Trending December 2023 # How Behavioural Email Marketing Can Improve Customer Loyalty # Suggested January 2024 # Top 12 Popular

You are reading the article How Behavioural Email Marketing Can Improve Customer Loyalty updated in December 2023 on the website Katfastfood.com. We hope that the information we have shared is helpful to you. If you find the content interesting and meaningful, please share it with your friends and continue to follow and support us for the latest updates. Suggested January 2024 How Behavioural Email Marketing Can Improve Customer Loyalty

What Email Marketers need to learn from Retailers How email marketers can use behavioural email to increase customer loyalty and drive more purchases

I believe email marketers have major lessons to learn from how the world’s leading offline retailers market to customers before, during and after their purchases. These companies serve as great examples of why email marketers need to go beyond the basic newsletter.

One of the best ways to frame email marketing is to focus on one key event; the purchase and then break it into three phases:

3 Phases of behavioural email marketing related to purchase

1. Before: The customer isn’t necessarily ready to make the purchase, but your goal is to stay top of mind and nurture the relationship until they are.

2. During: The customer is in the process of making a purchase, and your goal is to ensure they have a great experience but also that the customer is fully aware of what you offer.

3. After: The customer has purchased, and your goal is to turn that into a repeated event and build a true relationship with them. Growing this loyalty can have an incredible impact on profitability.

1. Pre-Purchase: Building Awareness and Desire

Before customers make a purchase, marketers usually focus on email newsletters to build awareness and desire in potential customers to get them in the store or on the site to purchase. That said, looking at some of the more creative efforts of retailers in the past shed light on how to think outside the box and standout.

Get local: One classic retail technique is to leverage local events (sponsoring sports clubs, announcing new stores openings in local newspapers, etc) to build a local following. While ecommerce stores don’t have a local presence, they should similarly think about using local allegiances and events to tailor their messaging.

2. During Purchase: Expanding customer relationships

While customers are in the store and making a purchase, offline retailers are masters of highlighting additional products that customers might want.

Seize Opportunity:Think about the queues in a typical retail store; they’re lined with small products that you can easily add to your basket.

The lesson for email marketers? If you know your customer well, you can use abandoned cart, order confirmation or other emails sent within a day or two of purchase to focus on products you know those customers might want.

3. Post-Purchase: Bringing the customer back

Probably the area of greatest opportunity for online marketers to learn from offline retailers is in how to build loyal and lifelong customer relationships.

Because of the often substantial costs of acquiring a customer the first-time, a customer who purchase a second, third and fourth time is often way more than 4 times as profitable as a customer who purchases once.

Loyalty Programmes: Many offline retailers have created loyalty programmes that literally reward customers for every purchase they make. To use this same idea, email marketers should craft campaigns around customer milestones, for example: thanking first time purchasers, recognising customers who make 5 purchases, etc.

Email marketers have a unique opportunity to send personal emails to customers who haven’t purchased recently to check-in, give them special offers, etc.

Email marketers have the unique ability to reach the right customers at the right time with the perfect message but they still need to do the legwork to figure out what to send.

Offline retailers have built deep and strong customer relationships with their marketing and online marketers have a great opportunity to emulate their success and improve on it!.

Ed Hallen is the co-founder of

Ed Hallen is the co-founder of Klaviyo , an intelligent email marketing platform for Ecommerce and Web Apps that helps makes email marketing easier, automated and more effective. You can connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

You're reading How Behavioural Email Marketing Can Improve Customer Loyalty

How To Run Customer Loyalty Programs

While attracting new customers is essential for all businesses, it’s equally as important to make sure you’re retaining existing customers. There are many effective customer retention techniques, but today we’re focusing on customer loyalty programs.

What are customer loyalty programs, and how do you create one? This post will give you a run-down on the basics of customer loyalty programs, how they work, and how you can use them to retain more customers for your business.

Why is Customer Loyalty So Important?

GIF Source

Customer loyalty and retention has a multitude of benefits. The rule of 80/20 states that 20% of a company’s existing customer base generates 80% of its profits! Just a slight increase in customer loyalty can dramatically increase your profits.

Customers aren’t just direct sources of profit, but potential promoters, as well. Plus, it costs less to retain a current customer than it does to acquire a new one.

