With the recession already reducing budgets and the uncertainty of jobs post lockdown further impacting consumer confidence. It’s never been more important to find smarter ways of working with what you have.

Being a previously used or considered brand in such uncertain times means you should have a healthy seam of data that you can tap into. As well as lots and lots of existing collateral that you have created and tested over the years. Now seems a great time to work smarter, rollout, re-use or re-purpose and generally sweat the assets you have…

Starting with Acquisition

Unconverted Enquiries – you’ve paid for the leads, so make the most of them. Retarget all those who clicked on your ad – but didn’t buy. You may have to pay to do this, if you haven’t captured their details and opted them in, but it is far cheaper than paying tore-recruit them a month or so later.

Old Enquir ies – now more than ever, you should be looking to extend your conversion window. If you normally cut off after 1 month, then make it 2. You can put some tests in place to establish a reasonable cut off for equitable cost vs return (ROI), but there should be some easy wins in this data.

Non Actives – so these are the people who didn’t open or click on recent communications. We often build tacet timescales into our programmes, with the assumption that customers who don’t open after xx contacts or time are not interested. There are 2 flaws in this logic:

1)    You forget that you don’t have to see a sale to create brand engagement. The sheer fact that you are in their inbox and email browser conveys a ‘store open’        cue  for these considerers.

2)    Not all customers are the same and our average time to conversion is just that. Some peoplewill fall outside these timescales and you should not feel bad about continuingto engage with them. Remember, they haveresponded to your initial ad and you are giving them the chance to unsubscribefrom your programme.

We would always advocate continuing a communication with theseemingly non engaged for these reasons – but you should extend your conversiontimescale out. Get a bit more inventivewith the comms and reduce contract frequency until you re-active them.

Remember, keeping these less responsive customers engaged evenif they aren’t purchasing will keep your brand top of mind and higher up thefunnel for future purchase decisions. Arecent Gallup poll indicated that customers who have high emotional engagementwith a brand are 30% more likely to purchase from the brand in future.

Abandoned shopping carts

You probably have this already – but it needs to be donequickly and intuitively to get best results. So automate a trigger email rather than “mop up” after so long. It should contain a link to the original cartor a reminder of the items that were in it. Continue to follow up for a period of time that is relevant to the purchaseinterval of the products you are selling. Use the process as a way of establishingany product, service or technical problems with the process and establish if customerhas bought the product from somewhere else and respond appropriately.

Improving subject lines

Poor subject lines are not just unforgivable but can halveyour open rates, which is the biggest barrier to conversion. Wehave worked with clients to improve their subject lines as part of a structuredtest and learn programme that systematically trials a range of active, urgentor emotive words to stimulate open rates, with some great results. When you have exhausted this approach, thenyou could look to invest in one of the Machine Learning solutions that takesthe pain out of the process. Either way– you will have more people to talk to as a consequence. This approach works in either the acquisitionor retention funnel.

Cross Sell & Up Sell

If you have more than 1 product range, then your existingcustomers can be a valuable source of additional sales and these are virtually free. These work best as part of an ongoing triggerprocess. Remember the old MO modelswhere your parcel would include targeted flyers for other products that youcould buy - or messages like “get thisto complete the outfit”. This is thesame principle and it works across all sectors – from financial products, tofashion, household goods, gardens, drinks, holidays etc. Building a shopping cart, checking out,order confirmation, delivery, post purchase follow ups are all cross-sellingopportunities and if done correctly are seen as helpful ideas to the customerrather than a sales drive. So look at eachstage, put yourself in your customers shoes and work out what and where to makeappropriate suggestions that would complement their initial purchase and drive uptheir order value.

Re-Use & Re-Purpose

Ok – so over the years you have built up a range ofcampaigns, offers and general content that you have used and moved on from. When time is tight and resources are limited,it is a good time to go back and re-assess the efficacy of these tried andtested solutions. It will enable you tokeep your campaigns fresh with the least amount of effort. Remember, you are uber close to yourprogrammes and customers do not have perfect knowledge or memory. Even if you have moved on from an offer orincentive because it reached wear out a year or more ago, it doesn’t mean thatit won’t resonate with customers again now. So save yourself some time, brush it all off, update where necessary andreap the rewards of recycling…

If you would like to know more about the techniques mentionedin this blog, then get in touch . We are here to help…