecting with them through desktop, mobile devices or brick-and-mortar stores.

It’s about accessibility for your customers and meeting them where they’re at.

Dive deeper with our five tips to boost your omnichannel marketing efforts, and consider where your customer service efforts can fit in with omnichannel marketing (since they are so connected).

In conclusion

Customer service can make or break your business. Take the time to understand where your customer service stands right now and how you can improve it. The time you spend now will pay off in dividends later.

And while you’re at it, check out our six tips to improve your customer retention rate.

As you’re working through your customer service strategy, 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.

6 tips to improve your customer retention rate

Strong customer retention is just smart business.

The cost of losing one customer equates to seven times the resources used to convert them. Customer retention is about maintaining your current customer base and increasing loyalty by offering better products or services and other benefits. Customer retention tactics include loyalty programs, discounts, special offers and targeted marketing campaigns.

Simply put, 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.

The following are six tips to improve your customer retention rate and keep your business strong.

Invest in great customer service

Clearly, bad customer service can lose you customers. But what’s needed to deliver great customer service that will increase your customer retention?

Start by understanding your customers’ needs. What platform do they prefer to contact you on? What other insights about your customers could help you?

You’ll also want to set and communicate customer service standards with your team. These standards should not just promote a positive customer service experience but also a consistent one.

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

Share your company values to build trust

How your business operates, the quality of your products or services and how you treat your customers should all be a reflection of your company’s values.

And while your values may be completely intertwined with how your business operates, the more you can share your values with your customers, the better.

Shared values between businesses and customers help build trusting relationships. The relationships you can build with your customers directly impact your customer retention.

Check out our six ways to grow consumer trust.

Over-deliver on customer expectations

Offering decent quality at a reasonable price is not enough these days. Consumers do expect more because they have more choices than ever before. If you don’t meet their needs, they’ll purchase from someone else.

How can you personalize your customer’s experience and be proactive throughout their purchasing journey? It all starts with knowing what your customer wants. Getting feedback through surveys and reviews can help you identify areas that can be improved.

Just remember that you never want to over-promise in any way to your customers. But whenever you can, you want to surprise and delight by over-delivering. Go above and beyond.

Regularly collect customer data

Data can help you understand the needs of your customers. Surveys are an effective way to encourage customer engagement and learn more about them. You’ll also be able to identify dissatisfied customers before they decide to never purchase from you again.

Besides collecting this data, it’s important to act on it. How can you improve? What do your customers need from you?

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

Communicate with your customers in multiple ways

Regularly sharing information about product or service updates is imperative, but the more ways you can do this the better.

Your target audience can be reached across multiple platforms. So, consider how you can best communicate through webchats, social media, text messaging, email and so on.

Of course, personalization can make your content that much more effective.

Check out our seven tips to level up your content marketing for inspiration.

Celebrate and reward loyalty

There are many ways that you can acknowledge, celebrate and reward brand loyalty among your customers.

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.

Check out our six tips to create brand loyalty for your business, and take your customer retention to the next level.

In conclusion

While attracting new customers will always matter, you can’t forget about your existing customers. Customer retention not only saves you money on new-customer acquisition, it also generates larger profits for your company.

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.

5 omnichannel marketing tips to help grow your business

With shopping habits rapidly evolving, it’s more important than ever for your multiple marketing channels to work together to engage consumers and ultimately lead them to purchase from you. Enter omnichannel marketing.

Even if customers are in your physical store, about 42 percent of in-store shoppers search for information online while browsing in-store. In addition, consumers reference up to 10 sources of information before making a purchasing decision.

As part of your digital marketing strategy, your brand likely already has various marketing channels. Omnichannel marketing is all about leveraging your multiple channels to deliver a seamless customer experience. This is where omnichannel goes beyond multi-channel marketing because multi-channel treats each channel as separate and independent. Omnichannel requires you to think through how each channel can complement another and work together to create a personalized experience for the consumer whether you’re connecting with them through desktop, mobile devices or brick-and-mortar stores.

For example, a customer could be direct messaging with your customer service representative on Facebook and then purchasing from your website. Or, you text a customer an offer to compel the completion of his or her purchase after abandoning the shopping cart on your website. You want to offer a seamless brand experience regardless of platform and preferred buying method.

Omnichannel shoppers spend between 50 percent and 300 percent more than traditional shoppers. In addition, omnichannel marketing campaigns generate a purchase rate that’s about 287 percent higher than single-channel campaigns. Companies that use omnichannel marketing also maintain about a 91 percent higher customer retention rate, year over year.

Clearly, your brand should not miss the opportunities that omnichannel marketing offer. The following five omnichannel marketing tips aim to help you grow your business across platforms.

