Customer engagement is essential for creating and maintaining interest on products and services. It plays a crucial part of brand development, builds up trust and rapport…
and keeps your customers coming back for more!
This article discusses ways you can create engagement with your customers via your business website.
We’re not talking marriage proposals! Rather ways you can interact and effectively communicate with your website visitors; draw interest and build a strong and quality reputation online.
Social Media Integration
There are many ways to incorporate social media on your website to make it more interactive and engaging…
Examples of social media strategy:
- Add social share icons to relevant pages or sections on your website encouraging visitors to share your products, articles or information.
- Embed an Instagram gallery on your website which automatically updates with your latest photos when you post to Instagram.
- Promote customer involvement by embedding an Instagram gallery with a set #hashtag, and encourage customers to post to this hashtag to be included.
- Twitter or Facebook feeds can be a great way to show updates on latest news without the need to log in to your website admin to add new content.
- Add social media icons to branded images to encourage visitors to share your website images on their social media pages to visually promote your business.
- Automate content from your website when new products or articles are published to post on your social media pages, saving on time.
- Create Remarketing Campaigns showing ads on Facebook to people who have recently visited your website as a reminder of products or services they were interested in – encourgaging return visits and more sales.
Email Subscriptions
Utilising email campaign software as part of your business marketing mix; can provide an effective means to reach and communicate with your customers and encourage more sales.
Email campaign software enables you to send branded emails with text and images to a contact list. You can track statistics such as how many people opened your email, who it was, what links were clicked and more.
You can do more with email marketing than just sending out some text and images…
Examples of email marketing strategy:
- Promote your latest news, products or services, linking directly to appropriate pages on your website.
- Create an auto-response email welcoming new subscribers, letting them know more information on your business; provide a discount coupon to encourage a sale etc.
- Use filtered mailing lists or demographics from subscriber data to personalise and target marketing campaigns – such as offering a 20% OFF Sale for a specific location only.
- Automate content from your online store or website blog to save time on having to write and create emails.
- Utilise festive and holiday seasons to promote discounts and encourage sales.
- Add a sign-up form to your website and Facebook page, encouraging subscriptions and automate contacts from ecommerce stores to build up mailing lists.
There are an extensive range of email marketing campaign software tools available, such as Mail Chimp or Campaign Monitor. Some providers offer a free account option with limited recipients or sends to get you started, some charge per month or per recipient.
Compare the features and sign-up for a free account first to trial out the system before making your decision so you can work out what works best for your business needs.
Live Chat
Live Chat on a website provides a direct communication tool for interacting with your customers. With the click of a button a potential customer can start up an instant message with your sales or support staff to ask a question to find out more about a product or service.
In this modern era, more people are adapting to online communication tools and no longer want to have to make a call to ask a question or send an email and wait for a reply. Live chat provides a great way for potential customers to gain instant service, showing that your business cares about providing quality customer service.
Methods of utilising Live Chat for communication strategy may include:
- Chat options categorised for different departments such as sales enquiries, tech support or general enquiries – directing customers to the right answers.
- ‘May I help you?‘ – Initiate chat directly with your website visitors, letting them know you are available if they have any questions.
- Monitor live statistics letting you know how many people are currently on your website and what pages they are on so you can appropriately target or direct your chat sessions. However avoid freaking your customers out letting them know you are watching their every move by keeping your starting message fairly generic.
- Create a custom offline message and contact form that can display when you’re not online.
- Create your own ‘chat bot’ with automated responses based on keywords being asked.
- Create polls or surveys before or after the chat session to find out more about the customer, their experience and expectations.
There are lots of Live Chat software options available, some are free to use for basic options which is all you may need to get started. Some options however, require a monthly subscription or a once off purchase fee. It really depends on what software your website has been developed with and the Live Chat features you require.
I hope this article has got you inspired and thinking about new ways you can expand on customer service and engagement with your website visitors.
If you have any feedback or any suggestions for topics you would like me to write about, send me a message! I love to hear from my readers.
Cheers,
Gemma
Digital Spice Web Design and Digital Marketing services – Helping small to medium businesses grow online!