Customer Life Journey Stages 4 and 5
Customers, are you looking how to retain more and make more sales? Having a strong Customer Life Journey in place is a must.
A Customer Life Journey consists of 8 stages. We completed an overview on the customer life journey in a past Podcast.
In this Customer Life Journey Series we will be tracking all 8 stages in detail. In the last podcast, we covered Stages 1-3 in detail, in our last podcast.
1. Make them aware2. Engage with them to create a relationship3. Get them to Subscribe and join your community
Now we're going to go through stages four and five of the Customer Life Journey.
At this point, we will assume they're on your list. You have their contact information, whether you do online marketing and you have collected their contact info via a form or you're a brick and mortar and have their business card you have added them to your community.
Stage Four of the Customer Life Journey: Creating a Customer
What do you do at this point is important! It is time you start offering them what we call a low-level product, program, or service. This allows your new community member to be able to test the waters with you, see who you are and what it is like working with you.
You want to do this in a way where you are offering them a product/program/service that brings value to them, but it's not going to cost a lot. This will be a minimal investment on their part to invest with you to get started. Keep this in mind this offer isn't designed to make you a profit and make you a millionaire. The intention of this offer is to gain trust and build your “buyer list” because selling to people who have already purchased from you is much easier than acquiring someone new and then trying to sell something.
You want to avoid jumping in and offering your TOP cost program/product/service too soon because that can be a turn off and toxic to this budding relationship. You don’t want to turn off a potential customer because you pushed too fast.
Once you've made them a customer, stage five is probably one of the biggest stages.
Stage Five of the Customer Life Journey: Creating Excitement
Creating excitement about you, your business, and your brand.
You should have a follow-up set of messages created that support the purchase that was just made. This will create an experience of what it is like to walk with you hand in hand through something they purchased from you and how they can expect to be treated later when they do more business with you.
So if they bought your low level program/product or service, maybe it's between $7 and $20. You want to capture the moment they are excited about getting something “new” and provide exceptional support and engage with them. You want to work with those feelings and over-deliver. Maybe what you sold is about a gardening tool so in your first email you gift them a bonus download that wasn't even in the offer.
Hey, now that you bought this gardening set, here's the top three tips to have the best tomatoes in the world! Something like that can be an easy gift that will be over delivered to them and appreciated. As for this “report download” you just gave them, it does not need to be a newly written report, it can be an optin offer you have out for lead capture somewhere else or maybe it is a chapter out of an eBook or physical book you have written. The point is you can reuse content you have other places and still give a valued gift to your new customer.
Once your gift message is received your new customer will be saying, wow, look at this thing I got, I didn't even know about it. They now get to not only use your product but experience your expertise even more.
Let’s keep the excitement going and do a little bit of follow-up with your new customer. You should have a check-in email maybe 3 to 5 days after their purchase just checking in asking a few questions:
Hey, if you love this product/program or service reply to this email and let me know. Feel free to include a picture of you and the product or working on the program, we love to hear back.
That's going to make them feel like you care, and you should care about what they're doing, but that also gives you testimonials that are true and authentic. They took the time to send this back to you and you are showing them that you care.
Your goal is to get feedback from them and to make it easy for them to provide that!
Your next email in your follow-up can be a quick check in and a small offer for the next logical purchase from what you have to offer that fits the direction they were heading in their initial purchase. You can say something like, Hey, you purchased ABC and I wanted to see how's it going with you? Did you know we also have this that is a complementary product/program or service that goes with what you already purchased. (Here you are going to want to list the benefits to this new program offer and what it will do for them and the discounted price for being a loyal customer) This is your first upsell email based on them becoming a customer of yours.
You can also put a direct mail follow-up for your customers. You can send them an actual Thank You Card. YES, a card, physically in the mail! You have received their address when they purchased it so you have all of the information you need. It is easy with tools like Mailbox Power. You can create a Thank You Card ahead of time and customize the message inside with merge codes and then when a sale is made most systems can integrate and pull that info in and trigger the card being sent for you! OR worst case scenario, you have to go enter their name and mailing address and link them to the appropriate Thank You card group and bam it is mailed out! Receiving a real card with a personalized note in it is awesome and can cost you as low as $1 plus postage. (or free 4X6 postcards! Just the cost of postage.)
If you only use email or text message marketing it is OK just get your Customer Journeys built out. Have the minimal in place and start! There will be time for editing, adjusting once you start seeing what is working and what might not be.
Sorry. I'm going to go on a tangent for a moment… I am going to insist on not using no-reply emails in your marketing platform. Be sure that you're sending it from an email address that is being monitored and can be followed up on, because if they take the time to ask you a question or reply back to you your exceptional customer experience needs to continue. You also want to make sure you are sending marketing emails out from YOU not Support@ or ClientCare@ email addresses – those are spam traps and will hamper your emails from being delivered. I usually suggest for clients to use a version of email address that is not their main personal email address so they can have the ability for a team member to check it and reply back or send it to you to get your actual response. So if your name is Susan Kay (just making this up), and your email is Susan@(company name) and that is the main email address you use to personally do business – go in and create SusanKay@(company name) email address that can be used for your marketing and eventually be checked by your support staff. This will help you identify Customer Emails first and foremost to get back to them asap.
In conclusion, your goals are to Engage and Excite in these stages of the customer journey.
I invite you to go over to StrategiesForSmallBusinesses.com and download the Branding and Purpose Checklist. This will help you work through the questions you need to answer and really helps you have a focused dive into all of your Branding.
If you have any questions, remember we're always here for you. Just utilize the question button on the website and will get back to you.
Thank you
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