Research and understand your target audience

To create a successful strategy in omnichannel marketing, you must understand who your audience is so that you can effectively build relationships with them across channels.

Who are they? Where are they from? What are their goals and challenges? Which devices are they using? What content do they love? Which platforms and/or channels do they use most?

Social media listening, customer feedback (through surveys and otherwise) and your data analytics tools (such as Google Analytics and social media metrics) can arm you with the information you need to make smart choices about how to best engage with your audience.

Then, you’ll want to use that information to segment your audience. This can include basic demographics, such as age, gender and so on. It also could be based on geographic location. There are many ways to segment your audience. Find out more.

Not sure who your target audience is exactly? Check out our seven tips.

Audit your technology

Depending on the software you’re using for your point of sale system (POS), customer relationship management system (CRM) and so on, it might be time for an upgrade.

If you’re systems do not or cannot integrate, that can be an issue that will hinder your omnichannel marketing tactics and performance.

DailyStory (which features email and SMS text marketing, segmentation, personalization, automation and much more) integrates with your favorite applications, such as Shopify, WordPress, Salesforce, etc. You also can connect to thousands of other applications using Zapier.

So, when someone joins your subscriber list, a welcome email can automatically send. Or, if a customer abandons his or cart on your website, an automated reminder can be sent to them via text or email. The sky is the limit.

Evaluate, choose your channels

If you’re new to digital marketing (perhaps your business just launched), omnichannel marketing can feel especially overwhelming.

Start simple. Start small. Then, build and grow from there.

Identify up to three channels and develop a campaign that will run for a set period of time. Consider the potential touchpoints you’ll have with your target audience on those chosen channels (hopefully the ones where your audience spends the most time). That way, you can stop hesitating, get something into action where you can then evaluate its performance and how you can improve for the next campaign.

Omnichannel marketing also involves customer service across multiple channels, so consider how you can best meet your customers where they are, whether that’s Facebook Messenger, email, live chat, Twitter DMs, etc.

Even if you have existing channels already in play, it’s never too late to evaluate what channels are working and which might actually be hurting your brand reputation (because you can spend enough resources on them to properly maintain). More isn’t always better. Quality over quantity always.

Optimize your content

Gone should be the days of copying and pasting the same social media post across platforms. Every platform (whether it’s a social media network, your blog, videos on YouTube, you name it) should be treated uniquely. This can be based on the features available, target audience there and platform expectations. For example, going live on video and answering customer questions on the fly about a new product or service is something you could easily do on Facebook or Instagram. But you wouldn’t do the same on TikTok, Twitter, a mass SMS text message or even your blog.

Consideration for every place you publish content should be in play as part of your content marketing strategy in general, but it’s especially important for omnichannel marketing.

Thinking through your content with the omnichannel lens, you want to offer:

Engaging and personalized content that supports customers through each stage of their purchasing journey with you.
Researched and information-filled solutions to help customers compare products or service and make decisions.
A range of content that supports the needs of your targeted customer.
Content that’s optimized for the channel and device that it’s beeing consumed on.

While you’re brainstorming, check out our seven tips to level up your overall content marketing.

Measure, measure, measure

Data is everything in omnichannel marketing. The only way you can improve and evolve your efforts is to track the performance of all omnichannel campaigns across platforms.

This isn’t just about reading an analytics reports. Consciously test tactics, request customer feedback and act on the information you’re learning as you move forward.

Typical key metrics to monitor can include email open rate, social media engagement, sales conversion rate and customer retention. But it really depends on the nature of your omnichannel marketing campaigns themselves.

Don’t forget to set goals at the beginning of each campaign. That way, you can have a better sense of whether your efforts are effectively growing your business.

In conclusion

If you’re not leveraging omnichannel marketing in some way as consumers and technology (and buying habits) continue to evolve, you’re missing out.

Think through how you can meet your target audience where they are and how those different channels can complement each other.

As you’re exploring the potential of omnichannel marketing, 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.

6 ways to attract customers to in-store shopping

Despite the growth of online shopping, there’s still value in the in-store shopping experience.

And if your business depends on actual foot traffic more than online sales, it’s important to attract customers to your physical store location.

After the COVID-19 pandemic (when online was the predominant way to shop), about 65 percent of consumers still prefer the in-store retail experience when shopping. In fact, impulse buying is more likely to occur in physical stores.

Because online shopping offers an easy, fast and often personalized experience, your in-store experience has to go above and beyond for consumers to see value in brick-and-mortar shopping. It’s about taking the opportunity to offer real-life, touch-and-feel experiences that build deeper relationships with your customers.

This need might feel overwhelming. The following are six ways to attract customers to in-store shopping rather than online shopping with you.

