Calling all customer retention, loyalty, relations and success managers across subscription businesses, ecommerce platforms, retail brands, B2B and B2C, product and service! We are all united on our mission to create such an exceptional customer welcome experience that new consumers are transformed into loyal fans.
Whether someone is making a first purchase or taking their initial onboarding steps, you need to have a personalised and well-thought-out plan for welcoming customers. Modern consumers have high expectations and handfuls of competitive options to choose from, so it’s essential you make a good first impression. Old expectations encompassed a fair price and a basic service delivered on time. Contrast this with modern expectations of a connected multi-channel experience filled with personal content.
First thing’s first - you need to build empathy and care into your customer welcome strategy. Advocacy starts at onboarding, so build the foundations for a long term relationship, and help your customers fall head over heels for your brand. Here are four hot tips...
Add a human touch to your customer welcome experience
Email sequences, in app messaging and social media posts are incredibly helpful channels for welcoming customers when it comes to providing functional information, such as contact details, activity notifications or payment reminders.
However, most brands overlook the importance of human touch. In fact, 84% of customers claim that being treated like a person, not a number, is key to winning their business. Consumers (humans who buy things) have basic human needs, such as significance, love and connection. So, welcome customers and make them feel valued by communicating in a caring way.
The physical quality of something as simple as a handwritten customer welcome note reflects care and effort. 70% of respondents prefer receiving physical mail rather than email from a company because it makes them feel valued and gives a better impression of the brand that sent it. As one respondent perfectly describes it, mail feels “human and real.”
Add a human touch to an increasingly anonymised and loveless marketing space to build lasting relationships with the people that matter the most to your brand. Accenture found that existing customers are more than twice as likely to be upsold through a human interaction than through a digital channel, so there’s research to back up the impact of a warm customer welcome.
Welcome customers and remind them why they’re with you
Since your new customer purchased from you online or in store, many other things may have happened in their life, clouding their memory of why they made the purchase. Shortly after the product is delivered, why not welcome customers and remind them why they bought from you? Encourage them to put their purchase to good use, reassure them that they have made the right decision and cement your brand image.
Invite new customers to join your community online and offline
As consumers, we don’t trust ads, we trust fellow consumers. To encourage people to trust your brand, build a community of customers who all share your vision. People love being part of a tribe, a community of like-minded people who trust one another. It’s human nature!
What can you do or say so that consumers just have to tell other people about it? Give your tribe something to believe in, a glue that unites all customers of your business. Encourage them to connect and contribute to the conversation - social media is a great place for this.
Welcome new customers by telling your story
The future business leaders will be those who emotionally connect and make people feel good. Similarly, brands that take a stand in the world and have a mission can transcend their product.
However, research shows that 95% of email marketing is deemed irrelevant by customers of premium brands. Telling your story and communicating your brand values is arguably as important as delivering a fantastic product and service - so why not welcome new customers through a medium that gets 100% open rates and a 33% stronger brain response than email, hitting the threshold that influences future behaviour?
The art of storytelling is so powerful. If done well, your customers will want to retell your story on your behalf, creating human-to-human and business-to-customer connections.
“People don’t buy what you do they buy what you do it” – Simon Sinek
A couple of best in class examples...
1. Men’s designer swimwear brand Orlebar Brown sends handwritten customer welcome notes inviting them to join the online community on social media and share pictures of their travels in their new clothing.
2. Premium cycling wear brand Rapha has 22 shops-cum-clubhouses around the world, which act as a hub for the cycling community. Members of the Rapha Cycling Club meet several times a week to go riding together.
Lets get you started
Here’s an example of a customer welcome letter from Inkpact, which you can use as a template for your own handwritten letter campaign. We share the founder’s original vision straight from the horse's mouth, welcoming customers to our brand and sharing our core values.
Dear {First Name},
In our digital world we’re constantly bombarded with emails, most of which go unopened. Inkpact was created in 2015 to bring thoughtful human interaction into communications. As a student at university I created a community of students who wrote letters on behalf of local businesses. It wasn’t long before the business results grew and so did the orders. That's when I teamed up with Andrew, my co-founder, who developed the clever tech to support and automate strategic campaigns for brands big and small, all lovingly written by our now 250-strong Scribe Tribe.
Thank you for coming on this journey with us. Welcome to the Inkpact community!
Lots of love,
Charlotte
CEO and Founder