George is the magazine for St.George Bank’s corporate customers. Aimed at executive-level readers, it features customer case studies, news, articles on emerging business and management trends, product information, lifestyle features and more.
Issue link: http://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/48224
T here's a fine balance between retaining core customers and bringing in the new while diversifying your business and your customer base. But with the right tools of engagement, it's possible to keep and acquire customers and grow your business without eroding your core supporters. The key to identifying your core customers is through engagement and advocacy, says Senior Consultant at marketing firm TrinityP3, Anton Buchner. "A lot of people look inside-out and say, we'll just look at the dollar value of that customer to our brand or business and assign them as high-value. Where that's evolved to is looking at engagement." Customers who regularly open your company's emails, click through supplied links, interact with social networks such as Facebook and Google+ (Google's own new social network), or forward emails to others, are highly engaged with your company's communications, says Anton, and are therefore more valuable. These activities can all be tracked, but it's also important to look to the future. For example, customers who fall into a medium-value category today may, due to lifecycle, business, personal or other triggers, become high-value customers in the future. Out with the old, in with the new? Not if you know what's good for business … BY MIRIAM HECHTMAN Get it together Many companies fail to identify such customers by not looking across the total business and having a central view. Many companies today are structured into silos, Anton says. "They're looking at high-value people and their interactions within individual silos. They fail to look at all product holdings, let alone customer engagement, and have mixed messages from different divisions," he notes. Though it may be difficult to pull together everything into a single point of view, track these different channels and then put them into an overall interaction or engagement scoring, "That's where companies need to go," says Anton. He also suggests companies track measures of high- value engagement like Net Promoter Scores (NPS) as a way to better understand their customers. The overall NPS score is a top-line measure of how healthy a company is in terms of overall promoters or detractors. The score is obtained by asking customers a single question on a 0–10 rating scale. At an individual level, businesses can identify promoters who rate a company nine or 10 out of 10, and run advocacy strategies, such as member-get-member or social referral, says Anton. "It should also look at targeting detractors (0–6), understand what has dampened their view of a business (typically poor customer service experiences) and resolve their issues." Companies should also be alert to danger signs that they may be losing customers. The most obvious sign is that customers aren't spending as much, says Anton. But looking more laterally, companies can learn things might be changing for a customer, for example, by a name change. "A change in a product's holding from two names to one is a great sign and trigger that a customer's life has changed. You can very simply send out that you want to keep up with that customer's changes." Interaction rates, such as declining sign-ins to your website, declining open and click-through rates on emails, or unsubscribes from emails are also telltale signs. Know your customers So how do you keep these core customers? The key to keeping high-value customers loyal is giving them preferential treatment, says Anton. "Make them feel special and don't treat them as a number. Many companies are too focused on the next sell," he says. Creating VIP experiences, surprise rewards, random acts of kindness and advanced notification on products or services are some of the ways to establish brand loyalty. "It's not being afraid to ask some key questions to know a little bit more about who your customers are," says Anton. This approach is especially pertinent for newer or less 'sticky' customers. "This is where businesses need to go – I really need to know this customer. I've got to try and remain relevant and make them feel special and then they'll become my biggest advocates, rather than just flogging product sales objectives blatantly at them." Ensure your customer touch points are compelling and emotionally connect with your audience to maximise memorability. Smart Solutions' Creative Director, Erik Bigalk, says it has become even more important to maximise and make www.stgeorge.com.au/george George 7