Why is it that marketing and sales efforts are focused mainly on bringing in more and more new leads?
Obviously success in that area is vital, but existing customers are already involved with you (and probably like you) and forgetting about them can be extremely costly.
As you roll out new products and services, you need to find a quick and personal way to reach out to your existing customers to keep them informed.
Luckily, marketing automation makes this easy.
With the right triggers and appropriate responses in place, marketing automation allows you to skilfully capitalise on this often-forgotten chunk of custom.
Here’s what you need to do…
1) Use past purchase information
Referencing past purchase information is a simple way to get the most out of marketing automation when pursuing existing customers.
Whether it’s using basic manual triggers, or a more sophisticated Amazon-like engine, you are essentially presenting them with products or services that, based on their previous purchases, they’re more than likely interested in.
This requires a little detective work. What have similar customers purchased? Are there any buying patterns? You can soon build a decent picture of what goes with what.
2) Utilise web activity as a trigger
Using the web activity of your customers as a base, you can push out some rather clever automation campaigns.
Just as you would with leads, track what your existing customers are getting up to on your website, then use the behavioural triggers to send automated emails that are tailored to their activity/engagement.
This is a quick and scalable way to automate the way you nurture your customers, simply acknowledging interest and encouraging future purchases.
3) Keep every customer happy, so they don’t get away!
Most businesses pour time, money and resources into generating a ton of leads and attempts to convert them into new customers, but tend to sort of forget about what they need to do to keep them.
Keeping customers is a quick win, but forgetting about them is an even quicker loss. Displeasing the customers you have means losing out on revenue, and on your initial marketing investment.
You don’t need to give every customer one-on-one attention but, by using triggers, you can identify, contact and nurture those people who need it most.
TIP: Using a scoring system such as NPS (Net Promotore Score) is a great way to mark customers in terms of their satisfaction or happiness. With these triggers in place, the marketing automation software can do the rest.
4) Turn neutrals into loyal customers
Most consumers land in the neutral bracket. That is, they have no real reason to dislike you, and no real reason to like you. This is your chance to show them how good you are.
Through marketing automation, you can educate customers about your products, services, and most importantly your philosophy and message. Get this right and soon those neutrals will be your strongest advocates.
Maybe it’s educational materials targeting a problem they’re trying to solve, maybe it’s a new feature they don’t know about. Delivering great opportunities that they’re interested in is how you win the heart of the neutral, bringing them firmly into TEAM YOU.
5) Turn happy customers into ambassadors
Happy customers are the ones who buy from you without a second thought. They know your message, they know your products, they trust your business, and they’ll most likely to buy from you again.
To reach these customers in the most mutually beneficial way, you can do far more than just deliver upsell and cross-sell automation campaigns. As you release new products and services, you need these happy customers behind you, shouting your name from the side-lines. Here are a few ways to do this…
- Send them a preview to get in on the pre-sale
- Make them part of an elite group of first-to-try
- Offer thank you discounts in exchange for valued feedback
- Provide referral codes to send to their friends, family, colleagues or whoever
These are all great low-risk ways to draw your existing happy customers further into your brand, empowering them to get other like-minded people in on the act, and creating momentum within a core demographic.
You’ll either upsell your current customers and gain a whole lot of new business, or you’ll be left helpful feedback from people who already love you. That’s the magic of marketing automation right there.
6) It’s all in the timing…
Most businesses have high and low seasons, with budgets to match. This means there are times of year that your customers have more cash to spend, and you want to be there to see it.
Learn about the industries and business types within your customer base (this works for leads too), and tailor your own calendar to position upsell campaigns to match the seasonal trends.
The better you get to know customers, the more you’ll learn about these types of spending habits. Then, through your CRM and marketing automation software, these types of timely offers and campaigns can be quickly added and distributed to the right people.
7) Lastly, keep your channel accounts working at their best…
The selling efforts of your channel accounts hold a lot of potential. To get the most out of them, you can use marketing automation to keep them in the loop about new content, offers or campaigns, or push them to close by delivering end-of-the-month incentives.
They should never be wanting for all the latest marketing insight. The better updated they are, they better they can sell for you. Again, marketing automation makes this a breeze.