Why is effective communication so important for your existing customers? Let’s say your marketing campaign has been a roaring success, and that more people than expected bought or signed up to become customers.
Now they’re in, all you need to do is to inspire them to keep contributing to your most valuable KPIs, like buying new products, renewing their subscriptions, and switching to direct debits. That means having a relationship and continuously communicating with them.
It’s all about execution and the right communication strategy
A lot of businesses spend enormous amounts of money on their marketing tech stacks. If that’s you, you want to get the absolute maximum bang for your buck, so understandably you use the marketing stack to communicate with existing customers as well as prospects.
So you fire up your campaign manager or marketing automation software and create methodical user journeys that elegantly guide people towards the valuable actions you’d like them to take.
The only thing left is choosing and sending the best and most effective communication for each individual customer, to spur them through those journeys. And that’s the hardest part.
READ MORE: Communicating with your customers like they are prospects is a dangerous game
There are so many question marks:
- Which channels to use?
- What’s the right tone of voice?
- What’s the best message for each situation?
- How do you personalize the messaging?
- When should you get in touch?
- What if the customers don’t react? What then?
This, right here, is the Customer Activation Gap. The final pitfall at the last mile of customer communication.
It’s when you have an awful lot of data about your customers, and you’ve got great customer journeys to take them through. But right at the point of execution, you’re not able to give customers the personal communication and experience they really want and need.
What many businesses do instead is to fall back to their marketing stack to broadcast to their customers as if they were prospects, rather than communicate with their customers personally, guiding them through the different moments of the customer lifecycle.
And it’s a crying shame—because it’s a surefire way to alienate people, increase customer churn, and kill your customer lifetime value metrics. Ouch.
READ MORE:
Checklist: Step by step how to reach more customers in your communication strategy