2. Customer loyalty can contribute to reduced marketing costs. 3. Customer loyalty can translate to increased customer satisfaction.

GIF Source

Repeat customers also offer another invaluable benefit: brand insight. Repeat customers will provide honest feedback based on experience. This feedback can be used to improve your business, increasing customer satisfaction and bringing increased revenue.

4. Customer loyalty can help your business become resilient.

Lastly, building customer retention and loyalty will help insulate your business from competitors. Loyal customers will stick to the brand they trust regardless of economic changes.

Loyal customers, as long as they are kept satisfied by your service, will keep bringing money to your business, even if a trendy new brand comes to the market.

What are Customer Loyalty Programs?

Customer loyalty programs offer participating customers rewards or special benefits for their purchases that aren’t available to non-participating customers. They’re designed to incentivize repeat business and may come in the form of loyalty cards, keychain fobs, stickers, or even paper punch cards.

You can customize a loyalty card like this one using Canva.

Customer loyalty programs combine humanity’s competitive nature with the consumer’s love of receiving free stuff. The customer is made happy by their reward, while the hosting business rakes in more profits and gains that customer’s allegiance, building customer loyalty.

Customer Loyalty Program Examples

Looking for some examples of the best types of customer loyalty programs for small businesses? Take a look at these three.

1. Free Customer Loyalty Programs

Here’s a simple example of a free loyalty program. My favorite donut shop provides customers with a stamp card. For each $10 purchase you make, you get one stamp on your card. After 10 stamps, you get $10 off your next purchase. It’s thrilling to receive an incentive for “free” and makes me feel excited once I reach that tenth stamp (instead of thinking about the fact that I’ve spent $100 on donuts).

2. Paid Loyalty Programs

Not every business can hand out free rewards, regardless of the repeat business they may bring. Thankfully, customer loyalty programs come in all shapes and sizes, and not all of these programs are free.

Some loyalty programs have an initial start-up fee to compensate for the time, money, and planning that the business puts into its loyalty program.

Take Starbucks Rewards — the customer loyalty program from Starbucks. You can sign up for Starbucks Rewards for free, but you have to load in a gift card or credit card and make a purchase through the app to start earning rewards — called Stars.

The Starbucks Rewards program is ingenious because it’s multi-faceted. It’s not only a customer loyalty program but also a purchasing program. In fact, last year, Starbucks reported that 40% of its total sales could be attributed to its rewards program. Starbucks’ customer loyalty program had turned its customers into brand evangelists.

Other paid loyalty programs include Amazon Prime, Barnes and Noble’s B&N Membership, and REI’s Co-op Membership. Each of these programs requires an upfront cost but provides loyalty program members with benefits worth the extra fee.

3. Tiered Loyalty Programs

With a tiered loyalty program, you can entice customers with a baseline rewards program that encourages them to continue earning points with you to move up in membership tiers.

Marriott does this with its Bonvoy program. This loyalty program allows customers to move up in tiers based on the number of nights they stay at Marriot properties each year. The more nights you stay, the better benefits you receive.

How to Build a Customer Loyalty Program

You can set up a customer loyalty program for your business with relatively little time and effort.

Here are some simple steps:

1. Set a goal for your customers.

This is your “prize.” What will it be — a discount? A free T-shirt? Using your own product as a reward is oftentimes easiest and is a great way to encourage repeat business — like in the example of my favorite donut shop or Starbucks offering a plethora of different rewards opportunities based on the number of Stars accrued.

2. Decide how customers will progress towards the goal.

Do they have to buy 10 sandwiches? Do they have to spend X amount or more? Be very selective about choosing which behavior you wish to reward.

For example, it wouldn’t make sense for an auto shop to have a punch card for oil changes, as these are only needed a few times a year. A gas gift card for every $X spent would work better.

3. Give customers a starting boost.

If you have a punch-card system, for example, punch the first hole or first two holes as a one-time reward for joining the loyalty program. Studies have shown that giving customers a head-start on the loyalty program encourages them to participate more.

4. Promote Your Loyalty Program

Your loyalty program won’t be effective if your customers don’t know about it. Be sure to promote it in your store and via email, social media, and your website.

