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Do you currently have a resilient marketing plan in place to weather crazy 2020 and beyond? If the answer is no, don’t panic! Many companies have been making a larger shift towards digital marketing recently. That might sound daunting, but it doesn’t mean you have to overhaul your entire marketing strategy. Instead, start small – identify the incremental improvements you can make to bring about real results.
There are many opportunities to improve your digital marketing to grow revenue and increase customer engagement. The challenge, however, is picking the right tactics to focus on that will provide the most uplift with the least amount of effort and, more importantly, will not compromise the future growth of your business. And Mapp wants to help guide you through this!
Taking a step back, you can divide most marketing tactics into 4 main categories: Acquire, Nurture, Grow, and Retain. This blog focuses on the category “Acquiring Customers” as the first in a series of 4 blogs. (Keep an eye on our website for upcoming blog posts covering the best Nurture, Grow, and Retain tactics – coming soon!)
Bringing new customers in is essential for any business; big or small, old or new. Acquisition is one of the primary objectives for any marketing team. The goal is to set up an acquisition strategy that will allow your company to effectively and systematically attract and convert new customers, in order to maintain a healthy bottom line. However, 61% of marketers say generating traffic and leads is their top challenge – that’s where our proposed tactics can help.
Easy-to-Implement Tactics for Customer Acquisition:
#1 WELCOME EMAIL
Welcome newsletter subscribers with an email or a sequence of emails specifically designed for new customers so that they can become more familiar with your company and products/services. The average open rate for a welcome email is 50%. That makes it 86% more effective than standard newsletters, according to Invesp. The best practice is to keep new subscribers in a 7-day nurture sequence focused on driving the first purchase.
Why implement this tactic?
Drive the first purchase and enrich the customer profile with additional intent-based data
#2 DIGITAL RECEIPTS
As stores are slowly starting to open up again, start offering email receipts to customers buying in-store. According to Green America, 9 out of 10 consumers want the option of a digital receipt, with millennials driving this demand. It provides them with peace of mind in case they misplace their receipt and want to return an item in the future. This can be done directly through your POS or with a digital receipts vendor that provides a simple plug-and-play solution.
Why implement this tactic?
Identify brick-and-mortar shoppers
Increase newsletter subscribers
Measure impact of digital campaigns on in-store transactions
#3 COMPETITIONS
Run giveaways and contests that reward customers for interacting with your brand and products across a variety of channels. Examples include picking a favorite product, product registration, social media engagement, etc. Contests have a conversion rate of almost 34% because of their interactive nature, which is higher than other content types.
Why implement this tactic?
Accelerate newsletter subscription growth
Increase brand awareness
Reach audiences that were previously unavailable to you
#4 TWITTER CARDS
Capture leads directly from Twitter with Twitter Cards. With Twitter Cards, you can attach rich photos, videos and media experiences to Tweets, helping to drive traffic to your website. These dynamic ads will automatically push the customer’s email address to your marketing automation platform, such as Mapp Cloud. However, this is only recommended for high-value products and goals that justify the premium cost per lead charged by Twitter.
Why implement this tactic?
Increase goal completion rates by providing customers with a frictionless experience without leaving Twitter
#5 SURVEY
Send out a survey to newsletter subscribers or create a survey-based competition to learn more about newly acquired leads. The survey responses are a rich source of data that can be used to personalize the customer experience from day 1. Use images wherever possible as image-based surveys get 80% more responses.
Why implement this tactic?
Decrease average time to first purchase
Enrich customer profiles and understand customer behavior
Personalize the entire customer journey
#6 DATA OVERLAY CAPTURE
Capture anonymous web visitor data during key stages of their journey. 74% of companies use web forms for lead generation, with 49.7% stating their online forms are their highest converting lead generation tool. Focus on stages of the journey where the intent to complete a goal is significant, but you are unable to establish the identity of the visitor to re-engage them via email or mobile push.
Why implement this tactic?
Increase your newsletter subscriber database
Enrich customer profile data
Optimize and save paid media retargeting budget
#7 LOOKALIKE AUDIENCES
Find people who are similar to your existing buyers, as this will increase the chance of acquisition. Create a lookalike audience based on customers that interact with specific products in your email campaigns and target them with relevant promotions. For example, if a specific product had an exceptionally high click-through rate, promote this product on Facebook by targeting similar people that engaged with the email promotion.
