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Building Relationships, Rewarding Loyal Customers
Insights-Driven Decisions for Business Growth
Preference Marketing is a very effective strategy to drive engagement and increase lifetime value with all of your customers. When a business markets specific products and promotions to specific customers based on their purchase history, loyalty, and more, a customer is more likely to make a purchase. And they will come back for more by being shown products according to their taste and liking.
retailcloud CRM allows you to manage your customers and makes it very easy to market to them by keeping records of the personal information and purchase history. And with marketing campaigns, you can communicate with your customers more effectively by notifying them about new products, promotions, and more!
With the CRM builder, you can create profiles with relevant personal information to track sales and purchase history by customer, and associate them within a frequency-based category or static group.
Learn about your customers: Think…Purchase History, Loyalty History, and Segments, Groups, or Clubs!
Being able to categorize your customers can give you a better understanding of their preferences and shopping habits so that you can deliver a more personalized shopping experience to them.
Text message marketing is a great alternative to some of the more traditional forms of digital marketing. It’s a seamless way to engage and connect with your customers through the device most of us are on for hours each day.
Now with all the insightful customer data you have at your fingertips, you can engage with your customers on a personal level and successfully connect with them to encourage more purchases and drive their interest in your business. When you notify your customers about products or prices they like, they will want to take advantage of them!
Think about their PREFERENCES…
-Frequently purchased items
-Purchase value
-Purchase volume
Think about how you want to engage and connect with your customers…
-Email and SMS marketing
-Products, promotions, etc.
-Customer groups, clubs, designations
Preference marketing increases customer lifetime value and profits. By sending personalized offers, you provide the most relevant promotions to your customers, driving sales and increasing revenue. Using retailcloud CRM and marketing campaigns with SMS messaging, you have full control over your business from your POS!
In retail location matters, and brick and mortar retailers spend a lot of time and resources in getting new customers to walk in their stores, but that is just the beginning; keeping customers coming back is the key to operating a successful retail operation. Here are some tips on how to do that
Let’s start here, keep reminding them where they are – have associates greet them by using your store name “ Welcome to (store name); Can I help you find something?” Remind them where they are whenever possible – Thank you for shopping at (store name); try to use shopping bags, digital receipts where your store name is prominently displayed. Whenever possible use preprinted hangtags or if you don’t want to invest in them – try a stamp or sticker with your name and logo.
Here is a low-cost value add for your customers, have associates be aware of surprising customers with random acts of kindness (I don’t mean give away free product or discounts) – taking time to carefully package items, spending a little more time to make sure the customer experience is curated for the customer.
Provide accurate information to the customer or product availability. Give associates the tools to know what’s in stock, what’s on the way in and when it can be expected. Pay particular attention to your product mix and train your associates on complimentary and replacement product.
Loyalty and club programs (especially experienced based ones) are the cornerstone of retail – Club programs can range from simple pricing discounts like grocery stores offer or experience-based ones that many airlines focus on. One of my favorite example of a club program is a neighborhood restaurant who has a point system for visits and once you get to a certain level – they guarantee you a table anytime – I’ve seen them set up temporarily set up tables for their top customers even when fully sold out – I’m sure that those customers feel the restaurant always value their relationship.
Last but by no means least
Consumers want easy access to their favorite stores, have an online site that has accurate information on products and inventory levels (ideally connected to your inventory system) and tied to your POS (so customers have one view into all their activity). This allows customers to view product, make purchases and even process returns at their convenience.
Keep the shopping process simple yet enriching is what will keep them coming back. Keep reminding the customer where they are (frequency of impression is real) and have your associates stay focused on providing a quality experience. These are some simple yet inexpensive ways in driving return activity.
According to a recent infographic from Community Merchants USA, 66 percent of all point-of-sales (POS) transactions are done with plastic – credit, debit, or gift cards. As we all know, there are VISA/MC and association fees that must be paid by the retailers to accept credit cards. A major trend in many industries is to pass on the expense to the customer at the time of the sales transaction. Tacking a small percent onto each sale, can result in a significant savings for the business.
Are Cash Discounts right for you and your customers? Here are pros and cons that can help you decide.
Reduce Fees – Obviously, the biggest pro is reducing or eliminating card processing fees associated with accepting credit cards. If you don’t process cards, you don’t have to pay for the service.
