What To Do If You Think You Lost All Your Customers

Have you lost all your customers?

What is customer engagement – it is the ongoing connection between you (the company) and your customer.  Stated simply: "Customer engagement is the ongoing interactions between company and customer, offered by the company, chosen by the customer."  Paul Greenberg (for HubSpot)

These past few months have caused havoc for some businesses and customer engagement may mostly likely is off target.  In addition you may have had to temporarily close the doors, lay people off and only relied on internet sales and creative ways to keep the cash flowing.

The good news is, when someone is engaged with your product or service, they trust you and what you offer, but they may not be in a buying frame of mind.

During these challenging times most likely you continued to offer engagement opportunities to your customers with email marketing and social media. Perhaps you sent a survey, created a poll, talked about an upcoming product or shared a joke.  And in the care and keeping of your customers, you may have offered services for free, send them a mask, shared a low-cost recipe, offer tips on making hand sanitizers or simply asked “How we can help you?”

At the same time keep an eye on your Facebook page and twitter account.  If there’s issues that you are unaware of, most likely you’ll discover in a public post.  Your concern for your customer will be evident to your social media followers when you quickly and publicly answer any complaints or fears to resolve them.

• Keep the lines of communication open. Ask your customers questions
• Follow up on all customer feedback

• If possible, create a loyalty program.
• Even if you believe you have offered the moon, you may still find your customer base dwindling

This may be because your customers are still working from home – not out shopping.  Working from home means they continue to receive SPAM calls and tons of emails.  In some cases so many, they might just delete them.  Change up your marketing a bit and mail, with a postage stamp, a handwritten short note of appreciation with a small token, like a magnet saying thanks for being a customer.  Include your website and list name.

• Set up automatic Happy Anniversary greeting, on the day date they joined your list. “Happy Anniversary on your 1-year membership”, include a coupon for 10% off their next purchase.  
• Ask for referrals.
• Request comments and feedback
• Keep your customers and prospects up to date about your business, when it will open and what options they have to order your product or service now. If you are going to be open for traffic, tell them how you’re going to keep them safe, so they have a great buying experience. Try to keep the email short and to the point.
• Invite your reader to visit your website. Offer discounts and or information on the products or services they use Keep your website up to date with your safety precautions too
  
  
  Just know that “All email marketing lists contain a fair amount of inactive list subscribers to the point where inactive subscribers can make up most of an email marketing list.  Inactive subscribers are ones who seemly lost interest in your messages; taking no action on your emails as they have filtered your messages out of their virtual life.  As you know messages when ignored or deleted without being open triggers nothing, so there is no feedback as to why they are inactive.  With some planning, inactive addresses can be rejuvenated and re-engaged to active subscribers again.”  You can find out more about this here.