Buyer retention issues — particularly proper now.
However how do you retain your present prospects and usher in new ones and sustain with every thing else concerned in working your corporation?
Enter automation. Automation enables you to:
- Preserve your buyer knowledge up-to-date — no guide entry required
- Observe your prospects’ buy habits and engagement
- Construct tiered loyalty applications and ship out particular provides
- Establish your prime prospects (and reward them accordingly!)
- Gather and act on buyer suggestions
- Create a greater, extra private buyer expertise
On this information, we’ll cowl 4 areas of your corporation you could automate to extend repeat enterprise — plus 19 automation recipes you’ll be able to import and use immediately.
- Reward your finest prospects with loyalty applications
- Win again lapsed prospects
- Ship cross-sell and upsell campaigns
- Gather and act on buyer suggestions
You may obtain this infographic right here!
1. Reward your finest prospects with loyalty applications
Your finest prospects — that prime 20% of repeat consumers — are answerable for a lot of your success. Loyalty applications are a good way to thank these prime prospects. They’re additionally glorious for buyer acquisition and retention:
Extra buyer loyalty means extra repeat purchases and extra new prospects.
Constructing a loyalty program or rewards system from scratch may appear troublesome and time-consuming. Automation enables you to arrange a loyalty program that tracks your prospects’ engagement and buy habits — after which rewards them accordingly.
You may even use automation and contact scoring to construct out a point-based or tiered loyalty program.
A tiered loyalty program is a kind of membership program the place prospects obtain totally different perks and advantages primarily based on their stage. Ranges (aka tiers) are often decided by a metric just like the variety of purchases or sum of money spent by a buyer. The upper the tier, the extra useful (and unique) the rewards.
To succeed in the subsequent tier, loyalty program members must cross a measurable milestone, like {dollars} spent or purchases made. With automation and lead scoring, you’ll be able to phase loyalty program tiers primarily based on prospects’ point-based scores — after which ship the correct rewards to the correct prospects.
This automation enables you to phase members of your buyer loyalty program into tiers primarily based on a point-based rating — after which ship them rewards and reductions accordingly. Get the Tiered Loyalty Program Automation Recipe right here.
If a buyer is already a member of your loyalty program, robotically reward their buy with factors. If the shopper will not be a member of your loyalty program, ship them an electronic mail letting them know that they earned factors on their buy and alluring them to enroll in this system. Get the Loyalty Program: Add Factors After Buy Automation Recipe right here.
Buyer loyalty rewards and particular provides can embody:
- A reduction share off their complete buy
- Free transport
- BOGO (purchase one, get one) promotion
- A free present
- A greenback quantity off
- Membership right into a VIP program
- Contest entry
How will you decide which prospects are most engaged?
You should use automation to phase prospects primarily based on virtually something, together with:
- Their common order worth
- The date of their first buy
- The full greenback worth of their purchases
- What number of orders they’ve positioned
- Which objects they’ve bought
- How lengthy it’s been since their final order
- Which merchandise they considered greater than as soon as in your web site
- What number of occasions they’ve visited your on-line retailer
- Their loyalty rewards program standing
- After they final interacted together with your electronic mail content material
Robotically maintain observe of a buyer’s first buy date with this automation. This helps you phase your contacts and higher perceive your buyer lifecycle. Get the Retailer Buyer First Buy Date Automation Recipe right here.
When you phase your prospects, use these tags to robotically ship them particular provides. You may arrange automations to…
- Ship prospects a coupon after they make their first buy
- Add factors to a buyer’s loyalty program rating after they make a purchase order
- Invite new prospects to affix your loyalty program
- Have a good time a buyer milestone with a celebratory provide
- Thank them with a reduction code after they attain a sure variety of purchases
- Ship them a win-back electronic mail coupon in the event that they haven’t bought shortly
Flip first-time customers into repeat prospects with this automation. Robotically reward first-time prospects with a particular low cost or coupon over electronic mail. Get the Ship Electronic mail Coupon After First Buy Automation Recipe right here.
