#topferral

If your company is like most businesses, you spend a great deal of resources thinking about how you are going to grow your customer base.  A large percentage of your staff, money and marketing budget are focused on that goal.  Admittedly, we have also given more focus to the topic of how to acquire new customers through referral programs (Referrals Are All Around, The First Step of Referrals - Networking, and 3 Steps to Make Asking for a Referral Part of Your Daily Life).  So we are going to change it up a bit and encourage you to think more about client retention.  That does not mean that you shift your focus 100% to retention - we are encouraging you to strike a balance between the two.  Plus, as an added benefit, happy customers are more likely to refer your business (which is acquisition) - kind of cool how that circle works, right?

So as a company, what should you be doing and how should you change your thinking to encourage an environment of focused on customer retention?  Noah Fleming believes that the heart of the issue is often how your Marketing Department divides their resources, and if your marketing department never makes “keeping our customers” a goal - then you have a problem.  Luckily, that problem can be easily fixed!  Fleming has 5 topics that, if included on your next meeting agenda, can help shift the focus to equal balance between customer retention and acquisition.  

5 Topics to Help Shift Focus to Include “Keeping Customers”:

1. Do we have balance between our acquisition and retention efforts? 

The drawing, at the top or this post, was created by Noah Fleming to illustrate how you company needs to best think of customer acquisition and customer retention.  As you can see, it is a perfect balance with marketing in the overlapping identically sized circles making your goal an equal dual focus.  Fleming says that in reality the customer retention circle might need to be bigger, aka a larger focus, especially if your company is purely focused on customer acquisition at this time.

2. Could our marketing dollars go further and provide a greater ROI?

Look at your current marketing budget closely.  You probably have some great ideas that are fun and unique, but will they help you retain your current customers?  Are you encouraging your clients to use your product, visit your site again, or show up to your store?  If not, why not?  Isn’t it easy to capture the attention of someone who has already invested in your brand with time or money, then capture the attention of someone new?  

3. Are we proactive or reactive?

Just like many things in life the best time to fix something is not when it is broken or in this case the best time to think about retaining customers is not when you are have lost a chunk of them.  The worst time to think about a retention program is when you need to retain clients.  Instead, start thinking about it now, lay the groundwork and you will have more success in the long run with retaining and acquire customers.  

4. There is more to it then just a great customer experience. 

Though giving your customers a great experience and saying thank you for being a customer is a start...it is not enough for you to retain all of your customers.  You need to create a program that encourages your clients to come back, think about why they are visiting.  If they are not visiting anymore, why not?  Try to get into the mind of your customer so you can give them the complete experience that they truly want.

5.  How can we turn our current customers into our best acquisition tool?

We’ve talked about this step a lot in the Whoat blog, but nevertheless, it is extremely important and a passion of our company.  You gave your customer a great experience and now they love your company - how to you turn that happy customer into a new client?  Encourage that customer to make referrals to their friends.  More than likely they will be happy to do so, and as we all know, a referral from a friend results in actual business more times than not and they tend to become more loyal customers.  

The key to success is creating a process for referrals, and the most straightforward way to do that is by signing up for Topferral.  Register your company domain today so that you can start gathering actual client referrals once Topferral launches.

By : Maddie Blumenthal

As we continue to develop the first version of Topferral, we wanted to update you on what features will be available and the importance of these initial capabilities.  The first feature we decided to highlight is the ability to send emails requesting referrals from your customer base.

As most of you know, the best way to receive feedback is to ask for it (especially positive feedback).  In general, people do not go out of their way to say something nice when they have had a good experience; for no other reason than they do not have the motivation to do so.  Think of the “no news is good news” mentality.  When someone has a negative experience, they are generally looking for some sort of resolution, so are more likely to go out of their way to express concern or share their experience.  Negative referrals are part of business, and are not necessarily detrimental to your business if handled correctly (but we will save that topic for a future post!)

Topferral has made it extremely easy for you to solicit feedback from your customers through your dashboard.  Once you have set up your business profile, you will be directed to your personalized dashboard.  You will be able to sync your contacts (a topic that will also be featured in a future blog), and select which customers you would like to send referrals requests.  In our first release, we will have an email template already created for you to utilize - in future releases, you will be able to customize this email.  

You will then schedule when the emails will be sent.  In order for this program to be successful, you will want to send the emails when your customers are more likely to be in their inboxes.  While you may be working on your referral program at midnight on a Saturday, you would not want to send those emails out immediately.  We give you control, as you know your customers best.

Once emails have been sent - the Topferral dashboard will provide you with metrics and analytics around the success rate of your email campaign.  You will get data around open rate, bounce rate and click through.  Topferral will also notify you once a referral has been submitted to your site.

A recent article in Fast Company discussed how critical it is to motivate even your most brand loyal customers to become advocates of your brand.  Theresa Trevor said it is as “simple - or as complex - as knowing what they need.” Please may appreciate the experience your company has given them, developed an affinity for the product and may even be brand loyal, but will they go out of their way to help you out?

Trevor, the Marketing Director at Amplifinity, believes that following five steps can motivate your customers to become brand advocates or make a referral. 

Five Tips to Motivate Consumers to Make a Referral:

1. Give them a reason to feel grateful for you in the first place: Provide a solid product or service that you believe in - one that answers consumers’ demand for something they need to make life easier, more fun, prettier, more exciting, etc.

2. Help them through the buying process: Make it easy for your consumers and brand advocates to buy things from you.  The more we know about our brand advocates, the more your sales team can effectively answer their needs without wasting their time or yours.

3. Don’t assume your brand advocates are going to stick by your brand with standard messages from your marketing department: Develop a brand advocacy program that allows consumers to talk to your brand advocates about you.

           - Topferral.com fits in nicely in this step!

4. Listen: As your brand advocacy grows make sure you’re getting insightful data from everything your brand advocates do.

5. Say thank you: Thank your advocates every time you ask them to help you out and they do.