As consumers become more information savvy, marketers continue to face the challenge of client engagement and how to improve client reactivation.
In this age when consumers are spoilt for choice, businesses face two big challenges in the areas of client engagement and client reactivation. At the front and back of every marketer’s mind are the questions like: How do I engage clients in a meaningful way? Or, what is the most effective way to reactivate clients who have gone ‘cold’ and ‘inactive’?
The battle for client attention and engagement is never fiercer than in the financial services industry. If you’re a marketing director in the financial services industry, chances are you’re spending a big chunk of your time trying to figure out the best ways to engage with your clients and how to reactive those who have gone dormant in your list.
Let’s have a look at some of the time tested and proven ways to engage with your clients and how to reactivate those who have not been responsive to your communication campaigns.
A recent video about the importance of your client list, talked about giving value to your clients.
These days, with consumers being bombarded with promotions and selling, clients are more likely to tune out if you send them another email asking them to buy something. Instead, you have to connect and engage with your clients in a way that will be meaningful or valuable to them. Here are some of the techniques we’ve found extremely helpful and effective in reaching out to clients.
Technique 1: Give your clients something of value to them
Provide them with useful, practical information that they can use or apply straight away. Give them some thought provoking ideas or some inspirational and aspirational thoughts and suggestions that will give them something positive to think about or to act on.
For example, a credit card company may send their clients some tips on how to repay credit card balance on time so as not to attract penalties. Or an online trading company may want to point out to their clients some market trends that may affect their portfolios. If your clients are retail traders, maybe you can give them some scanning techniques or tools on how to find trade set-ups and opportunities.
Give them something valuable that they cannot get from somewhere else.
Technique 2: Give relevant and timely information to your clients
While it is good to give something of value to your clients, it is even better if you give it on a timely manner. This means whatever it is of value that you’re giving has to get to your client on time or with enough time for them to act on it or to use it for their benefit.
For example, if you want to give some tips about taxation, make sure that you send it way in advance before tax lodgement time. Or if you’re giving away some discount for products or services for a limited time, make sure that you send a note about the discount at least a month in advance. This will make sure that the client will have enough time to take note of the discount period and act on it, if they want to.
Technique 3: Segment your client list
As an astute marketer, segmenting and analysing your target market is one of the best things you can do on a regular basis. This is because only when you segment and analyse what your clients are doing (or not doing) that you will get a better understanding of how to communicate and reach out to them more effectively.
Even if you have half a million clients on your list, but if you are sending them the same message, chances are many of them may become disengaged if they get information that are not relevant to them. Using today’s advanced technology and software applications, you can analyse dig deeper into your clients’ activities, preferences, values and wants. It goes without saying that the more you know about your clients, the better chances you have of reaching out to them and keeping them active and engaged.
In our previous post about programmatic buying, we talked about how it can be used for client segmentation.
Segmenting your client list will also deliver other benefits such as:
- Identify your most engaged and most active clients – reaching out to and communicating with your most active and engaged clients could mean more sales (better or higher profitability) because you are reaching them in a meaningful way. If your clients are engaged, this means they are giving you feedback, which you can use to deliver even better communication or service.
For example, on the online retail trading industry where almost all trading platform providers are offering similar technology, some are differentiating themselves by offering tailored trading education courses. Some of these providers have asked their clients what would help them with their trading and by engaging clients this way, these providers were able to adjust their service offerings.
- Identify inactive or non-responsive clients – knowing your inactive or non-responsive clients will also help you tailor your messages and communications accordingly. It will also cut or stop you wasting time and resources in trying to get them ‘active’ again. While some marketers may prefer the ‘comfort’ of having millions of client names in their list, what’s the point of having those if they are not responsive anyway? A wise marketer will do better in ‘cleaning’ the list and tailoring communications and campaigns to reach out to the most engaged clients.
- Targeted and more effective communications and offers – once you know your most active and engaged clients, you can easily and more efficiently tailor your campaigns, promos and other activities to keep them engaged.
These are just some of the time tested and proven ways to keep your clients engaged and how you can reactivate them in case they have been inactive for a period of time. Some industries have bigger challenges in keeping clients engaged and active. Let us know if you have other client engagement and reactivation techniques that have worked wonders.