Robotically reward repeat prospects on their fifth (or tenth, or a hundredth) buy by monitoring their complete purchases and triggering an automation after they attain a sure quantity. Get the Reward Prospects on Repeat Buy Automation Recipe right here.
When a contact clicks on a hyperlink, makes a purchase order, visits a product web page, or replies to an electronic mail, robotically provides factors to their contact rating. When their contact rating reaches a sure stage, reward them with a coupon and reset their rating — then begin the automation once more. Get the Coupon Electronic mail for Buyer Engagement Automation Recipe right here.
This automation helps you have fun prospects on a particular date, like their birthday or the anniversary of them signing up with you. Ship your prospects coupons, rewards, or simply comfortable birthday needs. Get the Birthday and Anniversary Coupon Electronic mail Automaton Recipe right here.
2. Win again lapsed prospects
Electronic mail advertising skilled Val Geisler calls lapsed prospects, “zombie prospects”: “They’re on the market, searching for an answer to their issues. They used to work together together with your model, however have stopped.”
You could be tempted to jot down these zombie prospects off as a misplaced trigger or not well worth the effort. With advertising automation, you’ll be able to observe when your prospects final bought from you — and use that info to robotically enter them right into a win-back electronic mail marketing campaign.
A win-back electronic mail marketing campaign is a sequence of focused, customized emails you ship to prospects who haven’t engaged together with your content material or bought from you for some time.
The purpose of win-back campaigns (aka re-engagement campaigns) is to get your contacts to work together together with your electronic mail content material and purchase out of your on-line retailer once more.
Easy methods to automate your win-back campaigns
Along with saving you cash, automating your reactivation emails saves you time. You don’t should manually observe when your contacts final bought from you or clicked in your emails — automation can do this for you!
With engagement monitoring, you’ll be able to phase prospects primarily based on the final time they engaged together with your content material or visited your on-line retailer. You may also observe a buyer’s final buy date with buy monitoring.
This two-part automation tags your prospects after they interact, keep lively, or change into inactive — so you’ll be able to observe their engagement at scale. Get Half 1: Engagement Tagging Automation Recipe right here.
The second half of the engagement tagging automation recipe tracks your prospects’ engagement together with your content material or retailer in order that they are often tagged accordingly. Get Half 2: Engagement Tagging Automation Recipe right here.
Once you use engagement and buy monitoring, you’ll be able to set off win-back electronic mail automations when a buyer hits a sure level of disengagement — like 6 months since their final buy, or 3 months since they clicked by way of considered one of your emails to your web site.
Right here’s an instance of schedule a win-back electronic mail marketing campaign for buyer retention:
- Ship your first electronic mail about 3 months after your buyer’s final interplay. Observe their engagement with the e-mail. Do they open the e-mail, click on a hyperlink, or (hopefully) make a purchase order?
- Ship your follow-up emails in a drip marketing campaign that’s unfold equally between your first and final electronic mail — that’s often an electronic mail each 1-2 months
- Ship your final electronic mail when lapsed prospects have traditionally change into fully disengaged. If that time is at 9 months of inactivity, you will have 6 months out of your first electronic mail to win them again. As soon as they cross the cut-off level, take away them out of your electronic mail listing.
If a contact hasn’t engaged together with your content material or on-line retailer shortly, this automation robotically enters them right into a re-engagement electronic mail marketing campaign — so you’ll be able to win-back disengaged prospects. Get the Ship a Re-engagement Marketing campaign After Inactivity Automation Recipe right here.
To provide your lapsed prospects the very best expertise potential — and provide the finest probability of profitable them again — Val Geisler has the following tips:
- Let your prospects select which electronic mail lists they opt-into
- Heat them up earlier than you ask them to purchase from you once more. Ship them content material like:
- Worth provides
- Updates
- Newsletters
- Preserve it concise. Lengthy-form content material is nice for present, engaged prospects — however lapsed prospects in all probability received’t learn it.
- Ask for suggestions. In the event that they’re newly lapsed, there’s nonetheless an opportunity to deliver them again — however provided that you speak to them. Suggestions requests will be key: In the event that they reply, they’re nonetheless . (Extra on automate suggestions requests in part 4!)