Invest (or reinvest) in-store design

Every store is different, but investing in thoughtful, memorable store design pays off. Of course, how you approach a redesign can range from hiring an interior designer to displaying visually engaging merchandise.

The key is that you’re elevating the in-store experience visually. Effective store design can lead to about a 40 percent increase in sales.

Even your lighting can make an impact on how your customers feel and the overall in-store shopping experience. One study cites a 12 percent increase in sales for one retailer in Germany that installed a new lighting scheme.

And it never hurts to think about which areas could be photo worthy for your customers, where if done right, your store easily could get posted and shared on Instagram and other social media networks. (You can then leverage this user-generated content on your own channels.)

Take a look around your physical store with fresh eyes. What do you see? You can even distribute a customer survey to find out what your customers think would improve your store design if you’re not sure where to start.

Become a community hub

Building a community out of your target audience isn’t just for social media. It can be done in your physical store as well.

If you can, create a space within your store that can host meetings, gatherings and so on, both formally scheduled and informal happenings.

This gives you the opportunity to engage with new audiences (and bring in new customers) by hosting in-store events with various groups. And depending on how open and accessible the area is, customers may feel compelled to sit down and hang around longer as they talk with friends or work on their laptop.

Make sure that your community space is comfortable and accessible. It should be a space where people would want to spend some time. Of course, free WiFi never hurts either.

To take this idea even further, consider a dual purpose retail space. For example, this could be a cafe within your retail store. This does take considerable more work but could deliver bigger results if it’s right for your brand.

Offer customization, personalization services

About 62 percent of American consumers prefer gifts that feel more personal. By adding gift customization and personalization services in-store for customers, you may attract consumers who are looking for that something special for their loved ones.

What this looks like depends on the type of retailer you are and the products you’re selling. For example, a store with skincare products could offer the opportunity (and materials) for customers to put together their own gift baskets with whatever products they choose, walking out with a complete gift ready for giving.

Embrace all the senses

If you’re only focusing on what customers see while in-store shopping, you’re missing out on all the other senses that could compel them to not only stay longer but to return more often. And both actions can result in more in-store sales.

Creating a multi-sensory atmosphere specifically could encourage shoppers to spend an extra six minutes in your store and increase your sales by about 10 percent.

Consider the five sense:

Sight
Sound
Smell
Taste
Touch

Again, just like gift customization, how you embrace multiple senses depends on what makes sense for your brand, your store and your products.

What music are you playing? Does it create a positive atmosphere? Is there a comforting or invigorating scent to your store? Can customers taste samples of your products? Or, do you offer free mints at the door, for example? What is the seating like, or is there any seating at all? Can they touch your products?

Remember, you want to deliver a memorable experience that any customer entering your store would want to repeat. Start scanning your physical space for those opportunities.

Interact one-to-one with customers

Clearly, whether online or in-store shopping, the customer experience can make or break your business.

About 93 percent of customers are more likely to purchase from a brand again if they offer excellent customer service. And when it comes to in-store shopping, this is your opportunity to interact one-on-one with your customers. It’s inherently different than any online shopping experience. It’s all about that human interaction.

Customers feel special with undivided attention and personalized advice as they’re shopping. About 49 percent of consumers have made impulse purchases after getting a more personalized experience.

Think about how you can deliver a more personal one-on-one experience for your customers without being overwhelming.

Make your store pet-friendly

If it’s right for your brand, welcoming your customers’ pets into your in-store shopping experience can build a loyal and trusting connection with your customers.

Whether it’s a pet-friendly area or having some water bowls out, as well as treats available, for animals, it’s up to you.

Just keep in mind that you may have some legal limitations when it comes to allowing animals into your store. Check with your local health and safety boards to ensure that everything is on the up and up.

In conclusion

Technology will always be a factor for businesses, whether you have a physical store location or not. But with a store, you have the opportunity to level up the in-store shopping experience that your customers crave. You’ll build deeper connections and ultimately grow your sales.

While you’re evaluating how to best attract customers to in-store shopping, consider leveling up your digital marketing process. Is it everything you want it to be? DailyStory features automation, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.

8 tips to create a successful customer survey for your business

Customer satisfaction can make or break your business, so a customer survey can help you understand how your customers are feeling and where you could potentially improve.

Customer surveys are simply a method of soliciting customer feedback so you can measure your customer satisfaction, understand their expectations and conduct market research. (The principles of a successful customer survey can also be applied to employees.)

About 81 percent of companies that deliver customer experience excellence outperform their competitors, and 86 percent of consumers are willing to pay up to 25 percent more for a better customer experience.

When it comes to customer surveys, response rates can reach past 85 percent when respondents are motivated and the survey is well-executed.

