What is customer loyalty?
Customer loyalty describes a continual relationship between your business and your customers, which is demonstrated by your customer’s willingness to engage with your company and return to do business with you rather than seeking out competitors. Loyalty is usually only achieved when a customer has positive experiences with you and the relationship then begins to develop trust, which in turn leads to loyal customers. Brand loyalty can make up most of your consistent revenue. A brand loyal consumer will also help to encourage new customer engagement when others start to notice that your happy customers are reaping the benefits of your brand. You can easily achieve customer loyalty with SMS with our research.
What defines a loyal customer?
- Happy and likely to offer you repeat business.
- They purchase and use your product or services.
- They share the experience with others.
- Engage with you via different marketing channels. E.g., social media, SMS messages, etc.
- Give great feedback, boosting your profile within the marketplace.
Different types of customers
We are all different, so it would be wrong to assume that just because you are one type of business that all your customers will be the same type of people. You may have one product or service that suits many types, or you may have multiple products and services to suit various different needs. Either way, it is important to identify how to achieve customer loyalty and what it looks like. These are the types of loyalty that we have identified:
- A happy customer – this customer is generally satisfied with your product or service and would gladly purchase from you again. But, be warned, this customer can easily be persuaded to buy elsewhere with the right marketing campaign, a better price, a voucher, etc.
- A price loyal customer – it’s all about the price for these purchasers, you offered a really good deal and it caught their attention. They may not have been too concerned about quality but you fitted their budget at that time and they felt that they were getting a good deal. Well, that sounds fair but can mean only one thing, they will easily be tempted by another low price from another supplier. Unless you wish to price your products permanently lower than your competitors, customers such as these are hard to sustain.
- A loyalty club-member customer – These guys love to get something back. The feeling of being rewarded for their loyalty can override any price or quality decisions they may make.
- A convenience customer – Your brand is perhaps within easy reach for this busy client who doesn’t have the time to shop around. Maybe dealing with your company is hassle-free or they may simply enjoy the familiarity and simplicity of your website or checking out process.
- A freebie hungry customer – who doesn’t love a freebie? This customer certainly does and will favour brands that hand out discounts, vouchers, or freebies. Many shoppers in this camp are happy to wait for the discount or can easily be tempted away by a competitor’s discount.
- Totally loyal customer – yep, they do exist, cut them in half and you might see the name of your brand written all the way through! Not only do these guys love what you do, but they are prepared to tell others how good you are too, and want everyone to shop with you because they think you are the best. It sounds great, but the downside of customers like these is that they get very unhappy when you let them down and will want everyone to know about it.
It is important to nurture all types of customers to maximise your profits, so you will need to cover all angles to make the most out of any marketing investment.
How you can achieve customer loyalty with sms
SMS marketing is the fastest and most efficient way to reach your potential customers and is now becoming the preferred method of marketing and transactional communications. With an open rate of 97% and a fast read rate within minutes, you can see why.
Did you know that 23 billion SMS messages are sent out globally every day? It makes perfect sense when you consider that in 2021, 3.8 billion people owned mobile phones and that figure is set to continue to rise in the years to come. In the UK alone, a staggering 92% of all brits already have a mobile phone and we look at them on average once every 4 minutes. The number of different mediums of communication we have access to on these little mobile devices is ever increasing. Quite frankly, mobile phones have taken the world by storm and are by far our favourite way to interact with others. When dealing with businesses, we are now partial to a non-invasive approach. Marketing by SMS messages and two-way communication via SMS interaction is right up our street.
It should come as no surprise that statistics show that 48% of people prefer to receive marketing communications by text message. By contrast, only 22% prefer email marketing and email alerts, 20% pay attention to app notifications, and a meagre 8% would now welcome direct mail. Many businesses have already upgraded their marketing strategies and adjusted their budgets to keep up with the growing trend for SMS marketing messages. They already know that traditional methods are no longer hitting the mark and are more costly and inefficient.
Let’s have a look at the customer types again and see how you can achieve customer loyalty with SMS marketing messages to promote customer satisfaction and customer loyalty:
- Happy – Use SMS marketing messages to keep in touch with your latest news and offers. Perhaps encourage them to join your database to receive ongoing marketing texts from you. Make sure they know how to opt-out of SMS marketing if they need to as they may easily go elsewhere if they feel harassed or become dissatisfied with you.
