Of course you want to give your customers as much attention as possible, start real conversations, and keep those conversations going. That’s what real customer appreciation is all about.
Whether your business is well established and growing steadily or it’s brand new and you have so much to do, it’s simply not feasible to personally text each customer whenever you think about it. And you certainly aren’t going to remember personal details about all of their lives.
So improve your customer retention strategy and automate your customer appreciation — at least portions of it.
When you utilize custom fields and set up messages to automatically send, you stay in contact at the exact right times and position yourself to create your biggest supporters. All because you took the time to show a little customer appreciation.
A note about custom fields
Custom fields totally change how you converse via text, and they work great for automating messages like these. Just remember that when you create a custom field in Skipio, if you don’t have it filled out for a contact, it will be appear in brackets. For example, if you create a [Favorite Hobby] custom field but don’t fill it out for a contact, if you send a message with [Favorite Hobby], that’s exactly what the recipient will see.
Birthdays
It’s pretty standard for businesses to send birthday well wishes and/or coupons – you’ve probably received a postcard or two from your dentist over the years. But texting everyone is certainly easier than sending emails or postcards, and it’s still plenty personal.
You could keep a manual record of birthdays and create calendar invites to remind you to send texts. Or you could automate it with Skipio.
Skipio lets you save each contact’s birthdate and then write a specific birthday message that will automatically go out on that day. If you don’t want to write a message for each person individually, you can write a single default message. But you can still customize that “default” message if you’ve created custom fields.
Example text: Happy birthday, [First Name]! Use coupon code “Insert Code” online or show this text to get your free gift, valid until the end of the month. Have a most excellent day
Holidays
Certain holidays might be a really big deal for your business. And there’s a (usually silly) national holiday for just about every industry.
So whether you’re a business hoping to make the most of the holiday shopping season or simply trying to express your gratitude for customers around Thanksgiving, you should be texting people.
Example text 1: Hey [First Name], did you know that today is “Insert Holiday”? I know what you’re thinking. Don’t we celebrate that every day at “Insert Business Name”? But come in today for a special sale!
Example text 2: Happy Thanksgiving weekend [First Name]! Everyone here at “Business Name” is so thankful for your continued support. I’m
Write and schedule all your holiday texts in advance so when the time comes you don’t have to worry. Instead focus on what’s in front of you.
For more examples of holiday texts you may want to send, check out our post on holiday appreciation promotions.
General Follow-Up
Don’t try to remember all on your own the last time you reached out to someone. When you use a platform like Skipio, you can see all the texts you’ve sent, and it’s all in one place. Even better is automating your follow-up. Because suddenly you’re following up anytime, anywhere.
When you schedule follow-up messages on a regular basis, you’ll always know your last touchpoint and your future touchpoint. You can even create separate groups and campaigns for people in different parts of the customer journey to further streamline the follow-up process.
How often you check in with customers will depend on your business and services. Following up once every week could be totally necessary for a personal trainer, but an insurance agent certainly doesn’t need to be in contact that often.
Example text: Hi [First Name], how are you doing with [Goal]? Is there anything I can do to help? Feel free to text me at any time!
When you create a custom field in your settings for [Goal] and then fill it out for each contact, Skipio will automatically fill in whatever information you saved for the contact. Every message becomes a personal message, no matter who you’re texting. And that’s true customer love.
Feedback Requests
Your desire to hear from your customers in an honest way is really another form of customer love. When you seek reviews and feedback from your customers, you show self-awareness and a desire to improve.
Send recent customers a link to leave a review or simply ask for their overall feedback on their most recent experience with your business.
Sending feedback requests will require you to keep track of customer interactions to make sure you’re only requesting feedback or reviews from people who have actually done business with you recently.
Example text: Hi [First Name], thanks for supporting “Insert Business Name”! I’d love if you left a review about your recent experience at “Insert Review Link”. We always love to hear how we can improve.
To further personalize a text asking for feedback, you could even create a custom field for [Last Date], meaning the last time they purchased something or visited your business in some way, or maybe even [Last Purchase]. As long as you ensure it gets updated, Skipio will automatically include it in your texts.
Integrating Skipio with your CRM or other systems can help you pull in information automatically that can then be put into messages. Talk with a rep to learn how Skipio can sync with your business.
When you automate customer appreciation and other types of messages, you can create even more automated messages that will go out based on how people respond. That way you keep the conversations going and still save massive amounts of time. And you do it all with your customer in mind.
