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Driving customer acquisition with an integrated approach to eCRMMost
customers will need to be exposed to your brand a number of times before they
convert. Your challenge as a marketer is to understand your cost of customer
acquisition across multiple online channels and to use the blend of channels
and strategies that will yield the best conversion rate at the lowest cost.
With the right customer information at your fingertips, you can begin to work to improve your response rates across the channels and media you use for your campaigns without increasing your overall campaign budget. The key here is that the more points of entry you provide for customer conversion, the more successful you will be in generating leads or closing sales, and the lower your cost per acquisition will be. Let’s consider this example of a five-step marketing programme that will increase your contact opportunities with each prospect and improve your chances of converting them. 1. Create an acquisition email campaign Once you’ve captured the interest of a new prospect through search, social, display or some other form of online advertising, ask him or her to sign up for an email promotion. This promotion should be an email communication targeted at prospects only and delivered in a short time frame to capitalise on the potential customer’s interest. Keep the message short so that it can be read and digested in 30 seconds or less. Make it clear during sign-up that the promotion is for a defined period only, and that the prospect won’t hear from you again if he or she decides not to engage with you after the promotion. During sign-up, you should ask questions that enable you to further pre-qualify and segment your audience. 2. Engage with customers across additional channels During sign-up for the email promotion, also ask for a cellphone number for SMS marketing. Again, SMS communications to these prospects must be tailored for people who are interested in what you have to offer but have yet to convert. With prospects’ permission, you can use SMS to remind them of your intention to send regular emails or to nudge them towards conversion by giving a promotional code, a Web site URL or a phone number for one of your sales reps. Once you have engaged with your prospects, you can schedule a follow-up SMS message a week or so after their first contact in order to thank them again for engaging with you. Be careful not to overuse SMS and to get explicit opt-in permission from customers before you use it. The mobile phone is extremely personal and prospects will be unhappy if you bombard them with communications too frequently. 3. Encourage word of mouth Customer acquisition costs are steep. One way to save money is by encouraging customers and prospects to refer friends and colleagues to your acquisition program. Referrals are often more targeted than your acquisition points could ever hope to be, as they are generated by the prospect or customer themselves with both knowledge of your offering and the needs of their friends and colleagues. 4. Gather further information via surveys By linking survey results to customer profiles, you can transform the data you gather from high-level quantitative data to detailed qualitative data that you can use for improved one-to-one communication. As with everything relating to data linking, it is important to always acquire a customer’s permission before linking results from a survey to their contact record. A survey is also a great way to end off an acquisition email campaign, as it will help you to determine where problems exist in converting prospects to customers. 5. Integrating customer data with everything The holy grail of database marketing brings all information gathered through customer touch-points into a central location where it can be analysed and mined for trends and similarities amongst customers. If you don’t already have a sophisticated eCRM package, you can connect your email lists with your customer database manually. This will enable you to offer a unique, personalised experience to both customers and prospects. Prospects would see information pertaining to first-time clients, while existing customers would see information that relates to their account and possibly additional products and services that might be of interest to them. Closing words An integrated approach to eCRM is the best way to
maximise the benefit of any customer acquisition campaign. By tracking
customers throughout their lifecycle with you, maximising opportunities for
engagement and accurately measuring the cost of acquisition, you will be able
to find ways of driving your sales up and your costs down. |
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