Easier to implement and explain than a credit card surcharge – Another way some merchants pay for card processing is to assess a surcharge on products bought with a credit card. There is sometimes push back. For instance, it’s illegal to add a card processing surcharge in 11 states. Implementing a cash discount, though, is legal everywhere. And it’s pretty easy to explain that all items in the store are priced with a built-in service fee, but that the fee is deducted if you pay with cash.
Encourages cash payments – Although many people prefer credit cards, a cash discount may encourage a customer to use cash instead of a card for their purchase. These means less time between the sale and when you have access to the funds. There is no processing time or wait period for cash in your hand. Plus you eliminate some fraud exposure.
Reduce chargebacks – With fewer people using cards in your store, it’s likely the number of chargebacks will also decrease. If this has been a problem for your business, this decrease may actually help reduce the card fees you do pay, because you’d be perceived as less of a risk.
Some customers may not carry cash – Lots of people simply don’t carry cash anymore. Expecting to use ApplePay, some shop armed with just their phone. And if a customer is opposed to making a purchase without getting a discount, they may walk out without buying anything. You could experience a drop in sales volume.
Conspicuous signage – To offer cash discounts, you must post what the law refers to as “conspicuous signage” throughout your place of business to let customers know they can receive a discount if they pay by cash or gift card rather than using a credit card. Also, while expressed as a discount and not as a fee, some customers may view the posted “offer” in a negative light.
Implementation – To be compliant with a cash discount program, your receipts must clearly reflect that there is a service charge on items and that that service charge was removed for a cash payment. That means revising your POS system software. Plus you’ll want to be sure you follow any changes in the laws around cash discounts in the future to avoid any penalties.
Potential Drop in Sales – Studies have show that consumers spend more when using their credit cards. If cash appears to be a more attractive option in terms of managing credit card processing fees, be aware that it could end up discouraging and depressing your overall sales results.
If you chose to implement a cash discount program, make sure you go into it with your eyes open. Follow the rules closely to avoid issues and penalties, and be sure to evaluate the success of the program against any declines in sales you may experience to be sure the program is working for you.
A lot has been written about drawing new customers and retaining your existing customer base. Statistics show that it is wiser to emphasize your efforts on retaining existing customers, as it’s 6 to 7 times more expensive to attract new customers than to keep existing customers. That being said, you probably have underutilized tools, that you are already paying for, that can help you reach new customers that will love your products.
You want to grow your business not only through catering to your existing customer base but reaching all those potential customers out there. There are a number of paths to explore with ways of attracting new customers into your store.
You are the eyes and ears of how to make your business succeeds in your community. You know the demographics of who your products will interest. Explore beyond the obvious and expand to new avenues that potentially could expose additional consumers to your store that may not have even thought of you as a viable option.
You need to think about how best to reach this audience. Give this some thought, so that you can tailor your marketing to best reach the consumers most likely to respond, seek you out and enjoy the buying experience at your store.
There are numerous ways to market to your targeted buyers, ranging from elaborate marketing tools to flyers plastered on car windows. Look at the systems that you have in place to leverage the features that you may already have and that you may not be using to their fullest.
Once you have the marketing campaign in full swing, you want to have real time data to assess the success of your program and then can pivot to increase effectiveness. You’ll want to know which marketing campaign is bring in the new customers and what kind of shoppers are they. What are their Units per Transaction and other Key Performance Indicators, are they repeat customers once they discover your business, in general how did your marketing campaign increase the bottom line.
Whatever you have put in place to reach your new consumers, it needs to be user friendly so that you can easily modify the parameters to get the results desired. A complex third party application that requires expensive development to alter may not only take too long to change, but may also come with a price tag that does not work for you.
I recommend looking no further than your POS system for advanced marketing tools. Partner with a POS company that can help you get seen by the consumers you are trying to reach.
What to ask your POS Provider to explain:
These tools should be available on your POS system and are often underutilized as merchants think that they need to look elsewhere for these solutions and often hire a third party when it’s already provided on their POS. Your POS, not only helps with sales and tracking inventory, but uses your customer data and integrations to give you incredible market reach.
Today was the 5th day since I activated my retailcloud account, and I received email 4 of the boarding series. It was about how to create a mailing campaign and some promotions, it also guided you through how to check the effectiveness of the campaign.
As you may recall from my Day 3 blog, I started with about 400 customers and added a few more since then, at the POS. I scanned through my Inventory Balance Reports as well as my Bestseller and Sales Summary Reports and was not sure what direction to go. Back on chat support and we concluded that after less than 3 days of sales there was not enough data to run a targeted campaign, so I decided to run a general promotion.
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