Mobile is now considered essential to great customer engagement.
Customer engagement increases customer loyalty, and once you have gained customers’ trust, they’re more likely not only to purchase from you, but to think of you as their “first stop” when they’re looking for something new. Engaged customers can actually become effective as a marketing channel, because they tend to share their positive experiences with your products and services with friends and peers.
With great customer engagement, you’ll have less customer churn, and the cost for acquiring new customers will drop. Gartner says that just a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by an impressive 25% to an astounding 125%! But you have to keep in mind that when you let customers down, the effects can be just as dramatically negative. Customers have more choices right at their fingertips, and they’re not afraid to try them when they believe they’ve been served poorly. Following are 5 ways to turbo charge positive customer loyalty.
1. Content Marketing
Content marketing can take on many forms, but it is different from product descriptions. Content marketing often uses “lifestyle” content as a way to increase engagement. For example, a supermarket may have an easy recipe section on their website geared toward busy parents. A fashion boutique may publish quarterly look books, or a DIY retailer may hold workshops or host instructional videos on its website on how to make repairs or accomplish simple home projects. It isn’t direct selling, but sets the stage for sales.
2. Clever Categories and Filtering
E-commerce businesses that offer customers several creative ways to search for products can improve customer engagement. A site search feature is considered a minimum capability. Making it easy for customers to filter search results by price, customer reviews, colours, or even whom they’re shopping for reduces “friction” between the customer and identifying and purchasing what they want. Quick links related to upcoming holidays or sale items also make it easier for customers to find exactly what they’re looking for.
3. A Committed Social Media Strategy
Social media can be used to tie together various customer engagement strategies.
Social media strategy means different things to different businesses, but it starts with staking out the most valuable social media platforms in terms of customer reach and developing a consistent social media posting strategy that’s heavy on information and interaction and light on selling. Social media can be great for tying together platforms and introducing customers to, say, a new app or to the occasional special offer.
4. A Consistent Cross-Channel Customer Experience
Customers want to know that you “know” them whether they’re shopping from their desktop, a mobile device, or in person in a bricks-and-mortar store. It takes work to provide a consistent customer experience across channels, but it can really lock down loyalty if you do it well. Cross-channel customer engagement also requires that you take context into account. App users are generally ready to solve a problem or take an action, whilst desktop browsers may have more time for exploring.
5. An Outstanding Native App
Online and mobile performance monitor Keynote found that top tier native apps are faster and have less downtime than less successful apps. If you want a native app for customer engagement, the importance of your app developers cannot be overemphasised. Native apps are the fastest growing segment on mobile, because the right app developers can deliver amazing customer experiences. But you have to choose app developers with experience in driving customer engagement as well as customising apps to highly specific client needs.
Conclusion
Today’s digitally-empowered customer is in control of his or her customer relationship, and transitions easily from mobile to desktop to in-person buying. They want to engage with your brand conveniently, and if that doesn’t happen, they’ll happily go elsewhere.
If you’re evaluating mobile app developers to create the mobile app experience that will turbo charge customer engagement, Glance is a leading UK native app developer that puts client needs front and centre. We believe that your success with a native app is our success, and we’re right there with you from concept to post-rollout, ensuring your app meets or exceeds expectations. To learn more about how our app developers can help you engage effectively with customers, we invite you to send us an enquiry. We’ll be in touch promptly to answer your questions and get you started on the road to exceptional customer engagement.