By: Yayu Javier
The Emotional Framework Part 2
In my last article, I spoke about the Emotional Framework of Loyalty and clearly emphasized that Loyalty should not be merely transactional but rather more emotional. Below was the Framework which I have personally developed and shared with everyone in the last article:
Understanding that each of these modules have to work cross-functionally, my objective for this article is to explain the first segment of the framework.
Customer Journey
This is where it all begins. Customer Journey is simply understanding the entire process a customer goes through from searching your product, buying your product, until after sales. Some of you may have read my article last year where I have explained this more thoroughly. But for now, I want to talk about how this works with the other segments.
The Search
When a customer searches for information, it may be through search engines, internet or web chat at your website, call center via telephone, face-to-face at your store and now through message apps with artificial intelligence (Chat Bot). It is then very important to come up with effective campaigns to make sure the customer will indeed find you.
Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing is your initial step when using digital strategies. SEO is simply increasing the visibility of your website by using specific key words in the search engine. SEM uses the Pay-Per-Click to help increase visibility and visits to the site.
Customer Data Formation
Each contact allows an opportunity to gather data and get to know your customers. You must, however, determine first which data is most important to get so that it will allow you to develop effective and relevant campaign triggers to have an emotional attachment for your brand. These would include not just their demographic data (name, address, age, gender, etc.) but also their interest in your product such as are they first time buyers, regular buyers, which competitive products they are buying, what they like about your products and your competitors, where they buy , how often they buy , and if they have suggestions.
Some examples for this is for the case of baby products where it is very critical to know the age of the child to determine what messages will be relevant depending on which age the child is in. So knowing the age and gender of the mom’s child is crucial so we can offer the right products at the right age and stage of her child as the need of the child is dependent on the child’s age.
While these data have no actual transactions, these allows you to have indicative information and provide you an initial understanding of your customer behavior. Once you have the basic customer data, this becomes the start of your gold mining that will provide your more insights and better ways to engage with your customers.
Some loyalty programs start with only the mobile number and customer name in terms of data. Reason for this, is to make it easier for customers to register. What’s important is to have at least a single point of contact so that we can continue to converse with them and make them buy or continue to buy our products.
To make sure that you have a clean data, it is important to test the data by sending an email or sms to the indicated contact detail. Should there be invalid data, the call center agent can call to validate. At this point, it is important to provide incentives so that the customer will be encouraged to give an accurate data. This could be start up points, welcome kits, raffle for a chance to win and more. Additional information can be built up either through emails, Chat Bot, or through your call center.
Keep the love burning with your customers!
About the Author:
Yayu Javier is the President and COO of Avanza, Inc., who has acquired more than 20 years experience in loyalty and customer relationship marketing and has extensive exposure in various industries such as retail, consumer goods, banking, and institutional products.
*First published on Philippine Retailing newsletter.
