This is a guest blogging article contributed by Aida Kubatova at Growave
Customer engagement is an important connection between your brand and your customers. It’s well known that highly engaged customers buy more, promote more, and demonstrate more loyalty to your online brand.
In 2020 online customers are getting smarter and quicker each day, thanks to the growth of digital marketing and social media. So to involve more customers in their business, merchants all over the world are coming up with different customer engagement strategies every day.
Customer engagement and service is always a worth-while investment (source: clarabridge.com)
Well, the main goal of every customer engagement strategy is to get an emotional connection with your customers and encourage them to involve themselves with your brand. Customer engagement also works as a metric for your online business that shows the quality of your customer experience and how loyal your customers are to you.
Today we see a lot of successful customer engagement examples that merchants could use to create an awesome customer engagement strategy for their businesses. It’s better to look up to big brands and form a strategy that would fit your business. Major brands use different strategies: from creating useful content and explainer videos to and providing the top-notch personalized customer service.
And in this article, I would like to talk about 5 customer engagement strategies you need to leverage in 2022 to keep your business on top of the game.
I. Customer Service and Experience
Customer Online Mapping is an important pillar to good customer experience (Source: UXpressia.com)
As a lot of merchants say - the good news is that customers remember when they were treated well, and the bad news is that they also remember when they were treated poorly. Either way, customers share their shopping experience with their family and friends, and this will end up bringing either more or fewer sales opportunities for you as an online business owner.
A study shows that when asking customers what impact their level of trust with a brand, offering excellent customer service was ranked number one, and 52% even said that they made another purchase from a brand after they had a positive customer service experience. So make sure that great customer service and experience is one of your priority customer engagement strategies. Integrate various types of customer support; via email marketing, social media, phone calls by integrating business phone to keep in contact with your customers and provide great customer service.
Further Reading:
- Hotjar // What is Custome Experience: Best Practices and Tips
- CMSWire // A Beginner's Guide To Digital Experience
- Hubspot // A How-to Guide To Customer Journey Mapping (With Examples + Templates)
- ClickTale // White Paper: Defining Digital Experience Report
- Shopify Compass // Customer Engagement and Retention with Facebook Ads
- Intercom // Customer Support and Service: Success Strategies
II. Useful Content
Another great customer engagement strategy, that in my personal opinion brings the most traffic to your online shop, is creating useful content for your customers. There are a lot of different channels to share the content and let’s talk about the most suitable channels for eCommerce.
If you have an opportunity to create promotional or explainer videos - do it.
Because according to Wyzowl, soon video traffic will represent 80% of all consumer online traffic as half of a billion people watch videos on social media every day. Show how to properly use your products and tell your customers the story of your brand, or you can make a funny backstage video and go viral. Anyways, all videos get lots of attention and help you to engage more with your customers.
Also, engaging with other communities in order to expand your online brand’s name and grow your reputation in different groups of people brings major traffic, which will eventually convert on your website.
For example, you can start guest blogging, as blogs have a major influence on the online market and society today. People now search for all types of information on blogs and other informative websites, so your blog post needs to have informative content and tips about your industry or what the targeted audience wants. Also, online forums like Quora and Reddit are a great channel to reach your desired audience. Show your knowledge by answering questions related to your products on Quora, talking about your industry on Reddit and people will trust you and your brand more and become your loyal customers.
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.”
— Seth Godin
Further Reading:
- PageFly // How To Write Quality Content In 15 Steps (examples + case studies)
- PageFly // Content Strategy for Your eCommerce Business
- Neil Patel // How to Create Better Content For Your Customers
- Mention // Engage and Retain Customers With The Right Content Marketing Strategy
- Hubspot // How To Develop An Effective Content Strategy: From Start To Finish
- Marketing Insider // How To Use Content Marketing To Build Strong Branding
- Smart Insights // Essential Content Marketing Statistics in 2020
- Content Marketing Institute // 10+ Case Studies To Inspire Your Content Marketing Plan
III. Rewards and VIP Tiers
In 2020 rewards programs are one of the most effective strategies for customer engagement.
