Learning how to nurture customers is a little bit involved but with a strategy it is possible to achieve and even have it become part of the everyday business operations and culture. Why should you bother with a strategy for effective customer nurturing? According to The Annuitas Group, nurtured customers make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured customers.
Top tips for creating and implementing a strategy for effective customer nurturing:
Listen and respond to the behaviours or individuals in real time – customers must feel that any questions or concerns are important to you and will be dealt with in a timely manner. Your customer nurturing strategy must include monitoring of emails, live chat messages and social media platforms.
Communicate with customer both online and offline – nurtured customers are those that feel that both their online and in-store interactions are valued. Ensure that your customer service and customer experience processes take both into consideration.
Set limits – no one likes to be overwhelmed with communications. It diminishes the message and its effectiveness. Limit the number of emails to add value to the customer experience, not detract from it.
Determine what content to send and when – again, your content needs to add value, address relevant concerns so determine what is the right content to send out to customers and when is the best time to do so.
Build relationships over the entire customer journey – there’s no point to only support customers during the buying step and at no other point in the customer journey; they will not feel nurtured. Design and implement a strategy that supports customers at all points of the sales funnel, from discovery to purchase and follow up.
Have solutions that are easy to implement – your business and its customer nurturing strategy should not be difficult to implement and/or reliant on your IT specialist. Ensure that customer nurturing solutions are easily implemented, managed and adjusted at a ground roots level within the business.
Measure the engagement – as with all marketing and business strategies, your customer nurturing strategy must be designed with measurement in mind to ensure it is working, to identify any shortcomings and highlight opportunities for making things better.
To discuss your business’ customer nurturing strategy in more detail please contact the team at Website Design Centre.