Why implement this tactic?
Optimize paid media spend for acquisition campaigns
Increase action rate for paid media campaigns
#8 SMS OPT-IN
Drive people to sign up to your communications via SMS. It’s a quick and effective way to capture customers on the go. This works exceptionally well when you only have the customer’s attention for a short period of time, for example, advertising in elevators, bus stops, trains, taxis, TV, etc. What’s more, 75% of consumers are OK with receiving SMS messages from brands after they’ve opted in.
Why implement this tactic?
Add mobile to your marketing channels to communicate with consumers
Increase goal completion rates by providing a simple call to action
Capture both email address and mobile number from a prospect
#9 IN-STORE LEAD CAPTURE
Capture consumer details in-store when they interact with a sales rep, allowing them to choose between completing the transaction online or coming back at a later time. In-store tablets can capture customer details, as well as information about products browsed, which can be used to send personalized messages with links to the specific products they were interested in.
Why implement this tactic?
Motivate in-store staff with a commission when customers choose to check out using the most convenient method for them
Attribute online conversions to in-store interactions
Prevent in-store browsers from shopping with your competitors
#10 FORM ANALYTICS
Analyze customer interaction with forms to optimize the goal completion rates. Form analytics provide insights into how customers use your forms and what fields may be causing significant drop off. This can also provide ideas on what options are most frequently selected in combination with other fields, allowing you optimize the form for the highest conversion rate.
Why implement this tactic?
Increase goal completion rates
Improve the customer experience
#11 RETARGETING
Synchronize onsite behavioral data across all channels, including email and paid media, to ensure customers are exposed to the most relevant and personalized content from your brand. As a result, the clickthrough rate for a retargeted ad is 10X that of a display ad on average. Segment synchronization across all channels also allows you to re-engaging customers via the most cost-effective channel and prevents wasting money on customers that already completed the transaction.
Why implement this tactic?
Optimize paid media ROI
Increase effectiveness of retargeting campaigns
Increase conversion rates
#12 PRODUCT ANALYTICS
Analyze product performance on your eCommerce site to understand what role they play in the customer journey. Out-of-stock products are common online, however when your paid media campaigns are promoting those specific products, you have a problem. Products should also be analyzed on a far greater set of metrics than just conversion rates. For instance, some products may have very little conversions but drive a significant amount of organic traffic to the website.
Why implement this tactic?
Increase conversion rates
Enhance the customer experience
Understand the value of your products
#13 INVITE A FRIEND
Give your customers a reason to invite their friends and family to experience the great products and services you have to offer. According to Nielsen, people are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. Undoubtedly, several of your existing customers have already come through a word-of-mouth referral or recommendation from a previous customer. You need to be in control of the referral activities and, more importantly, reward your most loyal customers for their advocacy.
Why implement this tactic?
Increase customer loyalty
Grow your customer base by leveraging existing customers who love your brand
#14 SMART COUPONS
Send time-sensitive coupons that are aimed at increasing the cart value to customers that show high propensity to convert in the session. Coupons given to customers before they are ready to transact and coupons that are eligible for a lower transaction amount than the customer intends to spend do nothing but decrease your margin. Only send discounts to those who won’t buy without.
Why implement this tactic?
Increase conversion rates
Decrease in-session churn
Increase average basket size
#15 LINKEDIN LEAD GEN FORMS
Leverage LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms to encourage prospective customers to complete a desired goal, such as signing up for promotions or downloading a whitepaper, without having to leave the LinkedIn website. These forms eliminate the friction of having to manually fill out contact information, which often deters people. Instead, Lead Gen Forms automatically populate the form’s fields based on a member’s profile data.
Why implement this tactic?
Decrease friction
Enhance customer experience
Wrap up:
These are just a few acquisition marketing tactics that you can implement right now that will provide the greatest uplift in the least amount of time. If you are struggling with the shift to digital marketing, start small with tactics that you can execute with the tools and resources you already have. Many small improvements will bring about real results for your company.
Need more inspiration to create your resilient marketing plan? Mapp has put together a list of 100 straight-forward and easy-to-implement digital marketing tactics that are proven to deliver results. You just have to pick what your objectives are for the upcoming months and our Digital Marketing Playbook will guide you through the strategies you should focus on.
This article was first published by MAPP. Permission to use has been granted by the publisher.