If your brand sells products via contractors, vendors or marketplaces, you probably don’t have a direct contact with the end user. That raises several drawbacks, the biggest of which is having a slower or no feedback cycle (Hubspot). What happens is, your contractors are communicating with the end users most of the time and the feedback they receive may not be 100% accurate regardless of how trustworthy they are. They may ask the wrong questions, analyze results inaccurately, or give biased interpretation. Without an objective idea of how your end users feel about your product, expanding the market would be a tough mission.
We offer you to gain first-hand feedback and engage directly with the end users via Subscribe.bg, so you can deliver personalized experience, make them feel special and develop their brand loyalty. Then they will help you expand.
Invite existing customers to subscribe to your Subscribe.bg’ virtual Viber assistant
When applying new mechanisms and technologies into your customers’ routine, it’s best to start with an already loyal group of users. If you have some of your existing customers’ emails, Viber, and phone numbers, send them an invite via email or SMS to come join your virtual assistant. Make sure you have their consent to contact them via phone.
The first message containing the invite is essential so make sure it’s catchy and attractive. Make sure it’s an offer worth not missing.
Explain that the virtual assistant would help them receive exclusive and useful content that would make their lives easier and would save them time and effort. If you already have a loyalty program integrated with your virtual assistant, speak about the benefits of having a “virtual loyalty card” straight in their phones, where they can easily view the status of their loyalty card, collect points or stamps, unlock VIP access and privileges, win vouchers and free products/services, receive exclusive promotions and what not. You know best.
Engage your virtual assistant’s customer database
The more positive feelings a customer has toward your brand, the more likely they are to advocate on your behalf.
Once you’ve collected a clients database, you need to start engaging with it. It’s best to have a strategy for customer engagement rather than randomly sending out nice messages as you risk to annoy and disturb your customers. You know how easy it is for them to leave just by a single click.
Think of your virtual assistant as an upgraded version of email marketing. With email marketing your customers may see the email after days, and even then they may not open it. The open rate of emails is about 20% (Hubspot). Your Subscribe.bg’s client database, however, is engaged instantly – customers receive the message immediately and the average open rate of messages is 90%. You can easily communicate time sensitive information and receive almost instant results.
Here are several ideas on how to engage your subscribers. Of course, you know your audience best and if you come up with your own idea, we’d love to help you develop and implement it.
Surveys. Speaking about the value of receiving customer feedback straight from the source, we suggest you conduct a survey so you know how to please your clients and further personalize the communication. Send them a short questionnaire with predefined answers via your Viber assistant and offer a reward for completing it. The winner may be chosen on a random basis, or everyone who completes it may be a winner. Ask them questions that would help you gain valuable insights about your client database. The benefit of using Subscribe.bg’s virtual assistant for feedback is that it requires no extra effort to login or register anywhere.
Tip: Some of the questions may be about:
- age/gender/location/occupation
- how long they have been using your products and why
- what they love the most about your brand
- which products they use
- what they hate the most
- what their biggest pains and needs are…
Once you’ve gained some insights, you can easily think of ways to solve your clients’ pains and make them feel special.
Gamification. Come up with a game to entertain your clients and make them laugh. Combine GIFs, memes, images, etc. with funny questions and answers. Add a wheel of fortune. Again, offer an incentive to stimulate their participation, so you can observe their behavior and plan future steps.
Promotions. This is another good way to engage your client database and introduce new products or services. Send your clients promotional vouchers with a timer to create a sense of urgency. Mobile vouchers are interactive, may be redeemed online or at a physical location, and you can track who used their vouchers and who did not, and who shared it with friends.
Push notifications. Reach out those who haven’t been active in awhile. Remind them that they still have an unused voucher. Push notifications help you maintain warm relationships with your clients. You can send personalized messages to individuals or to certain segments of clients – it all depends on your business needs.
News. Send news regarding your company, products, services, programs, campaigns, events, etc.. You can gain traffic to your website pages and track “seen” and “opened” messages.
Design and implement a loyalty program
A loyalty program is a structured approach to rewarding customer actions. Every successful loyalty program starts with a business goal, and rewards a specific customer action to help achieve it (ie. sign up for a trial, make more purchases, refer a friend or a colleague) while making customers feel valued and appreciated.
They are known to be a brand differentiator, improve the customer experience, improve your credibility, and retain more high-value customers – all of which naturally lead to optimized revenue.
Incentive-based loyalty programs work because they turn your product into a habit. ~ (digitalloyaltyacademy.com)
Designing your strategy for engagement and loyalty should revolve around 3 main points:
- Goal. What are your business goals?
- Action. What can a customer do to help you achieve these goals?
- Reward. What can you offer to a customer to motivate them to complete these actions?
If your goal is to expand your market, you may want to think of a program that stimulates:
- existing customers to refer a friend: they may refer a friend when they are very pleased with your products and services, and when the loyalty program is based on referrals.
- newcomers to turn into customers: offer a reward for becoming a client.
Example: Uber’s program stimulates retention and subsequent rides as clients can load in money to be used for Uber Eats. Happy clients then recommend the service to their friends.
Your virtual Viber assistant can track “friend sharing”. And when that referred friend turns into a customer, the referee receives a reward.
As for the reward, you know best how to impress your audience. It could be:
- a pass for a special event or training with covered expenses
- a plane ticket
- free product or service
- discount
- collected stamps/points that can be monetized in various ways
- VIP access
…and so on.
Launch your virtual assistant
The more subscribers you have in your virtual assistant’s database, the more warm relationships you can build with your audience. That’s why we suggest you launch a campaign online and at physical locations to invite new users to join. Once they subscribe – you know the drill: engage, observe, reward. Of course, the strategy for newcomers may completely differ from the strategy for long-term customers. Contact us to discuss what’s best for your business needs.