A new year is a time to take stock on how the successes and challenges of the past year have brought you here. Too often the temptation is to solely rely on what’s worked in the past to achieve your future goals, but taking the time at the start of the year to reflect on your service offering or product strategy can help take you in new and exciting directions.
If you’re a service provider, considering both sides of that transaction, put yourself in the shoes of the person purchasing that service. What are their needs and does your service meet them? Is there anything else you can do as part of the service to add value to their experience? Taking your service back to its base principles of who, what, how and why will help you consider where you should devote your energies in the new year.
If you’re selling products, consider where you can improve the purchaser’s experience at every step of the transaction. Do you send them effectively segmented emails or abandoned cart emails to entice them to reconsider? Are your transaction confirmation, shipping and delivery communications effective and engaging? Rethinking what your customer would like to hear at every stage of the transaction will help you refine what you’re sending.
One strategy you may choose to adopt this year could be developing or refining email automations. Automations are one of the most effective ways to provide value to your clients and customers and impress them at every stage of their interactions with you – and once they’re set up, they run themselves!
For service providers, this might mean welcome emails with details of your agreed terms of service, contact information and any information that would help empower and assure the client that work has commenced. You could also link your automations to your CRM to send confirmations that work has commenced or completed. This could be tied to a client satisfaction service or a referrals program – what better time to ask for feedback or a referral than when a piece of work has been successfully completed.
For ecommerce sites, you could improve the design of your purchase confirmation and shipping notifications, create integrations for delivery tracking or even send delivery confirmations with satisfaction surveys or returns information to ensure customer satisfaction.
For brick and mortar stores, emailing receipts is an effective way of contacting customers after their successful purchases. When was the last time you received a simple thank you for your patronage and asking if you’re happy with your purchase? This could be very effective when making significant purchases like white goods or cars as part of your aftercare service.
However, automations can also create challenges when misused. People don’t need confirmations every time they sign up to a mailing list, the receiving of the mailing is confirmation enough. Automations need to come as a result of a transaction or interaction and add value to your customer or client’s experience. When delivered after a successful purchase or completion of work, these can increase client engagement and opportunities to impress with your communication.
Do you want to set up an email automation sequence or get some advice on refining your automations? Get in contact.