3. Ship customized cross-sell and upsell campaigns
You should use automation to upsell and cross-sell to your present prospects primarily based on their purchases and pursuits. Focused upsell and cross-sell campaigns encourage your prospects to purchase further merchandise or improve their membership — and assist you deliver in additional income from present prospects.
What’s the distinction between cross-selling and upselling?
- Cross-selling means selling further merchandise to an present buyer after they’ve made a purchase order. For instance, as soon as a buyer buys a pair of sneakers, you ship them a follow-up electronic mail exhibiting an identical purse.
- Upselling is the sale of add-ons, costlier objects, and upgrades. The purpose of upselling is to influence a buyer to spend extra. A buyer buys a pair of sneakers and will get proven add-on merchandise like shoe care kits or colourful shoelace equipment.
Cross-sell and upsell electronic mail campaigns generally is a highly effective option to generate repeat enterprise. In keeping with a examine performed by ActiveCampaign, 28% of 546 respondents mentioned that emails from a enterprise most incessantly encourage them to buy once more:
Electronic mail advertising was most definitely to encourage individuals to buy from a model once more.
Present prospects the merchandise that they’ll love
Essentially the most profitable cross-sell and upsell campaigns use personalization to indicate customers the merchandise that they’re most definitely to purchase.
Automation enables you to observe your prospects’ interactions together with your web site and merchandise, then phase them accordingly. For those who promote on an ecommerce platform, you’ll be able to combine your ecommerce retailer with advertising automation to make use of buyer buy and product curiosity knowledge in your cross-sell and upsell campaigns.
When a buyer makes a purchase order in your ecommerce retailer, robotically ship them an upsell electronic mail marketing campaign primarily based on the product they purchased. Incentivize the upsell with low cost codes and free transport. Get the Accent Upsell After Buy Automation Recipe right here.
You may also use tags to robotically set off upsell and cross-sell electronic mail campaigns primarily based on:
- Particular product curiosity
- Variety of occasions bought
- Repeat product buy
- First-time product buy
- Variety of occasions visiting a product web page
This automation makes use of web site monitoring to robotically observe your contacts’ curiosity in a sure product — then ship focused messaging primarily based on that curiosity. Get the Product Curiosity Tagging Automation Recipe right here.
When a buyer makes a purchase order, robotically observe up with a cross-sell electronic mail marketing campaign primarily based on the product they bought. Get the Ecommerce Cross-Promote Electronic mail Automation Recipe right here.
With dynamic content material, you should use tagging and conditional content material to ship every buyer precisely what they need to see — the product, improve, or function that they’ll’t dwell with out.
For those who combine a Shopify retailer with ActiveCampaign, you’ll be able to spotlight your merchandise with product blocks. Product blocks allow you to pull product photos and particulars out of your ecommerce retailer instantly into campaigns and automations:
Add product blocks to your cross-sell and upsell electronic mail campaigns to indicate prospects the merchandise they need most.
Once you mix product blocks with product curiosity tagging, you’ll be able to ship dynamic, focused cross-sell and upsell campaigns that flip extra customers into repeat prospects.
When a buyer reveals curiosity in a product, robotically ship a sequence of focused follow-up emails with a reduction code to encourage them to make a purchase order. This automation makes use of product blocks to import your Shopify product listings into your emails, so you’ll be able to present prospects the merchandise that you understand they’re fascinated by. Get the Shopify: Product Curiosity Observe-up Emails Automation Recipe right here.
4. Gather and act on buyer suggestions
68% of shoppers who churn achieve this as a result of they don’t suppose you care about them. However you do care about your prospects — and utilizing automation to gather and act on buyer suggestions can assist you show it.
Once you ask for suggestions out of your prospects, you’ll be able to determine why first-time prospects aren’t coming again for extra, then repair these gaps to boost your retention charges. You may also discover out why your loyal prospects love your corporation — then use their phrases to market and promote to prospects with related ache factors.
