After spending several hours at a charity walk on a cold fall afternoon, an email pops up on my phone thanking me for spending my time helping with this cause.
Instead of it being a long and dull boilerplate-type email, it is a photograph of a young person who has been helped by the organization. The message said:
“I’m Suzanna and I want to thank you for spending time helping people like me.”
This touch point contained a photo, a sentence and an emotional thank you further bonding me with their good work. This non-profit is being intentional and thoughtful about my customer’s journey with their non-profit.
Plotting out a Path for Marketing Touch Points
Companies often forget to plot out their customer’s journey and engagement so they can delight and surprise them at every touchpoint. It is a big missed opportunity when you don’t plan each connection. Marketing professionals today need to be hyper-focused on customer experience.
A customer’s experience is an exceptionally important way that a brand stays relevant and is emotionally attached to your customers.
Over lunch with a marketing colleague, we talked about the organization he works with and how important that intentional touch can be to build connection, cohesion, and compassion with a brand. From how you answer the phone to the email sent after a customer places an order, to the monthly helpful hints shared with those who give permission, each touch matters.
Mapping Every Step
Corporations, non-profits, small businesses and solopreneurs all first meet customers in the real world or online.
What happens after someone comes into your store, calls your office or visits you on your website?
Do you have a clear and well-defined process for how you follow up with them, what the touches are that separates you from others in your category? How can you stay in touch with them by being helpful?
The following are some helpful hints and tips:
- Draw a Map: Take an afternoon to map out how customers or clients meet your organization or brand.
- Identify Touchpoints: Determine what the opportunities are to connect again in a friendly and non-pushy way.
- Staying Top of Mind: Are these visitors people you want to bring closer to your business? If yes, how can you keep what you do or sell top of mind?
- Surprise & Delight: What little kind of surprise could you offer that might get them to notice and remember you?
- Secret Clubs: If you sell a product through retailers, can you have some secret, a special club that they can join online that gives them unique access to regular helpful hints? Maybe print a special code # on your label that gives them access online to something only customers get to enjoy like special recipes.
- Holiday Happiness: Instead of holiday cards or emails in December, can you celebrate other holidays (or made up holidays) that connect with your brand?) A law firm that sends out an email to clients reminding them that July 23rd is National Tell A Lawyer Joke Day. (it isn’t – I made it up). But what a great idea for humanizing a typically stodgy organization.
- A Process to Capture Data: When volunteers engage with your charity, do you religiously capture information about each so you can stay in touch with them throughout the year. (with permission). Have you listened enough to understand how you might be able to be helpful?
- Will You Help Me? Nothing wrong with asking someone to share something about your brand or business – but you don’t want to do it all the time. Think of Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice of Jab, Jab, Jab – Right Hook. What that means is keep giving and giving and giving – and once and a while, ask for a favor.
- Human Touch, Pick up the Phone. If you are a tax preparer, could you send a helpful, simple tip of the month to remind me of your service? Can you call me at least twice a year to ask if you can do anything to help with tax planning? Some businesses have too many customers to call. But why can’t you assign each customer service representative the task of calling one customer a day just to say thank you or to ask if they need anything from you? If you have four customer service representatives, that is over one-thousand personal calls per year. You’d be surprised how much people will share their delight when you just call to say thank you and don’t try to sell them something.
Keeping in Touch
Mapping the journey means you are engaged in understanding how you and a customer can connect and reconnect all year long. It means you value the human engagement.
If your scale is such that it needs to be automated, that doesn’t mean it still can’t have a human voice. Mail Chimp does a great job of making me feel connected with an organization that is helpful, has a sense of humor and is not a big, overbearing corporation.
I enjoy reading their emails even though I recognize that they aren’t personalized. Their brand voice is light-hearted and strikes a chord with my sensibilities and keeps me connected to them.
What journey are you taking with your customers?
Need help mapping out your customer’s journeys and the various opportunities you have to delight them? Let’s take a walk together. Call me at 929 730 0995 or email me at jeffreylynnslater@gmail.com
Photo: Jenny Chan https://www.flickr.com/photos/97823772@N02/with/15410073995/