The following are eight tips to create a successful customer survey that delivers actionable insights for your business.

Brainstorm the purpose of your customer survey

Of course, the first step to executing a successful customer survey involves identifying a clear purpose. Resist the temptation to dump every possible question and objective into a single customer survey. You’ll just overwhelm your respondents.

Instead, define your overall objectives, what you expect to get out of the customer survey and what you plan to do with the information you receive.

Some common goals include:

Getting feedback on your product or service.
Benchmarking customer experience metrics.
Improving your sales or customer support experience.
Testing your branding decisions.
Understanding customer satisfaction as it relates to customer retention.
Measuring interest in new types of products or services.

If you have multiple goals or objectives, prioritize them and decide which one you’d like to start with in a specific customer survey. You can always address other, lower-priority objectives in future surveys.

Check out our nine brainstorming techniques to help you generate clear, better ideas.

Choose your customer survey type

Once you know your objective, you need to choose the type of customer survey you want to create. This will also determine who you’ll want to survey.

The following are some of the types of customer surveys you can use:

Customer satisfaction surveys, where you can better understand and monitor how your audience feels about your products, services and brand itself. This includes New Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys and Customer Effort Score (CES) surveys. Remember that each customer is at a different stage in the customer experience lifecycle, so there’s not a single type that will effectively offer the insight you’re looking for.
Branding surveys, where you can get a sense of how to move forward with branding decisions, especially if you’re rethinking the overall look and feel of your business brand. The insights you get can help you develop your marketing strategy and confirm whether your product or service experience is actually aligned with your brand values.
Employee engagement surveys, where you can gauge the buy-in of your employees. Your employees are just as important as your customers, so their engagement is critical to your business results. This type includes Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) surveys, pulse surveys and 360-degree surveys.

Keep in mind that soliciting feedback in a customer survey (or even an employee survey) can feel unexpected or out of the blue for respondents, so regardless of the type of survey you choose, you’ll want to explain why you’re conducting the survey and offer clear instructions if necessary.

Keep your customer survey short and simple

The type of feedback you can generate through customer surveys is limitless, but this is not a one-shot deal. You don’t have to gather as much data as possible right away.

Think of customer surveys as a conversation, just like social media. Asking a ton of questions upfront will only overwhelm your audience. They’ll then lose interest and bounce. Then, you won’t get any of the feedback you’re looking for.

Consider survey “fatigue.” You don’t want yours to take longer than five minutes to complete, with no more than about 10 targeted questions.

You can always follow up with future surveys. How often you survey can depend on your industry, but be wary of surveying too frequently as well. Fatigue can happen through surveys that are both too long and/or too frequent.

Keep everything short, simple and only as needed. No fluff.

Embrace questionnaire best practices

When it comes to the questions themselves, there are general best practices you’ll want to pay attention to so that you can solicit true responses that can be positive and negative. These include:

Starting any customer experience surveys with a question that asks for an overall rating of the interaction that’s being addressed. You can then follow up with an open-ended question.
Avoid any biased questions that can influence your respondents to answer in a certain way or make it difficult to respond honestly.
Vary the types of survey questions you use. Mix open-ended questions with multiple choice, scale questions and anything else so that feedback can be well-rounded and help get at the “why” behind it.
Only ask one question at a time. Simplify your question as much as possible so that you’re not inadvertently asking multiple questions within a single question. For example, “Was your experience fun and helpful?” You’d do better asking those two questions separately so that respondents can better express whether it was fun and then whether it was helpful.
Keep most of the questions optional.
Avoid complicated sentences or any jargon in your questions.
Do not ask overly personal questions. Consumers are increasingly more security- and privacy-conscious. Confirm that you’re not asking needless demographic questions or anything that could be considered offensive or embarrassing. Your questions can be perceived very differently across multiple demographics and culturally diverse backgrounds.
Check every question for spelling and grammar errors. You want everything to look as professional as possible.

Pick your customer survey distribution channels

How you distribute your customer survey matters. In general, you should aim for the channel or channels that your respondents use the most. This could be email or SMS text messages, but don’t be afraid to be creative.

For example, you could have a scannable QR code printed on your receipts or a sign in your physical store location that links to your customer survey.

The goal or intention of your survey could also impact your delivery method. For example, you would likely email an employee engagement survey directly to your employees. It wouldn’t be linked publicly.

Of course, if you’re missing responses from a specific demographic, consider reaching out one-on-one in different ways, which can make a huge difference in your response rate. An incentive (like a discount or gift) can also help.

Test your customer survey with colleagues first

Before you send out your customer survey, you must test it yourself and by sending it to colleagues who can give you honest feedback. Select colleagues from various backgrounds to get the most perspectives possible. Encourage them to dig deep and challenge you on everything they experience in your survey.