Good buyer suggestions and testimonials will be highly effective instruments in your advertising. Potential prospects are far more prone to take heed to different prospects than to take your phrase for one thing:
- In keeping with Nielsen, 92% of customers say that they’re extra prone to belief private suggestions over adverts
- Millennials are 115% extra influenced by phrase of mouth than conventional promoting
However how do you get suggestions from prospects? Which prospects do you ask?
Automation enables you to observe buyer pursuits, exercise, and interactions, then use that info to ask the correct prospects for suggestions on the proper time.
Your most engaged prospects are a superb place to begin; they’re the most definitely to answer while you ask them for suggestions.
Past direct suggestions, you’ll be able to have a look at marketing campaign metrics to A/B take a look at issues like win-back topic strains and preheaders to see which emails have been opened probably the most. That approach, you’ll be able to iterate to create higher re-engagement topic strains because the marketing campaign grows.
Once you observe your prospects’ engagement with contact and lead scoring, you’ll be able to robotically electronic mail them to ask for suggestions as soon as they attain a sure stage of engagement. This additionally lets your prospects know that their opinion issues to you, which reinforces their loyalty. Win-win.
When a buyer reaches a set stage of engagement, robotically ship them an electronic mail asking for suggestions — then robotically ship them a thanks electronic mail in the event that they fill out your suggestions type. (Manners matter.) Get the Electronic mail Extremely Engaged Prospects for Suggestions Automation Recipe right here.
For those who don’t use contact scoring, you’ll be able to nonetheless establish and attain out to your most devoted prospects by tagging them as “energy customers.” For SaaS (Software program-as-a-Service) firms, energy customers are contacts who spend on daily basis in your product or use its most superior options.
These persons are an excellent supply of buyer tales, opinions, and suggestions.
When a buyer is tagged as a “energy consumer,” robotically attain out to request suggestions. Get the Suggestions Survey from Energy Customers Automation Recipe right here.
What about customers who don’t love your product or use it on daily basis? Attain out to inactive customers to be taught why they don’t use your product. What options do they want? What are their largest ache factors?
Sending a suggestions survey to inactive prospects can assist cut back churn, re-engage lapsed prospects, and provide you with useful details about the place your product has room for enchancment.
When a buyer is tagged as “inactive,” robotically attain out with a request for suggestions. Get the Buyer Survey for Inactive Customers Automation Recipe right here.
In order for you suggestions on the client expertise or a particular merchandise, you’ll be able to automate that, too — when a buyer makes a purchase order, enter them into an automation that may observe up with them per week later (so that you don’t have to recollect to do it manually).
When a buyer makes a purchase order, robotically observe up with a request for suggestions. Get the Collect Suggestions After Buy Automation Recipe right here.
How to answer (and act on) buyer suggestions
Asking for and receiving suggestions is a good way to be taught extra in regards to the buyer expertise and present your prospects you care. However how do your prospects know that their suggestions made a distinction?
For those who use NPS (Web Promoter Rating) surveys to gather buyer suggestions, you’ll be able to map these scores into your prospects’ contact data, then set off electronic mail campaigns or job assignments primarily based on the rating. If a buyer provides you a low rating, you should use automation to inform their designated account supervisor, provide them a reduction code on their subsequent buy, and even invite them to e-book a name together with your help crew.
Canned responses to suggestions can work in a pinch, however having an actual individual attain out to your contacts to be taught extra about their expertise — whether or not destructive or constructive — helps construct buyer loyalty and improve the possibilities of repeat enterprise.
Automation helps notify your crew when they should act and observe up on buyer suggestions. That is the place automation and a private contact go hand-in-hand: When a contact submits your suggestions type, use automation to ship them an electronic mail thanking them for his or her suggestions, then assign a crew member a job to observe up with a customized response.
When a contact submits your suggestions type, robotically thank them for his or her suggestions and assign a crew member a job to observe up with a customized response. After a while has handed, robotically ship another follow-up electronic mail to ask in the event that they want anything. Get the Suggestions Type Submission Observe-up Automation Recipe right here.
