4 tactics to quickly engage all the new customers you just won

In last week’s blog, Sam and Ian, our data gurus, gave us some time to talk about how to read your data in Dotdigital after a busy sales period like Black Friday. We’re continuing the series with some practical tactics to employ to keep those new customers you acquired engaged. After all, remember, a new customer can very quickly decay to an inactive persona that never spends with you again. Or… they are primed to become your biggest brand champions. Try some of these targeted marketing practices to make sure your new customers are seeing the best of what you have to offer.

1. Introduce your brand

Remember, these are new customers. You most likely caught them in an impulse moment (or what they thought was an impulse moment after weeks of clever nudging from your clever marketing teams 😉 ). They might not be at all that familiar with what your brand is all about or what products you offer (but more on this in tactic two).

To build loyalty that lasts, be polite, just like grandma told you. Introduce yourselves, and put your best foot forward. Make sure this is not just another marketing email in their inboxes. Pack it with value for the new customer. If you’re planning to deliver educational content about your business, make sure it’s what they’re interested in and not just what you want them to know. Empathize with your customer by considering the material you like to receive when it comes to your favorite brands. If your brand resonates with your new customers, chances are, they’ll become repeat buyers and maybe even loyal fans.

Not so confident in the kind of content you could send? Currently lacking a brand story? Start by giving them a coupon campaign as a sweetener to stick around.

2. Product recommendations in emails and on-site

They’ve bought one product from you already. What are the chances they won’t be interested in any other of the product range you have? It’s unlikely that there was only one product that resonated with them. It’s much more likely that your new customers just haven’t had a chance to look at your whole range yet. Make it easy for them. Bring a selection to them, by serving up product recommendations based on their own behavior or the behavior of shoppers just like them.

We don’t know about you, but here at the dotdigital offices, we all love it when we get beautiful, personalized emails delivered to our inbox, with a selection of goodies that are actually relevant to us. Especially when we get these emails on pay day!

With Dotdigital, you can upsell complementary products (setting the price threshold as similar to what your new customer spent the first time around) in an email. Or surface on-site product recommendations, showcasing low-cost products you’d typically use to upsell (like batteries, screen protectors, or purses (depending on your product types of course), peppered between full-price products of your beautiful range. Don’t worry, we’ll talk you through all the amazing things you can do with product recommendations in Dotdigital in part three of this series.

3. Social re-targeting with audience connectors

You won that new customer. But maybe so did your competitors, having caught them in a spending spree at this busy shopping time of year. So what do you do to stand out against the competition? Expose your brand.

An old rule of marketing that has stood the test of time and proved itself time and time again is the rule of seven. The rule of seven says that it takes about seven times of being exposed to something, from an idea to a brand logo, for us to retain it long term. Sure, your new customer is not going to forget about the purchase they made with you last week. But what about in a few months’ time? How do you ensure your customer remembers you in the future enough to come back to your store?

Social re-targeting will be key here. Leverage the automation and insights of Dotdigital out to channels like Facebook and Google Ads to make sure you’re remembered. With audience connectors, you can sync Dotdigital contacts to your Facebook and Google Ad audiences. Start by syncing an entire segment to a new audience or maintain an existing one by adding contacts when they meet your predefined criteria. Audience connectors in program builder make it easy to upkeep your ad audiences and ensure optimal re-targeting campaign ROI. Easy peasy.

4. Empower new customers with a voice

Last, but by no means least, listen to what your new customers have to say. Perform a bit of data capture with them for both of your benefits. Give them control of their marketing preferences for optimal transparency, trust, and relevance. Send them surveys to find out what they want to hear about or what they want to see more of in your store. (You’ll find the tools to do all this and more in Dotdigtial pages and forms by the way ).

You could consider providing a little incentive here for this exchange of information. Not only will make your new customers feel special, but it will also provide you with more data, and ultimately, more power.

Not a Dotdigital user yet? Take a tour with our quick demo here.

Don’t forget, this is the second of our three-part series on what to do after a surge in sales. Check out part one here, click here for part three, or sign up for blog updates and more here.