Customer engagement should be at the heart of everything you do. Truly connecting with your audience leads to more satisfied customers (who in turn sing your praises to the general public), better retention rates, and a more streamlined operational experience for your staff.
But if customer engagement was easy to achieve, everyone would be doing it. It takes some effort, planning, and, ideally, a killer digital communications platform that can help you deliver your strategy.
If all that sounds overwhelming, don’t worry; we’ve done the heavy lifting and put together 6 simple ways you can improve your customer engagement using digital communication.
1. Map out your current state of customer engagement
Before you can find ways to improve customer engagement, you first need to have an eagle-eye view of its current state. Knowing the ways in which your customers currently do (or don’t) engage with you acts as a great starting point for you to jump off from, and will give you tangible goals for you to work towards.
One way to do this is to look at your data. With the right tools, you can see which points customers most often drop off – ie stop engaging with you. Do people unsubscribe from your emails with lightning speed? Are people receiving your messages but not opening them? Are you asking people to complete an action, like confirm their purchase, and they’re just not doing it?
Those drop-off points, wherever they may be, are important to note, so you can start building on them through better and more engaging communications.
Measure your engagement with Whispir’s smart reporting
2. Create relevant and helpful content
It may sound obvious, but you’re only going to hook people in with your communications if what you’re offering is helpful and relevant. Unfortunately, far too many businesses keep trying to spruik the same, unhelpful content – usually focussing on their business, and not a solution.
Customers are much more likely to resonate with solution-driven communications. That means content that focusses on helping them solve their problems or improve their quality of life – not just a detailed diatribe of why your business is the best.
3. Use personalisation to your advantage
These days, customers don’t just want personalised interactions with businesses – they expect it. So if you’re not creating communications that feel real and personal, then you’re already behind the curve.
Luckily, injecting some personalisation into your customer interactions is easy with the right digital communication tools – including distribution lists. Using distribution lists, you can segment your contacts into groups based on certain criteria – such as where they live, what they do for work, or even past purchases.
Then, you can create targeted and personalised communications that speak to each specific audience and, in turn, foster much higher levels of engagement.
Discover the power of Whispir’s distribution lists
4. Listen to your audience
A truly engaging digital communication strategy isn’t a one-way street. You can gain a great deal of value in listening to your audience and finding out what they actually want.
To do that, it’s important to not only have avenues in which customers can message your business if they want but also to proactively gather feedback. You can do this by creating and sending out surveys asking questions directly related to engagement – for example, find out what content your audience is interested in, whether they have suggestions for improvement, or if they have positive feedback they want to share.
Learn more about using two-way conversations for customer feedback
5. Incentivise customer engagement
One surefire way to boost your customer engagement? Make sure there’s something in it for the customer. You can incentivise engagement through things like competitions (e.g. asking customers to share a social media post) and loyalty programs to encourage people to make repeat visits or purchases.
6. Use the right communication channels
Not all communication channels are created equal, nor are they equally effective across different use cases. To truly get the most engagement out of your communications, you need to be able to have various channels at your disposal and know which will be most beneficial according to the type of messaging you’re sending.
Need to send out a quick, snappy message that requires an immediate response? SMS is most likely your way to go. Have complicated information that you need to take time to explain? A video or email might be the best format – depending on the subject and your audience demographic.
Send communications across multiple channels from the one central platform
Drive better customer engagement with the right digital communication tools
Powerful customer engagement starts with a powerful digital communication platform. Whispir is an all-in-one communication platform that allows you to easily create, send, and monitor messages across multiple channels – including SMS, email, voice, video, and more.
Not only is it easy to craft engaging messages on the Whispir platform, but you can also use real-time data to see how well your communications are landing. See which audiences resonate with which messages, and adjust accordingly.
In a world where customer engagement is key for long-term business success, it’s imperative to have the right digital communication platform at your fingertips.
