Hi, Ross Hamer here, from the Swrve Content Marketing Team. Shaw + Scott and Swrve have teamed up to bring you a digital communications content supergroup! We’ll be sharing lots of tips and best practices on how to communicate successfully with customers across all the channels that matter. This first post focuses on how to succeed in the changing face of customer loyalty, in particular with relation to mobile.
A Changing Landscape
Brands spend a huge amount of time and money on marketing and advertising their products to keep customers coming back. It happens all around us, all the time, as they are constantly maintaining our awareness of what we are already familiar with.
But mobile has changed what we might call the ‘loyalty landscape’ completely. Nearly everyone has a smartphone that they carry with them at all times, in all places, and use at any given opportunity. This is a huge opportunity for brands, but they have only recently started to figure out the nuances, and of course there is still a lot of work to do.
It’s clear that customer loyalty marketing today can’t just simply be about reminding people all the time that you exist. It’s far more important for your business to be on the screen of whatever device your customer is currently using. And this is the real challenge! In our age of fleeting attention spans, getting the brand on the screen - and staying there - is the single most important thing you can do to nurture customer loyalty.
How To Drive Customer Loyalty
So how do you do it? Let’s start with the first time that a user opens your app, as it will define the rest of their journey, and if you don’t onboard successfully, that journey will be a short one. It’s all about educating your users about the core features of your app as effectively as you can, without being obtrusive.
For example, use in-app messages to explain the benefits of signing up for a free trial or opting in for push notifications. Once your audience understands the full value of your service, developing loyalty and increasing engagement becomes a heck of a lot easier for you.
After the initial onboarding, resist the temptation to spam with push notifications. Let go of the old marketing ways. Instead, think “service messaging”, which provides helpful and important information to customers in real-time.
Communicating that you know, and perhaps even anticipate, customers needs is incredibly powerful when it comes to building loyalty. For example a weather app could message you to take an umbrella with you before you leave the house. Or an airline knows the airport is busy, so offers you a fast track upgrade.
Looking for more? Read the full article from Ross on the Swrve website, or if you are ready to chat you can reach Shaw + Scott at +1.520.762.4842 and press option 1, or through our simple contact form.