You’ll want to confirm that every question reads as intentioned, that it takes no more than five minutes to complete and that the customer survey renders well across multiple devices. It also helps to read the survey questions out loud.

You can never test too much because once you send your customer survey, it’s out there, and any issues will impact the quality (and quantity) of feedback you receive.

Prepare for feedback analysis

For a successful customer survey, you should consider how you’ll segment your feedback data and what comparisons you’ll want to make.

Thinking about the analysis process while you’re drafting questions can help you get the most out of your survey.

Some segmentations and comparisons you can consider include:

Customer segments, where there could be a difference in responses based on how much a customer has spent with you, what they’ve purchased and how long they’ve been with you.
Geography-based segments, where there could be a difference in responses based on the city, state or country of your respondents.
Interaction channels, where there could be a difference in responses based on how this customer has interacted with your business, whether that’s online or in-person.

Some existing data could be automatically imported into the survey interface depending on the platform you use, but you could also ask for it. Just keep the survey as short as possible if you do have to ask some qualifying questions that will help you better analyze your results.

Always thank respondents and inspire action

A simple “thank you” can go a long way. So, thanking your respondents after they complete your customer survey is critical.

Of course, when you’re thanking respondents, you also have the opportunity to inspire action. That action can be reviewing your business on a third-party platform with a direct link to make it easy. You also could offer direct contact information for your customer service team in case there could be an issue your respondent might want to resolve.

In conclusion

When creating your customer survey, keep your target audience and goals in mind. Then with enough testing, you can feel confident that your survey will generate the type of feedback that you’re looking for and can cleanly analyze.

While you’re crafting your customer survey or any other survey, consider leveling up your digital marketing process. DailyStory features automations, dynamic audience segmentations and more. We can help you get your survey to the right respondents. Schedule your free demo with us today.

7 ways to connect with potential customers through marketing

As a marketer or business owner, you’re constantly looking for ways to find and connect with potential customers. Marketing is the answer.

Of course, this is easier said than done because you have so much competition, and they seem to be doing everything right. However, consumers are smart, and they no longer believe everything a company says about its brand, products, and services, so it’s up to you to find new ways to connect with customers and foster trust.

Your customers drive your business. Without them, you wouldn’t exist. Customer interactions are key, so instead of reaching out to them because you need them to buy something from you, you must continuously find ways to connect with them on a more personal level.

Here are a few ways to connect with potential customers through marketing.

Personalize it

The one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. Consumers want personal interactions with brands and to feel special. You can personalize your marketing by giving customers what they want.

Instead of sending email blasts for products customers might not be interested in, you can use your email marketing software to automate your marketing and send personalized emails to customers based on actions they’ve taken on your website.

For example, if someone purchases a toy for their dog, you can regularly send them emails about dog products instead of asking them to look at products for cats or other pets they might not have.

Dive deeper into how personalization is true one-to-one marketing.

Build trust

Your customers need to trust you before they make a purchase. Unfortunately, your first-time customers have likely never heard of your brand before, so they don’t yet trust that you’ll deliver on all the promises you made on your website.

Building trust is crucial, so consider adding testimonials to your site to act as word-of-mouth marketing and allow your customers to learn about the quality of your brand and products through other real people.

Another way you can foster trust is by working with influencers and content creators who can be your brand advocates. Even though you pay these individuals to highlight the benefits and features of your products, your customers are more willing to listen to an actual human being than a business website or brand.

Respond to concerns

Always be available to customers to answer their concerns.

Even when customers have issues, quality customer service can improve their experience with your brand, making them more likely to come back.

For example, many businesses offer free returns for a set number of days with no questions asked. This means they’ll print the shipping label for the customer or even send them the packaging to put the products in to be shipped back out. By offering exceptional service, whether or not there’s an issue, you can improve your relationship with customers and begin fostering trust.

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

Be active on social media

Social media gives you the unique opportunity to showcase your brand in a more personal way.

While you might not want to put behind-the-scenes footage or images on your website to maintain its professional appearance, social media is the perfect place to show the people behind the brand to start building customer relationships.

Your social media platforms should be used to engage customers, not simply sell them products or services. Instead of making every post a post to sell more, consider asking customers to engage with your brand by hosting giveaways and contests or using social media as a way to highlight your expertise by offering valuable and educational content.

Check out our 11 best practices to grow your social media followers.

Show customer appreciation

You’d be nothing without your customers, so show them a little appreciation once and a while.

You can show customer appreciation in several ways. Many customers would be happy to receive deals as a thank-you for their business. However, you can take it to another level by making the experience even more personal and rewarding for them.

