1. Keep your audience up to date by sending out newsletters

An email newsletter is a useful tool for staying in touch with your consumers, whether you’re reaching out to fresh leads or devoted clients. Because of this, lifecycle email marketing ought to be a component of your marketing plan, regardless of where prospects and clients are in the sales cycle.

Make a plan for email distribution at each point in your sales cycle, from the initial contact through the follow-up after the sale. Send frequently, but don’t go overboard. And whatever the objective of the e-mail, it must respect the next crucial step, personalization, to stimulate interaction.

2. Personalize your communication for maximum connection

Even if you don’t know all of your customers‘ names or buying habits off the top of your head, it shouldn’t show in your messages. Personalized emails and website content will increase response rates and get customers‘ attention.

Set up an automation program so you can add names, purchase information or other individualized information to communications. To ensure that the communication is relevant to the recipient and responds to their choices about how they want to be contacted, make sure your data is up-to-date.

The progress will be seen in the customer journey, as the recipient will feel more valued and, therefore, more loyal, as these individualized communications are different from generic letters.

3. Respond to each new interaction

The feeling that no one is listening in today’s digital environment is one of the biggest gripes. Too many customers have used social media or email to try to resolve an issue or ask a question, only to be met with silence.

As you might guess, it can be hard to feel involved with a company that doesn’t seem to care about you when you need help. To avoid this feeling, use automation technologies to respond to all the messages and interactions that arrive on your website.

Set up your communication tools to respond immediately. Every time someone subscribes to emails, fills out a contact form, places an order, or contacts customer service, they should receive a quick response that includes a sincere thank you for making contact, as well as a next step and a call to action. Don’t just respond to the contact; continue the discussion with the response.

4. Ask for feedback

Marketing inspires behaviour. That’s why marketing messages always include an easy-to-follow call to action. The same logic applies if you want to increase online customer engagement. In the step above, you read about how to respond to meetings. The next step is to create feedback requests based on those remarks. This also helps build a strong relationships and a sense of trust with your customer.

Send an order summary after purchase and encourage the recipient to send any comments or complaints about the shipping of the product or the product itself. On product pages, use rating and review tools to post customer feedback. People will take advantage of opportunities to communicate with and about your business if you give them these. A loyal customer likes to give feedback, so it’s very important for any business to make the customer feel heard. This also allows negative criticism to be addressed and corrected, as there is always room for improvement.

5. Send out surveys

Marketing inspires behaviour. Because of this, marketing messages always include an easy-to-follow call to action. The same logic holds true if you want to raise target audience involvement. In the stage above, you read about reacting to encounters. Create requests for feedback from those remarks.

Send a recap of the order after purchase and encourage the recipient to send any feedback or complaints regarding the product‘s shipping or the product itself. On product pages, use rating and review tools. People will take advantage of opportunities to communicate with and about your company if you give them.

6. Make use of augmented reality for a unique virtual store experience

Today’s customers do 80% of their buying process on their own before contacting a salesperson. This means companies need to ensure their prospects have a good understanding of the proposed products before delivering any sales pitch.

The most effective way to provide valuable information to customers is by shifting away from static images and data sheets to interactive AR experiences.

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality is the superposition of reality and elements calculated by a computer system in real-time. It often refers to the various methods that allow virtual objects to be embedded realistically in a sequence of images.

 

By animating your business assets in 3D through AR, your company gives customers the ability to move them as they wish and even allow them to zoom in and out on specific movements and parts. You can also introduce interactive annotations, photos, videos, and hyperlinks in your digital twins to create effective customer engagement.

Nonetheless, having AR as a selling tool will promote your products effectively by giving customers more comprehensive information about their potential purchases.

Here’s a picture of how our client Larue is harnessing the power of augmented reality to elevate their tradeshow booth experience to deliver better value to attendees by offering immersive product demonstrations.

To learn more, here are 7 ways augmented reality increases customer experience and sales using Visao‘s online platform.

 

7. Cart abandonment emails for retargeting customers

It is a known fact that shopping cart abandonment is the biggest scourge of e-commerce businesses, and rightly so. However, all is not lost when customers do this. In fact, you can use this opportunity to retarget those customers and send them customized emails informing them of their abandoned carts. Numerous studies show that while the overall cart abandonment rate stands at 69%, ending abandoned cart emails makes as many as 10% of them come back to complete their purchase.

However, remember that while this online engagement technique is too good to avoid, employ it sparingly to not impede on your customers‘ privacy.

