A close examination of any successful business today will reveal that one of the primary reasons for their continued success is a large number of loyal customers. In business lingo, their customer retention rate (customer lifetime value) is high.

CLV has a major influence on business growth for a number of reasons. But perhaps the most important reason is that it is a forecast of the value your customer relationship can bring to your company—

Need more reasons why customer engagement is essential? Prioritizing customer engagement also opens up better opportunities for:

• An increase in your subscriber base
• Up-selling and cross-selling
• Creating more brand advocates
• Shorter purchase cycles
• Creating a better brand image
• Enhanced customer service
• Increased sales

The Secret to Succeeding At Customer Engagement: Provide Value

In the words of Mohan Sawhney, Clinical professor of marketing and McCormick Foundation Chair of Technology at the Kellogg School, the key to successful customer engagement is to view it as “advertising as a service, rather than advertising as an interruption.”

Essentially, you’re providing value to customers in exchange for their attention.

How do you determine what will be valuable to your customers?

1 Ask Them: It’s really that simple. Okay, so it’s not quite that simple because you still need to do some legwork to get this information from your prospects.

Leverage surveys, phone interviews, or even comb through forums like Reddit and Quora for insights into what their pain points are. This way, you’ll be able to engage them from a place of value.

Because the best source of quality customer data will always be the customer.

2 Follow Up On Unsolicited Customer Feedback: customers who provide spontaneous feedback are worth their weight in gold.

Surveys and focus groups are excellent methods for gathering customer insight. Still, in a world where every interaction with your company shapes their experience, these methods do not always provide effective feedback across the entire customer journey.

This is where unsolicited feedback can be a sales asset by compensating for some of the shortcomings of traditional solicited feedback.

The best part is that it is contextual, immediate, and, in most cases, a more honest customer perspective.

To be able to effectively follow up on unsolicited feedback received by your company, you must be proactive. Keeping a constant eye on social media feedback, for example (quote tweets, Instagram comments, and mentions on third party review platforms like Yelp, etc.).

You can also take it a step further by putting in place structures that allow for spontaneous communication between your company and its customers (such as building a community forum for your customers)

It’s also important to create lines of communication between departments in your organization. If you’re not careful, feedback from customers can go to the customer service reps and not actually make it back to the sales and marketing departments.

6 Easy and Actionable Tactics to Re-Engage Existing Customers

Hear from our Customer Success team how they support our clients, the most common challenges they see, and how they continue to deliver value to each customer year after year.

1 Share Their Content on Social Media

User-generated content (UGC) is an excellent marketing tool for companies that want to engage their customers. Why?

Because it is the equivalent of a word-of-mouth recommendation on social media.

UGC is trusted by 55 percent of consumers more than any other form of marketing, making it a surefire way to organically increase brand and product awareness.

Buyers in today’s digitally exhausted market have seen it all and are regularly unimpressed by brand-sponsored marketing messages.

As a result, consumers are relying on what other users say about your brand to make purchasing decisions more than ever before. In essence, UGC provides valuable social proof for your audience and keeps them engaged.

You’ll be doing your business a huge disservice if you are not sharing the content your customers create online. UGC presents a massive opportunity for your business because customers’ participation in this scale will help you meet a lot of your business goals quickly and effectively.

Of course, UGC should not only benefit your company. Use it to highlight your customers’ accomplishments as well.

Pro Tip: The experience your customers have when interacting with your brand is the most important factor in determining whether they become its loudest critic or a word-of-mouth marketer and active supporter of your business. As a result, to encourage a steady stream of UGCs from your buyers, cultivate a company culture in which customer issues are prioritized, and everyone is committed to providing the most memorable customer experience ever.

2 Host Customer Events

Exclusivity is such a powerful marketing and customer engagement tool because it is based on the psychological concept called  FOMO (fear of missing out).

It’s a strange phenomenon that, as humans, we desire the things we can’t have the most.

We want things that show the world that we are part of a select group – that we are special.

Leveraging this concept in your customer engagement strategy is such a powerful method to keep them coming back. And the implementation options are vast.

You can, for example, create exclusivity around your business by providing time-sensitive discounts and special sneak peeks of new business offerings to frequent buyers first. Even better, host “fans only” events where they can get first dibs on limited edition products. It will increase demand for your business l, but more importantly, it will get people talking about it!

Everyone enjoys being invited to exclusive events, including your existing customers. It’s also a great way to reconnect with your customer base – post pandemic.

So, book a room at a nearby restaurant or hotel and organize a re-networking meet-up with buyers. Even if your budget is limited, you can still provide an exclusive experience for your customers, such as a one-on-one lunch or breakfast with your top clients.

Pro Tip: Don’t focus on a sale during this meeting; instead, find out what’s new in their world. You’ll be surprised at how much information you can glean about their new consumer buying behaviors.

3 Personalize Business-customer Interactions

When a customer does business with you, they should be treated as if they are a VIP. This starts with providing exceptional service at every opportunity, from optimizing the user experience on your website to providing helpful support via phone or chat when a problem arises. Demonstrate that your relationship with them is more than just a business transaction.

In other words, make every interaction they have with your company as personal as possible.

Take it a step further by being proactive about offering these personalized experiences. What are you doing with all that information they gave you about themselves? For advertising purposes alone? It is time to change that up.

How about reaching out with a thoughtful message on their special days, such as work anniversaries, birthdays, and even on holidays that they hold dear. Or send them valuable resources like a great business book, and make it even more personal by shipping out with a handwritten note

As a result of all of your efforts to provide personalized experiences for your customers, your company will undoubtedly stand out from the crowd.

4 Ask for Introductions

Although asking for introductions right away may appear counterintuitive, it works as a customer engagement strategy. Requesting introductions makes your clients feel like they are part of your team.

Pick up the phone and call that customer right now. Request to be introduced to people who might be interested in your business offerings. You’ll reconnect with existing customers (and remind them of the benefits of doing business with you) while also generating leads for new business.

Pro Tip: Always provide value in exchange for their assistance. Get them excited about assisting your company. Consider rewarding them with referral bonuses whenever they successfully convince someone in their network to buy from you.

5 Make QBRs a Routine Practice

You already understand how critical it is to provide value to your clients quickly. Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR) are one of the tools available to help you deliver the aforementioned value. Especially given the ever-changing client-business environment.

QBRs are either unnecessary or dreaded by the majority of customer success managers or managed services providers (MSPs). A QBR, however, is more than just a formality to get out of the way. Because you can use your quarterly business review to solidify your customer base and grow your client relationships.

Pro Tip: Change up your QBR agenda to keep things interesting for everyone who attends. Consider a melting pot of product updates, company highlights, role-playing sales, and customer panels.

6 Use Technology to your Advantage

In many ways, technology has made modern life easier. It can also make customer engagement processes easier. Consider adding an AI tool to your stack, such as Accent, to capture and analyze all business-customer interactions (emails, calls, meetings, content shared and engaged with, etc.), so you can see in detail what’s happening AND what’s working across all of your customer engagement channels.

Consider what you could do with all that data. It is essentially a cheat code that can provide you with a significant advantage over the other players in your industry engaging the same audience.

According to McKinsey research, companies that have pioneered the use of AI in sales have seen benefits such as a more than 50% increase in leads and appointments, cost reductions of 40% to 60%, and call time reductions of 60% to 70%. Demonstrating that incorporating AI tools into your sales process provides only benefits.

Final Thoughts

Given the enormous impact that effectively engaging your customers can have on your brand, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be leveraging your current engagement channels to foster business growth.

Don’t forget to analyze these brand interactions so you can better understand and cater to your potential and existing customers.