Writing personalized thank-you letters or birthday cards is one way to show customers how much you care about them. One company that excels at building customer relationships is Chewy, the pet product marketplace. Chewy sends cards to pets on their birthdays and condolence cards and flowers to grieving pet parents after learning a pet has passed away. This company excels at building relationships, so they’re never in the back of someone’s mind when they need something for their pet.

Have a customer loyalty rewards program? Check out our five tips to successfully promote it.

Survey customers

If you want to know more about your customers, send them a survey and reward them once they’ve completed it.

You can learn just about anything from a survey, including how customers feel about your products and brand as a whole.

It can also improve your marketing by helping your business understand what customers want, including when they want to hear from you and which types of deals are most likely to make them take action on your website.

In addition, consider social listening, which essentially audience research where you monitor your brand’s social media channels for any customer feedback, mentions of your brand and discussions surrounding specific keywords, topics, competitors or industries that are relevant to your brand.

Build your email list

email-subscriber-list — If you don’t have an email list, you can’t send out surveys or keep customers informed about their orders, deals, and new products.

The best way to build relationships with customers is through email. If you don’t have an email list, you can’t send out surveys or keep customers informed about their orders, deals, and new products.

Email marketing has one of the highest ROIs of any marketing strategy, so if you’re not using it to grow your business, you’re losing out on tons of sales.

There are many types of email marketing messages to send, including:

Abandoned cart emails
E-blasts with deals
Customer appreciation emails
New product announcements
Company announcements

Each of your emails can be personalized based on actions your customers take on your website, improving your ROI and boosting sales.

Check out our 16 email marketing best practices that make an impact.

In conclusion

Connecting with potential customers isn’t difficult as long as you prioritize it.

Customers want to shop with businesses that actively show they care about them. If you’re not offering quality customer service or trying to build relationships and foster trust with customers, you’ll quickly lose out on sales to the competition that is doing all these things.

Consumers don’t want to be sold to. They want to be educated, informed, and experience personal interactions with brands.

Stop alienating customers because you don’t know how to market to them. They are the life of your business, so it’s time to start brainstorming ways you can begin building trust and improving your reputation.

As you’re looking to connect more with consumers, consider optimizing your overall digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email and text message marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.

About the author

Ashley Nielsen earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration Marketing at Point Loma Nazarene University. She is a freelance writer who loves to share knowledge about general business, marketing, lifestyle, wellness, and financial tips. During her free time, she enjoys being outside, staying active, reading a book, or diving deep into her favorite music.

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.

10 tips to improve your brand’s online reputation

If you’re not keeping tabs on your brand’s online reputation, you could be shooting yourself (or at least your brand) in the foot.

An online reputation comprises various strategies to shape the world’s perception of your brand online. If handled correctly, you’re able to build brand trust and impact consumers’ purchasing decisions in a positive way. In other words, a good online reputation supports your bottom line.

Think of it as your brand’s first impression for potential customers.

In fact, consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before trusting a business, while about 79 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

If you’re not on top of how your brand is perceived online, you could be losing out on customers and sales.

The following are 10 tips to improve your brand’s online reputation and put your best foot forward.

Start with an audit

Before anything else, you need to understand where your brand’s online reputation stands right now.

Thoroughly review all online reviews, and while this can feel overwhelming with so many potential places for customers to review you, keep it simple by beginning with the top four review platforms where consumers typically do their research on you:

Google
Yelp
TripAdvisor
Facebook

If you’re in a specialized industry that has an industry-specific platform for reviews, include that as well. For example, home-improvement brands will want to keep an eye on HomeAdvisor.

Of course, we encourage you to also Google your brand to see where else it might be popping up, just to cover all your bases.

Once you’ve compiled all the review platforms and reviews, double-check that all business contact details, location information and operational hours are up to date.

Then, look at what customers are saying. What is the ratio of positive-to-negative reviews? Are there far more positive than negative? If you have multiple locations, is one location standing out in a positive or negative way? Have you responded to all reviews?

Really assess where your brand is at perception-wise. Knowledge is power, and this information will fuel your online reputation strategies moving forward.

Keep in mind that you can set up Google Alerts to inform you of brand mentions online and more.

Decide on a review strategy and start replying

Now that you know where your customers are reviewing you and what they’re saying, it’s time to implement a review strategy for all relevant review platforms.

Perhaps you set a weekly time to regularly check for any new reviews. This would be the minimum effort we would recommend. If possible, turn on notifications wherever you can so that you can reply to all new reviews as soon as possible.

In fact, about 53 percent of customers expect businesses to respond to their online review within seven days.

You should respond to every review regardless of whether it’s positive, negative or neutral. And timeliness is a factor to be aware of. You’ll want to thank customers for positive reviews, but you definitely don’t want to leave a negative review festering without some sort of response.

