When it comes to getting back to business, owners know it requires more than just resuming operations.
During the pandemic, businesses around the world endured a lot of change in terms of how they run their business, as well as their customers’ spending habits.
Although their engagement might have been booming in the past, today, preferences have evolved and businesses need to reevaluate their positioning.
That’s why in this blog, we’re taking a look at how you can reevaluate your engagement strategy in a productive and revenue-driven way.
What does having an engagement strategy look like today?
An engagement strategy is essentially a plan to deliver exceptional experiences that drive customer interaction – both online and offline. Whether through a website, via social channels, or in person, a great engagement strategy looks at appeasing customers and encouraging repeat visits.
However, where engagement was once about offering the lowest price or providing your customers with enticing discounts, today customer engagement thrives off of personal connection. Which means, the key to your success and brand growth relies heavily on understanding the customer and their needs, while communicating in their preferred way. You need to invest in the long-term relationship because when you understand who they they are, you are able to deliver a personalized experience across the entire customer journey.
CX influences on-the-spot purchasing, too – as 49% of buyers have made impulse purchases after receiving a more personalized experience with 44% will becoming repeat buyers after personalized experiences
Considerations For Reevaluating Your Engagement Strategy
While reevaluating your engagement strategy, it’s important to keep authentic connections in mind. In this next section, we’re highlighting the best practices that you can leverage to build out a durable engagement strategy or enhance a current one.
That said, keep in mind that every tactic might not stick the first time around and that it’s worth testing out a few options before committing to any one tactic.
Audit your current strategy and content
A critical aspect of re-engaging customers is understanding whether your current engagement tactics are still relevant to your current customers. If your content or methods of engaging haven’t been refreshed since you were last open, it’s time to re-learn your customer and tailor your new strategy towards them. Pay attention to how they communicate with you, services or products they’re gravitating towards, health and safety expectations and so on.
This particular best practice can become simplified through a customer experience management solution, like the Loop Experience Platform. Using advanced text analytics, you can survey customers at critical touchpoints within their journey and better understand their motives and preferences. With sentiment measurement, you can learn if their thoughts towards your pricing have changed or if service is still up to par. Further, with the heat map visualization in the Loop Experience Platform reporting, you can see what trends are on the horizon and obtain a full suite of data and dashboards for clear and concise analytics.
Set clear attainable goals and communicate them internally
Before coming up with ideas for your engagement strategy, it’s important that you set clear and attainable goals. That means creating S.M.A.R.T goals that coincide with your brand’s image and values. For instance, when thinking of your strategy consider; What percentage do you want to see your engagement increase by? Is this number attainable for your business at this moment? What is your budget to implement this strategy? And, in what timeframe are you expecting to see this increase? From here, it’ll be easier to flesh out the strategy and ensure your tactics (channels, cadences, copy, etc.) are aligned with your end goal.
Example goal:
Within the first quarter of FY2021, we would like to see our WhatsApp Messenger engagement increase by 15%.
Once you’ve developed your goal and you start to build out your strategy, the next step is to effectively communicate it internally. This ensures that everyone is working towards the same unified vision and that all actions are taken with this goal top of mind.
Consider Real-Time Capabilities
Time to serve a customer is at the pinnacle of engagement -no customer wants to be on hold for hours on end.
When it comes to keeping customers engaged – it’s all about real-time interaction. Whether it be via Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, your business should be responding in minutes, even seconds. To ensure consistency, we encourage businesses to have time standards within their engagement strategy to ensure a consistent response time. In addition, having message templates with common answers to responses can help you streamline response times.
And for those looking to streamline the process, this is all possible with Loop. Using our platform, you can engage customers in their moment of truth allowing for recovery and follow-up to feedback on the customer experience. Whether an employee is on the go via mobile or sitting at an office desk, Loop notifies employees of customer conversations for a quick response. In addition, Loop houses an array of customizable message templates that your business can use to respond to in the moment.
Build A Brand That Resonates
It’s been said that the age of faceless brands is over, and that does hold true for many. Customers today crave connection and interaction with brands – especially after over a year of isolation. When building out your engagement strategy, consider ways in which you can make the customer feel valued while driving a meaningful connection with your authentic brand story.
Companies must work to create a sense of meaning and connection with customers, in order to attract their attention and facilitate opportunities for engagement. Part of that will come from the sense of authenticity you can create for your brand. For example, in a study, 86% say that brand authenticity is key to deciding which brands they like.
A great way to do this is to get personal with customers; use their name in conversation or reference past orders to show you care. Using a platform like Loop, you can actually leverage analytics and review past conversations to ensure you have context for conversations and can start building a connection. Further, you can send them a survey after their experience to see how you can tailor the experience and encourage repeat visits.
Take Advantage of Popular Channels
Over the course of the pandemic, many individuals have switched over to digital forms of communication. This means, if in-person conversations were popular before, that might not be the case today. When reevaluating your engagement strategy, consider trending channels and how customers are re-engaging with you. Being conscious of channel preferences allows you to focus your attention on building out engagement campaigns optimized for these channels – leading to higher satisfaction and conversion.
Not sure where to start? With a customer experience management solution like Loop, you can see all the channels customers are using to communicate, within a single inbox. Whether it be Web Chat, Facebook Messenger, Twitter DM, and more, using Loop you can take advantage of popular channels and leverage them for greater engagement. According to a study, “54% of social browsers use social media to research products.”
Ensure Consistent Communication Focused On Retention
Lastly, when it comes to engagement, it’s critical to ensure you’re consistently communicating with the customer and reminding them of your brand. Today’s customer is constantly receiving updates from people and businesses, so it’s important you keep the experience top of mind. Follow up with a customer after their service, or send a message a day after they purchase a product. With consistent communication, you keep your brand at the forefront, encouraging repeat visits or communication. This is especially effective if you’re listening to their feedback, implementing change, and communicating in a personalized way.
Want to ensure you’re creating a durable engagement strategy? Our representatives are happy to help.