It’s not a secret that customers love getting rewarded while they are online shopping – it makes them feel valued, and the more rewards they collect at your shop, the more they come back to shop again and redeem the rewards. VIP tier is also a great way to build customer loyalty and remind your long-term customers that you care and value a relationship between them and your business. VIP tiers help merchants make their best customers feel like a member of a closed privileged club at your store with special status, which makes them more engaged with your brand.
Source: uniqso.com
First of all, in order to build a rewards or VIP tier program on your Shopify store, you need to find an app on the Shopify App Store.
One of the best apps is Growave, with an average 5-star rating. Growave is the all-in-one marketing platform that can help you reach your audience, engage users, and increase conversions with ease. You get all tools for reaching, engaging, and converting your customers like Reviews, Wishlists, Rewards and Loyalty, Instagram galleries, Automated emails, Social Sharing and Social login for a great price, all under one dashboard.
Further Reading:
- PageFly // Top 05 Ways To Boost eCommerce Sales with Loyalty Program
- Hubspot // A Beginner's Guide To Customer Loyalty Program
- Shopify // 10 Examples of Innovative Loyalty Programs
- Sleeknote // 07 Proven Customer Loyalty Programs That Work
IV. Smart Email Marketing
Source: setup.us
Email marketing is a cheap but yet powerful tool to reach and engage with your customers. It may be a friendly email reminder about new products for your existing customers or promotional email to attract new targeted audience’s attention.
Proper emails may create your online brand’s awareness and build loyalty and trust among your customers. Collect emails from your customers when they shop and use the power of email marketing.
Further Reading:
- Optin Monster // Email Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-step Guide
- Sendgrid // 24 Email Marketing Best Practices For 2020
- Shopify // Email Marketing Guide For Small Businesses
- Backlinko // How To Build An Effective Email Marketing Campaigns
- Automizy // 12 Customer Engagement Email Templates (+29 Subject Lines)
- GrooveHQ // 18+ Customer Service Email Templates That'll Save You Hours
- Sprout Social // 10 Free Email Marketing Tools To Save You Time and Money
- Optin Monster // 31 Email Automation Tools To Transform Your Online Businesses
V. Personalization
You probably heard Dale Carnegie’s famous quote: “Remember that a person’s name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language”. If you think about it, this quotation refers directly to the value of personalization.
Personalization is becoming the future of eCommerce marketing, and experienced marketers say that 2020 is going to be the year of personalized marketing. Personalization is a great tool for engaging with your audience and increasing conversions, and that’s why experienced digital marketers have been leveraging personalization for years.
A survey of 1000 people shows that 90% of them have said that they find personalized marketing appealing. But what’s more important, 80% of the audience has mentioned that they would be more likely to purchase from a brand that offered a personalized experience.
Further Reading:
- PageFly // Homepage Personalization Made Easy: A Step-by-Step Guide
- PageFly // Product Page Personalization: Tips and Best Practices
- PageFly // Personalize Your Cart Page In 06 Simple Steps
- PageFly // Thank You Page Personalization: Everything You Need To Know
- PageFly // Top 05 Personalization Apps For Your Shopify Product Pages
- Big Commerce // eCommerce Personalization: A Definitive Guide
Conclusion
In the eCommerce world, where your brand’s competitors are just a click away, it’s important to leverage several customer engagement strategies and try new marketing hacks in order for your online business to remain relevant and keep flourishing.
-----Author’s bio:
Aida Kubatova is a Content Strategy Manager at Growave. She believes in the power of eCommerce and loves online shopping herself. Every day she creates useful content to help entrepreneurs around the world to learn more about the latest news and innovations from the world of Digital Marketing and eCommerce in order to grow their online business and, of course, sales.