Not sure what to say when it’s negative? Always view it as an opportunity to deliver amazing customer service and turn that experience for that customer around. (It’s definitely not the time or place to argue with the customer.) See our 11 tips to best respond to negative reviews.

Encourage happy customers to review you

Unfortunately, a customer is about 21 percent more likely to leave a negative review after a negative experience than a positive review after a positive review.

You must consistently work against that tendency by asking your happy and satisfied customers to share their experiences online. There are numerous ways to do this. Here are just a handful of ideas:

Offer incentives, discounts or cash rewards for customers who write reviews.
Send email follow-ups to customers requesting a review with a link to make it easy.
Have your employees remind happy customers to review you and explain the benefit that positive reviews have for your business.

Monitor all relevant social media platforms

Of course, you can’t properly manage your online reputation without a thorough plan involving social media.

First, consider all the platforms where your brand has a presence (an account, in other words). Then, think about any platforms that might be used by your customers, where they can post about you regardless of whether you have an account or not.

For example, if you only have accounts on Facebook and Instagram, that doesn’t mean that your customers aren’t tweeting about you (for better or worse) on Twitter.

You’ll need to embrace social listening, which is not just about monitoring what is being said about a business, brand, person or topic on social media. It’s also about acting on it. This can involve engaging with commenters or even adjusting brand strategy.

Learn more about social listening and how it’s different from social media crowdsourcing.

Prioritize your SEO tactics

Search engines can be a huge source of organic traffic to your website, but they also serve as research vehicles for consumers to learn more about businesses, products, services and so on.

So, your SEO (search engine optimization) strategy must be on point.

Ideally, you not only want to rank for the keywords that would help drive consumers to potentially purchase from you. You also want to rank for branded keywords that reflect your online reputation for consumers. In other words, you want your brand’s positive mentions ranking above any potential negative mentions.

And remember that blogging regularly showcases your expertise that will only benefit your online reputation, especially in search engine results.

Dive deeper into what you can do with our 12 SEO marketing tips for beginners. You also can level up your SEO skills with these 10 free online SEO courses.

Develop a public relations strategy

Earned media definitely can improve your online reputation, but it can take a little extra effort.

The extra effort involves a public relations strategy, which is all about promoting your brand’s inclusion in related articles, TV segments and more in the press.

Earned media is not to be confused with paid advertising. But leveraging press releases and connecting with local media outlets and reporters could lead to your brand earning some new coverage over time.

Work with influencers who have great online reputations

In the simplest sense, an influencer is anyone with a digital following (or audience) on a social media platform (but not necessarily) whom you’d like to attract.

The purpose of influencer marketing involves increasing brand awareness, targeting new and niche audiences and increasing impressions and reach.

This makes it a great vehicle to improve your online reputation because you’re leveraging the trust consumers have for an influence to boost your brand.

Check out our seven tips to know before starting your first influencer marketing campaign.

Monitor customer service complaints

Even though online reviews can take a lot of your focus, don’t forget about the complaints that are being given to your company directly.

How these complaints are handled can often impact resulting online reviews, though.

Depending on the size of your business, you may need a tool, such as Invoca, to help you stay on top of a high volume of call center or customer service department interactions.

Understanding what complaints are coming in can help you fix anything that isn’t working as expected as well (and prevent future complaints).

Keep track of your competitors

While it’s important to understand your own online reputation, you can take the next step by understanding that of your competitors.

Are they receiving mostly positive or mostly negative reviews? Are they responding to them? How are they responding? What are their customers saying about them?

Find out more about what a competitive analysis is and how you can start yours, as well as 16 tools to make your competitive analysis easier.

Commit to resolve recurring issues

At the core of successful online reputation management is the commitment to resolve any recurring issues to improve your brand’s buyer experience.

Consider the information (positive and negative) that you receive from customers as a critical piece to this commitment. If you keep your customers happy, you’ll prevent many negative online reviews from even happening.

It’s no easy task, but your responsiveness will serve your business beyond just your online reputation. Think about it: How many potential customers simply disappear because of a less-than-ideal experience and never return, whether they made a purchase or not? It’s important to get ahead of the issues and continually innovate what your brand can do better.

As you begin exploring your brand’s online reputation, 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.

8 ways to improve customer responsiveness

Your business can either thrive or barely survive based on your customer responsiveness in this fast-moving digital world.

How long does it take your team members to respond to a question from a customer or potential customer?

Simple answer: The longer it takes, the worse it is for your business.

Customer responsiveness is all about how quickly your business can respond to a query on any platform (social media, email and otherwise). On the flip side, it’s also about how quickly you can resolve an issue.

