The value of a positive customer experience can never be underestimated, and its power is only getting stronger: 88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services — a jump from 80% in 2020.
Great CX is also directly correlated to customer retention, as positive customer service experiences makes 95% of customers more likely to purchase again.
Ideally, CX and retention strategies work together to ensure a customer is satisfied with a company’s services, makes repeat purchases, and does not defect to a competitor – in other words, improving the value of a customer’s lifecycle value to consistently boost ROIs and bottom-lines, especially when it costs 6 to 7 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain one.
Welcome campaigns are one of the best ways to kickstart a memorable customer experience by sending a targeted message shortly after a purchase to greet the customer, check in on how their product or service is working, and ask how their experience was. A welcome message is also your first opportunity to establish an ongoing relationship that brings long-term gains: a mere 5% increase in customer retention can increase company revenue by 25-95%.
The success of a welcome campaign largely depends on its messaging channel, and many leading companies are leveraging the advantages of business texting – including its channel-leading open and response rates and preference by customers - to deliver effective and engaging welcome messages.
So to help you get the most out of business texting, we’ll explore why you should have a welcome campaign, some best practices to follow during its rollout, and the all-too-real risks you run if you ignore what is arguably the most critical juncture in the fragile relationship with your customers.
Benefits of a welcome campaign
Welcome campaigns first capitalize on perfect timing. The customer is excited about their recent purchase and you are still very fresh in their mind, making them primed to start a relationship with you.
A quick follow-up to see how they like their purchase directly engages the customer about any potential issues, which not only re-affirms their purchase – that they’ve made a good decision – but most importantly, opens up a conversation.
Remember, texting is always a two-way street, so making yourself available and accessible at these early stages and giving customers an avenue to respond shows that you take their concerns seriously. Customers appreciate feeling heard and an authentic dialogue goes a long way to building trust and loyalty.
And with personalization in high demand - 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging - SMS welcome campaigns let you tailor messages to a customer’s specific needs, meeting their expectations for a great experience and nurturing this budding relationship.
These factors lay the groundwork for retention by investing in a relationship that goes beyond the initial purchase. Welcome interactions form the basis for everything from future referral lists – when customers tell you they need headphones, say, in response to a welcome message – to invaluable databases of customer information that can yield data-driven insights to better refine and personalize future messaging.
And even if customers don’t respond, you can take comfort knowing that customers have at least read your message, as more than 90% of people read a text message within the first three minutes of receiving it.
Best practices for your welcome campaign
Welcome campaigns are the first step in establishing a customer relationship beyond the initial purchase, but only when they’re completed correctly.
- Avoid trying to sell: Welcome campaigns should never be transactional or salesy. Messages should be framed as ‘check-ins’ to see how the customer is enjoying their new product or how the service was received.
- Be timely: Welcome messages should be sent a short time after purchase. Companies can either have their welcome campaigns running daily - to send to those who purchased the day before - or monthly - to send to those who purchased in the past month.
- Ask a question: Always ensure you ask a question in your initial message. Questions open up a two-way dialogue and result in a higher response rate from customers.
- Don’t obsess over follow up: Welcome campaigns are meant to add to your customer relationship. Too many follow ups can come off as intrusive and overbearing. Keep your follow ups on welcome campaigns minimal and light in nature.
- Stay compliant: Any message from a business is required to follow compliance regulations. Be sure you are meeting all the necessary requirements before beginning your welcome campaign.
The bottom line about bottom lines
Making your welcome campaign part of an amazing customer experience drives up retention and, with it, the bottom lines that come from an improved customer lifecycle value.
Retained customers are also returning customers: on average, 75% will buy more products from companies they have a good relationship with. And not only do they buy more often and spend more than newer customers, they are more likely to bring in new customers by referring their friends and family.
Part of this retention is, of course, personalization, where 90% of consumers are likely to purchase more products if they believe a company understands their buying preferences. This positions business texting - with its unbeatable performance metrics and seamless ability to personalize messages on a preferred, responsive channel - as arguably the most powerful way to run a welcome campaign that keeps on giving.
Risks of not having a welcome campaign
Bombarded by countless messages, people are increasingly adept at tuning out from marketing. So without the right message sent at the right time and on the right channel, people will forget about you. And nothing is more damaging in the competition for a customer’s attention than to be forgotten.
So if your next touchpoint isn't until their next renewal in a year, they won’t think of you when they need something and you’ll miss out on possible sales and revenue, especially if a competitor comes along with a more enriching customer experience to woo them away.
When you delay texts like welcome messages until well after the time is ripe, they come across as “sales-y” and transactional rather than relationship-building, and people do not like being cold-texted and sold to if the foundation for that relationship has not been built.
Greetings!
Welcome campaigns are a great way to establish an ongoing relationship with your customers that ensure retention, referrals, and revenue. This is why welcome messages are the most commonly used automated text message sent by marketers, with 96% of marketers rating welcome messages as “effective”.
But to get the most out of your welcome campaigns, you need to execute it on the right channel, and business texting stands above the rest. Business texting creates more than a seamless, convenient, informative, and personalized experience – it creates an authentic, ongoing conversation with customers that cultivates the trust at the foundation of every great relationship, every retention strategy, and every great bottom-line.
Book a demo today and kick off your new and improved welcome campaign!
