Marketing, meet CX. Everyone talks about the marketing tactics that are good for ecommerce brands. But what about the strategies that are good for the customer experience? Subscribe to cxploration to learn the insights your customers want you to know.
š¤æ Listening to customers and reshaping the buying experience
Happy āGet To Know Your Customersā Day to all who celebrate ššš
Oh wait, you didnāt know about this holiday? Well, neither did I until yesterday. Apparently itās celebrated the third Thursday of each quarter.
I get a little š about the abundance of fake corporate holidays, but really whatās so bad about deliberately listening to your customers once per quarter? Sounds like a good reason to celebrate!
So Iāll check in in with yāall again in July and maybe we can come prepared with cake customer insights.
For now, weāll dive right in to today's links.
Link Diving
It all starts with your people
Wondering what ātalk to your customersā actually means for your brand? (I get it, just like your customers, you wanna know Whatās in it for me?)
Klaviyo has the answers in their Customer-First Marketing Playbook.
Customer-First Marketing has been gaining attention in the āprivacy-first eraā of DTC marketing.
Klaviyo defines Customer-First Marketing as,
Oh, well that sounds nice!
But problems can arise when thereās tension between how you and your team perceive your brand and how your customers actually think and talk about it.
Val Geisler explains it like this,
And Monica Grohne, founder of Marea Wellness, has learned from experience that,
It can take some time to process any disconnect between brand assumptions and customer insights.
But if you're open to listening (and then running some brand experiments), you may just discover some money-making, customer-winning secrets.
Klaviyoās guide is full of practical examples and suggestions for translating customer insights into actionable ideas. I took lots of notes on this one and I think youāll leave full of ideas for your brand too!
š° Read it here: Customer-First Marketing: The new brand playbook for the privacy-first eraā
. . .
Starting the customer conversation
If scheduling 1:1 interviews with your customers isnāt on your Q2 to-do list, there are still other ways to get to know your customers.
Ben Parr, the President and Co-Founder of Octane AI, joined the Conversational Commerce Podcast to talk all things Zero-Party Data.
According to Ben, listening to your customers isnāt just the right thing to do, itās also a great way to future-proof your business.
Not only because privacy and third-party data rules are always changing, but also because customers are choosing to buy from brands that actually understand them.
If youāre not sure where to start, think of Zero-Party Data as conversational data. Itās on you, as the brand, to start the conversations with your customers and collect relevant data directly from them.
This may look like quizzes, email segmentation, or conversational popups.
From there, you can start bridging the experience gap between shopping in store (getting personalized help) and shopping online (being left to figure it out on your own).
To do that, you need to actually use the data that you collect to personalize the customer experience across the entire customer journey.
Ben recommends you start gathering data now even if you plan on using it later. Tune in to hear his other tips for integrating zero-party data into your email, SMS, and website experience.
š Listen now: Conversational Commerce >> Ben Parrā
Delight Discovery
This week's Delight Discovery is purely hypothetical...but I love it anyway.
April 21st 2022
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Something mentioned repeatedly both in Klaviyo's guide and Ben Parr's interview is to actually use the data you have.
If Dropbox can't tell from user behavior that a customer is a YouTube Creator, they could start the conversation by asking how someone uses the product.
From there, they could create different popups, landing pages, and CTAs for different segments.
š” Once we listen to our customers (and even ask for that zero-party data), itās up to us to then personalize and customize the messaging they see.
Buried Treasure
When we listen to customers, we find buried treasure. Hereās this weekās featured product review thatās full of swipe-worthy customer language:
I have the driest, itchiest, most easily irritated skin imaginable. Finding a non-drying but non-greasy body wash has been a lifelong challenge.
I tried Bathing Culture and the results were amazing! My skin is clean, no longer dried out, and the body acne is going away. I will be a subscriber for life! |
When a customer is speaking in hyperbole (the driest skin imaginable, lifelong challenge, etc), I like to really pause and listen.
This buyer likely believes that theyāre the exceptionāthat their skin is too dry/itchy/irritated to use certain products.
And even though this buyer happened to give it a shot anyway, many skeptics will never make the purchase.
Next time you're tweaking your copy, think about how can you speak to potential buyers who feel like outliers.
CX Twitter
I'm working to find the best of CX Twitter. Here are a few Tweets that caught my eye this week.
April 12th 2022
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I love this example from outside the DTC world. How could your brand recreate this experience (and the feelings that came along with it) for your first-time and repeat buyers?
April 15th 2022
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Sure, focus groups are cool, but have you ever tried listening to your actual customers? (Or, to put it nicely, don't sweat it if you're not ready to pay a big agency to run focus groups. As long as you have a handful of customers, you have access to the data you need!)
April 18th 2022
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Like I said in last weekās issue, sometimes listening to your customers sucks š At least the upside here for Jack was a quick revenue boost!
Let me know what kind of CX, marketing, and customer-focused curiosities you've been exploring lately. I'd love to hear what you've discovered.
- Megan
PS. Travis and I are in the early stages of preparing for a move (same state. new city). The chaos of home selling and apartment hunting is starting to set in so I may switch to an every-other-week publishing schedule until we're settled in June.
If I'm not in your inbox next Thursday, I'll be there on May 5!
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Marketing, meet CX. Everyone talks about the marketing tactics that are good for ecommerce brands. But what about the strategies that are good for the customer experience? Subscribe to cxploration to learn the insights your customers want you to know.
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