- Price loyal – This customer needs to know about your special offers and discounts. During their purchase, make it clear that they can receive discounts when they sign up to receive SMS marketing messages from you. Price loyal customers are particularly reactive to time-sensitive discounts that require a quick reaction and maybe watching your products or services from afar waiting for a price drop, so give them a nudge and send them a text.
- Loyalty member – Your loyalty club members need to have access to exclusive deals as part of their membership. They will need to spend a lot of money to build up points with you so they are in it for the long haul and pretty much a captive audience for marketing communications. Receiving SMS marketing messages to update them on their points totals and exclusive offers is an interaction they would expect.
- Convenience – Streamline the customer experience by sending helpful SMS marketing messages, and asking questions to get the ball rolling for your customer. For example, “We noticed you forgot to check out your basket, click the link to proceed” or “Are you still looking to try meal kits, Aaron? Type “YES” and we can get one of our advisors to call you.” You could also text offers to book slots for sales to take the stress out of sale shopping and follow up with reminders or sync calendars.
- Freebies – It’s easy to engage with people who want a freebie. They are likely to want to opt into SMS marketing messages to ensure they have access to the latest discounts. They will be watching you closely for price reductions so will welcome a heads up.
- Totally loyal – Maintaining a good business relationship with completely loyal customers may seem easy but it’s good to let them know that you value them. It is far easier to nurture an existing, loyal customer than it is to win new customers, but there is no need to take them for granted. Reward their loyalty with offers and freebies. You need to tread very carefully when the totally loyal customer is unhappy, one word from them and your incompetency could be all over social media. SMS marketing messages can be a useful tool to handle complaints, it eases the frustration of making a telephone call or waiting for an email to come back. You can also check in on your loyal customers with feedback forms via SMS text messages to let them know that you continue to value their opinion. Keeping them updated with your latest news through SMS marketing messages and it will also be important to nurture them through changes to the way you do business. Totally loyal customers can sometimes be averse to change.
Leverage SMS marketing strategy
Any SMS marketing strategy you decide to promote is trackable from your PC, so you will be able to check where you may achieve customer loyalty with sms in real time. With Text Anywhere, your text marketing campaigns are measurable with our SMS marketing platform. So, you will be able to manage your SMS marketing strategy directly from our dashboard on your desktop. The best practice to leverage SMS marketing requires regularly engaging your loyal customers and qualified leads with content that promotes two-way communication. Send out texts they can reply back to so that they can gather further insight into your product. This is usually more successful when marketers go beyond just promotion and start to incorporate more personalised messages, such as a reminder to check out your abandoned shopping cart, birthday messages, customer anniversary specials, or VIP loyalty programs.
How to achieve customer lifetime value
Customer lifetime value refers to the entire amount a business earns from the average customer over the course of their relationship with the business. When companies gather feedback via SMS messaging this helps to improve your products or services. B2B marketers use leverage SMS marketing as a business productivity tool. For consumer-based businesses, it is important to take a deep dive into the types of customers you may have (see above), and consider how you can use SMS marketing messages to maintain as many of these customer relationships as possible and achieve customer loyalty with SMS Marketing strategies. In today’s modern world marketers are fortunate because the consumer’s desire to build connections opens an opportunity for brands to drive communication and interaction. Customers want brands to notice them and appreciate efforts to reach them on their mobile phones rather than through any other marketing channel.
Why choose SMS marketing with Text Anywhere?
The statistics speak for themselves, we know that SMS marketing works. It is by far the best marketing channel currently available. 77% of marketing subscribers opt-in to receive more vouchers and discounts and a staggering 64% actively want the companies they are interested in to communicate with them more via marketing text messages.
New to SMS marketing or just looking for a better provider? Text Anywhere, will be right by your side. We can offer you:
- A secure and easy to use platform
- The ability to send text messages by integrating with your own application for free.
- An improvement to your customer experience, engagement, and retention by SMS marketing.
- Instant SMS messaging and Bulk SMS marketing.
- An effective platform for marketing campaigns and transactional messages.
- Support and advice from our dedicated team.
A recap of the main benefits of SMS marketing?
We hope by now that you can see the huge benefits of SMS marketing messages, but just in case you are still unsure, here’s a quick recap; SMS marketing is:
- Instant
- Unlimited
- Engaging
- Non-intrusive
- Cheaper than any other marketing channel
- Preferred by 77% of consumers
- Trackable
Click the button below for a free trial today.