6 Steps to Building a Relationship with your Customers…Online

As purveyors of nightlife and entertainment, your communications with potential clients and customers must be consistent.  You must build a relationship over time and provide support and drive sales. Plan your online communications so it’s integrated and consistent with the rest of your marketing. Here are six major points to consider:

 

1.    Target market – Define your audience as granularly as possible in terms of demographic descriptions, psychographic insights, and past behaviors to help craft relevant messaging.

 

2.    Objective – Most campaigns focus on getting people to the event. If you’re putting a big event together, It’s good to take into considering each stage of the purchase process (research, engagement, purchase, post-purchase, and advocacy) when planning your messaging.

 

3.    Communications vehicle – What format are you going to use to communicate (Email, Mobile, RSS,  Chat, Social Media)? In making your selection, think about what’s best from your users’ perspective. Often, it’s important to give your customers a choice.

 

4.    Message – When crafting what you want to say, consider the format’s space constraints, how you can incorporate your branding into the communication, and whether different messages are needed for multiple formats. Think about how consumers will receive and respond to your message. Plan for customer responses across multiple devices.

 

5.    Supporting marketing – Integrate your messaging with the rest of your marketing program:

a.    Related advertising – This includes a variety of on- and offline campaigns. At a minimum, ensure that your search marketing contains the keywords in your message and links to the appropriate page of your Web site.

b.    Landing pages – Create tailored landing pages relevant to the event and content highlighted in your messages.

c.    Related content – Provide links to deeper information on related products and topics on your Web site and blogs.  For example, if you’re promoting a concert, let us link to the bands home page.

 

6.    Success metrics – While indicators can vary based on communications channel, at a macro level it’s important to track the following categories:

a.    Messages. By communications format, monitor the total number of messages sent, the number of messages that were misaddressed or bounced, the number of messages that were read, and the number of messages where customers took actions. Track the response rate and the conversion rate.

b.    Revenues. Measure the sales driven by each campaign by communications channel. Then calculate the sales per message separately for each channel.

c.    Expenses. Determine the fully loaded cost per campaign and calculate the cost per person contacted by communications format

d.    Attrition rate. Assess how many new registrants unsubscribe after receiving your first communication by source.

 

Building a relationship with your clients using a well-thought-out customer communications strategy allows you to cost-effectively deliver very targeted marketing messages. Communicating to customers and prospects via their channel of choice helps you create messages that are timely, personal, relevant, and effective. This should overcome any additional cost and complexity that the execution of such a strategy will involve.

 

I look forward to your comments.

 

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