These personalized emails give the impression that you are tracking a particular customer‘s actions and that their activity is important to you. That being said, it is important to collect your clients’ or potential customers’ email address. You can do this by sending personalized emails with images of the products in their cart and using tactics such as:

• Offer a special discount on products in a timely manner
• Include social proof of abandoned products in the form of customer ratings, reviews, etc.
• Promote actionable options such as related items

 

This diagram from a Shopify study shows the top reasons why shopping carts are abandoned.

 

 

8. Make use of customer loyalty programs for improved customer retention

Did you know that the 2017 Colloquy Loyalty Survey found that there exist upwards of 3.8 billion membership accounts active in loyalty programs?

In fact, loyalty programs are the primary driver of customer loyalty and retention. Every business wants people to buy from them and come back again and again to make more purchases.

Therefore, discounting for each subsequent purchase made through a loyalty program is the easiest way for e-commerce businesses to achieve this goal and make a loyal customer base.

Through loyalty plans, where the goal is to encourage purchase in exchange for a loyalty appreciation bonus. This way, you make customers happy to have gotten a good deal and they will be more likely to recommend the company and leave good feedback. While these programs can take any form, they typically take the form of a points-based system in which customers receive points for every dollar spent to increase their purchasing power, as well as other benefits such as exclusive discounts, notifications of new inventory arrivals and privileged access to certain inventory.

 

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9. Implement live chat and chatbots for on-site engagement

Online merchants who don’t offer live chat on their websites may see their sales decline.

This is according to a survey conducted by Econsultancy, which indicates that live chat has a higher level of customer satisfaction than email and phone support combined (73% versus 61% and 44%, respectively).

Customers can avoid the queue for customer support requests by using live chat for e-commerce. In addition, it allows your customer support staff to provide customers with personalized service and thus develop an emotional response, in other words, builds strong and lasting relationships with customers.

The majority of people who visit e-commerce stores are browsing products or comparing prices, but interacting with them then or when they need help can greatly increase your chances of turning them into customers. Additionally, you can combine a live chat with a chatbot to answer customer questions immediately which makes both of them effective communication channels. The goal is to answer all of the customer’s needs with direct messages so that they don’t end up having a bad experience while shopping. That being said, the accumulation of negative experiences from the consumer, could tarnish the brand name, something that can be tough to fix.

By automating up to 80% of common customer queries, you can scale your customer service. While chatbots aren’t as sophisticated as humans, they can handle the majority of your support team’s help requests simultaneously, allowing them to focus on more urgent and complex customer issues. When a request is too complex to be handled by a live chat agent, a chatbot can be used to route it. Customers have a positive experience with this immediate help, which boosts their engagement. Having an effective tool such as an active chat box on the front page of your website will instantly make a good impression on the customer service and support team.

Here is how Visao implemented a chatbot, designed to help and respond to customers.

10. Create social media engagement for increased interactivity

Customers don’t like to be constantly sold products, especially on social media platforms. In fact, they are more likely to make purchases from companies that provide them with the information they are looking for than from companies that push information on them.

Social platforms give you the opportunity to connect with customers without focusing on your products or previous purchases. That being said, having interactive content at your disposal can be a plus for your brand because it commands a new level of customer attention. It’s a great tool to drive consumer interaction online with valuable content. In order to keep your news feed interesting with relevant content and keep your followers interested in your business, post fresh content at least several times a week. It’s important to maintain your business’s online presence if you want to keep an engaged audience and potentially build strong and long-lasting customer relationships.

Social networks seem to be the saviour for e-commerce brands in this situation, as they can use the social visibility gained through shares, hashtags and content to get their stores in front of your target audience.

Because of their interactive nature, social media channels offer many opportunities for brand building and consumer loyalty through the development of online communities. In addition, social media is an excellent audience-targeting tool due to its regular updates and channels.

For example, fitness apparel brand Gymshark targeted consumer engagement through the following strategies, which established brand legitimacy and increased public trust in the product:

• Regularly posting photos of consumers wearing their clothing on their social media profiles to provide a platform for engagement.
• Creating interactive materials, such as workout videos and lifestyle tips.
• Hosting contests, giveaways or even online events that users can participate in and offering rewards to those who have supported the company on their individual social media accounts.
• Provide a channel for customer comments and feedback.

Ready to increase your online consumer engagement?

Engagement isn’t intended to immediately result in new purchases, at least not immediately. It keeps your company connected to the market, fosters potential clients’ trust and confidence, and increases the visibility of your goods and services, all of which might eventually result in increased sales and better customer experience and customer interactions.

Visao can help you increase online customer engagement for your online business and marketing campaigns through interactive 3D visualizations of your products.

To discuss the custom 3D visualization services we offer and how our team can help you create a more engaging and enhanced online platform with your current and potential customers, contact us today.