About 32 percent of customers expect a response from social media customer support within 30 minutes of reaching out, according to a survey, while 42 percent of consumers anticipate a response within 60 minutes.

Successful customer responsiveness leads to more sales and repeat customers who can ultimately become loyal brand ambassadors. Repeat customers are actually accountable for about 40 percent of an average business’s annual revenue. You definitely want your customers to come back.

The following are eight ways you can improve the customer responsiveness of your business.

Audit your current customer responsiveness

It’s important to assess the current state of your customer responsiveness and identify any areas in need of improvement.

You may want to test it yourself by sending an email from an anonymous account, asking an acquaintance to directly message on different social media platforms, etc.

The key is that you repeatedly test and document what is working to your expectations and what’s not.

You can’t fully improve or fix your customer responsiveness until you understand and identify the problems that need to be fixed.

Determine a customer response system

Every business is different, but it’s important to not only prioritize customer responsiveness but have a system for your team to address it.

For example, perhaps you know that most questions come through email, occasionally through your Facebook page inbox and very sparingly through your brand’s Twitter account (whether direct message or otherwise). You should then ensure that your team has time daily to respond to emails. For Facebook and Twitter, you confirm that your team receives notifications whenever there is a mention or message that needs to be addressed.

The more platforms your company is on (including Yelp and Google My Business), the more complex your customer responsiveness system may need to be. But it’s worth putting in the time and effort to think through what works best to achieve your improvement goals.

Keep in mind that the regular updating and maintenance of your knowledge base is critical to best serving your customers and keeping your team members all on the same page.

Embrace social media

Social media isn’t just a place where customers and potential customers can send your business direct messages. It’s also a place where queries can come in various types, depending on the platform.

On Facebook, for instance, a user can send you a direct message, comment on your post, tag you in another post or comment thread and even just mention you while not tagging you at all. While privacy settings may restrict what you can respond to or even see, it’s worth paying attention. Otherwise, you’re likely to miss something.

Instagram, Twitter, YouTube—there are so many ways users could be engaging with you and asking you specific questions. For example, only 3 percent of Twitter users tag a brand to ask for help, while about 37 percent of tweets mentioning brands are customer-service related.

Of course, regular searches for your brand name (and common misspellings) on various platforms can help identify the posts where you’re not tagged.

We recommend using a social media management tool in order to pool the monitoring all into one place. Some businesses might also outsource social media in order to stay on top of all the dynamics.

Consider tech-based solutions

Customer responsiveness and service have long been considered a manpowered service, where you have to hire more and more employees to do it right as a business. But there are a number of technology-based solutions out there that could work for your brand.

These solutions can include chat software where automated responses handle the most common and basic customer questions. Find out more about chatbots.

Invest in a quality customer service team

Chatbots can’t do it all. It’s imperative to hire and invest in a responsive customer service team, even if that’s only one person.

No matter the size, you must have the right people with the right skills working for you and representing your brand. Regular training to continue to develop and improve those skills also is necessary.

Strive for:

Knowledge, where a customer-service representative understands your products and/or services well enough to address the questions that pop up.
Excellent communication, where a representative engages with any type of customer or potential customer in a positive, supportive way.
Patience, where a representative does not get flustered or short with the customer or potential customer no matter what.

Explore CRM programs

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. In the simplest terms, a CRM program uses your data to build a relationship with your customers.

The right CRM program will help give you useful insights about your customers and their needs, as well as streamline customer service between different teams within your business (such as sales and customer service) so that your customer gets a consistent experience with your brand.

They’ll also often track pending and completed tasks by customer, so that you have an idea of what’s been done and what might still need to be done.

Get personal in your messaging

The further you can get from generic answers and messaging, the better. About 96 percent of marketers say that personalized messages and replies improve the brand-customer relationship.

To be more personal, use:

The customer’s name
A more informal, conversational and friendly tone
The customer’s native language

Strive for 24/7 customer support

This can be especially challenging for small businesses, especially if the only employee is you. (There is such a thing as work-life balance that every business owner should embrace to some degree.)

Options to be more responsive 24/7 include outsourcing your customer service, providing an easy-to-find and easy-to-understand FAQ section on your website and/or using live chatbot features that can then kick up more complex questions to a human.

In fact, chatbots have come a long way. About 41 percent of customers now expect live chat on your website.

Dive deeper into conversational marketing and the value of engaging customers in real time.

In conclusion

Ultimately, customers want to feel important. Take the time to understand what your business is doing well and what can be improved to offer the best possible customer responsiveness. The more you can put yourself in your customer’s shoes, the better.

Looking to level up your digital marketing process as you improve your customer responsiveness? Consider DailyStory, which features automation, audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.