Competition is getting increasingly stiffer in both B2C and B2B sectors with each passing year. As customers are rightly referred to as kings across sectors, they are tough acquire. Companies have to spend significant amount of resources to drive a customer through the sales funnel to successful conversion. However, selling to existing customers is not as difficult. Customer retention therefore plays a differentiating role in the success and growth of a business.
The fact that various studies have established that customer retention is easier to ensure than customer acquisition is an encouragement for enterprises in B2B as well as B2C sectors. Retaining customers is almost about engaging and interacting with them at the right moment and with appropriate time intervals between. Post-sales engagement is therefore as crucial for customer retention as pre-sales engagement is for conversion journey.
Customer Engagement Process in Brief
Achieving the level the engagement that drives confidence in the customers and eventually leads to loyalty and advocacy is a long-drawn battle. It may seem never-ending task, however, understanding the various stages of the engagement process, gives a clearer idea about what needs to be done, and whether marketers are heading towards the right direction.
Engagement process basically has four levels – on-boarding, delivery, understanding and value creation. On-boarding stage comes immediately after sales, and is the beginning of the relationship with the customer. It marks the end of planning, as sale completes and the first level of post-sales communication has been reached. The next stage is therefore to start delivering the engagement. The delivery phase necessitates deeper understanding of customers in order to produce more engaging content. This involves collecting information on customer behavior from diverse channels. As customer a business’ understanding of its customer matures, opportunities to innovate and add value start to become more and more evident. Enterprises can therefore work towards achieving customer loyalty and advocacy.
Effective Ways of Post-Sales Engagement
The extent of effort, time, money and other resources that enterprises have to spend on customer acquisition usually affects their will to plan and execute post-sales engagement. However, those who do have a post-sales engagement strategy in place, considerably increase the chances of beating the competitors in the long run.
While order confirmation, shipping notification, discount offers and ‘thank you’ messages are the most implemented post-sales engagement techniques, there are other ways to standout from the crowd. Interestingly, increasing number of companies are implementing new and unique post-sales engagement in order to make a mark in their customers’ mind.
Strategic emails for various post-sales interaction and engagement are among the popular techniques, and are effective as well. The content of the email depends upon the business of the enterprise. However, there are certain types of email that all companies can execute as part of their post-sales engagement plan.
Satisfaction surveys: Businesses can effectively show to their customers their care for them by sending satisfaction surveys immediately after a sale or a service. Rating the product and/or the service not only brings in customer feedback, but also enables enterprises to enhance their quality assurance standards.
Review requests: Requesting customers to review the product or service that they have purchased makes them feel that their opinions are valued. In addition, such reviews increase the overall engagement and interaction through the website and mobile application of the business. Besides, customers’ reviews are considered authentic by prospects, and therefore further increase sales scope. In order to encourage reviewing, businesses can publish customers’ reviews and notify them about the same. This naturally generates the urge among customers to review every product and service they purchase.
In addition, companies can also send recommendations and compelling offers based on customers’ purchase history. Also, the thank you notes, can be modified by including links to social media pages, infographics, videos, and so on in order to make them two-way communications.
Significance of Post-Sales Engagement
Retaining an existing customer cost multiple times less than acquiring a new customer. That alone is enough to indicate the importance of post-sales engagement. Besides, the probability of purchasing a new product or service by an existing customer is about 70% greater than by a new customer. The facts and figures clearly underline the significance of post-sales engagement, as it is one of the most effective techniques for ensuring customer retention. By making customers feel that the brand is not just concerned about sales and revenue, but values their preferences, companies can drive conversion to loyalty, and loyalty to advocacy, ensuring long-term business success.
Learn how to engage your customers in  ‘How Creating Relevant Post-Purchase Programs Can Increase Engagement and Brand Awareness’ with speaker Daniel Netkin-Collins, Email Producer, The LEGO Group at the Modern Marketing ExperienceOpens a new window  in Las Vegas from April 26-28, 2016.
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Join the thousands of people expected to attend Modern Marketing ExperienceOpens a new window  North America April 26–28, 2016 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Personally engage and network with Modern Marketing leaders and industry icons to gain valuable insights. Evolve your methods by taking home best practices from practitioners and experts in session tracks featuring cross-channel orchestration, optimization and personalization, social and content marketing, mobile engagement, data and programmatic advertising, and marketing automation. Explore today’s proven strategies and tools that you can use to power digital marketing innovation and revenue generation tomorrow.