You’ve probably heard about the importance of capturing customer information and purchasing habits. You may even have a really good system in place for doing so. But do you have a really good plan in place to make use of that data? Do you understand how to do that?

What is Automated Customer Communication?

In the early days of e-marketing tactics, a monthly email newsletter (that was often just a PDF of a physical document) was considered innovative. Fortunately, the modern marketplace has evolved to offer far more sophisticated methods of reaching out to prospects and customers. This includes the ability to automate customized campaigns based on segments, like age and gender, and even individual preferences or actions.

When creating your outbound automated customer communication plan, let the following three goals be your guide:

• Goal #1—Turn Prospects into Customers

  When you are able to capture data from prospects, you can nurture them and encourage them to come back to you, becoming an actual customer. With the touch of a button, you can automate the sending of SMS marketing messages or emails at key times based on a prospect’s profile. You can even send different messages to different prospects.

• Goal #2—Turn Sometimes-customers into All-the-time Customers

  Customer loyalty is worth its weight in gold. When you see that someone has purchased from you even one time, you know they have an interest in what you offer. Your job now is to make them want it more.
  By noting what a customer has purchased from you and when, you can learn how to motivate that person to buy again. Plan the timing and content of your offers and then automate the sending of messages to encourage repeat business.

• Goal #3—Turn Loyal Customers into Promoters

  The explosion of social media makes it clear that people love to share “their” stories. For your business, this means they are happy to share positive—and negative—buying experiences with others.
  You can use this to craft specific messages and promotions to your most loyal customers, inviting them to advocate for you. When you give a customer the power of becoming your advocate, you increase his or her loyalty as well as your new prospect base.

All of these goals can be best achieved through automated customer communication. Simply pre-defining send days and times, however, is only the beginning. Customizing your offer based upon the audience profile should be considered an integral part of automating your customer communications.

Don’t just collect customer data, use it. Take it to create a dynamic and personalized customer communications plan and leverage technology to reduce your time and costs to implement. The results will have you smiling all the way to the bank.

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