Stephanie Heitman

Stephanie is the Associate Director of Content for LocaliQ and WordStream. She has over 10 years of experience in content and social media marketing and loves writing about all things digital marketing. When she’s not researching the latest and greatest marketing news and updates, she’s probably watching reality TV with her husband, reading, or playing with her two pups.

How To Successfully Automate Customer Email Responses

Customer support is an oft-forgotten part of the sales cycle, but it’s critical to a company’s long-term success. With the increasing reliance on electronic communications, email automation is a must for companies – large and small – that want to keep their customers happy.

Strategic leverage of email automation can improve your customer support while streamlining your communication with customers and reducing demands on your customer support team. It’s a win-win for the customer and your business.

Editor’s note: Looking for the right email marketing service for your business? Fill out the below questionnaire to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs.

Did You Know?

With 4.3 billion email users worldwide, brands shouldn’t miss out on the potential benefits of email marketing.

Tip

Develop a re-engagement email strategy to incentivize your least active subscribers by introducing new value.

Examples of email automation

Here are some standard types of emails that are well suited to automation.

Welcome emails: An email welcoming a new subscriber is an excellent way to introduce them to your services and encourage them to interact and shop with you. According to Campaign Monitor, consumers are 10 times more likely to open welcome emails than other email types. This automated communication is a chance to introduce your company, engage with the customer, and highlight services you think will interest them without taking sales representatives’ time.

Promotional emails: Automated promotional emails are a great way to drive sales and boost brand awareness. Alerts about discounts and sales events can be sent automatically based on a customer’s purchasing and browsing habits. For example, a customer who recently purchased a kitchen chair may benefit from a promotional email offering discounts on other kitchen furniture.

Abandoned cart notifications: Abandoned cart emails remind customers that they have products in their cart but haven’t yet purchased them. These automated emails can prompt customers who may have forgotten about their cart and can even be used to offer a discount or recommend a similar product. For example, you could gently encourage customers to complete their purchase by including a code for a 15% discount.

Tip

When sending abandoned cart notifications, consider A/B testing different messages and offers to find out what resonates with your customers.

6 email automation tips to enhance customer support

Fortunately, automating customer emails is easier than ever. Here are some tips on how to use email automation technologies to make your customers happier:

1. Personalize outgoing emails automatically.

One of the most basic forms of email automation is mail merge. Using data from the best customer relationship management (CRM) software, such as Salesforce, you can automatically embed a client’s name and company information into an email.

But the possibilities of personalization go beyond including a name in an email. You can also use CRM software to record information about product features that may interest a potential client. You could then use that information to start an automatic email flow that incorporates specific information about that feature in a series of personalized email messages.

2. Provide consistency with email templates.

When responding to support requests, your tech support team could waste a lot of time and energy writing new emails for each issue that customers experience. Instead, use prewritten email templates to ensure every customer gets the same high-level answers to their questions. You can customize email templates for individual recipients to add a personal touch.

3. Gather feedback with embedded polls and surveys.

Find out what your customers really think by embedding a poll or survey into an email. Rather than outbound Net Promoter links, in-email polls can be a great way to gather customer feedback. In-email surveys are a convenient and easy way for customers to share their experiences, enabling your business to collect voluntarily provided data to improve customer service and your products.

4. Schedule emails to send later.

The ability to schedule emails can be a massive benefit to salespeople, staff and business owners. Let’s say you have a small business with a team that works remotely at various times of the day, but you want to give the impression of a traditional company with regular hours. Scheduling emails to send later can help. An employee who works at 10 p.m. can follow up on emails and schedule other emails to go out first thing in the morning.

Tip

You can use email scheduling in many instances. For example, you might schedule a follow-up email with a customer for two weeks after your last response to them.

5. Integrate with other systems.

We’ve already discussed the benefits of integrating a CRM tool with your email communications, but other integrations can also significantly benefit your business. You can integrate your email with other platforms and SaaS offerings, including Google Calendar, Dropbox, Twitter and GitHub. Connect emails with tweets or include attachments from your preferred cloud storage provider. This functionality makes email faster and more convenient, resulting in quicker responses to customers.

6. Leverage email automation to improve your customer support.

You can make your customers happier by applying the best practices of email automation to your next email marketing campaign or customer follow-up time. Features like automated personalization, email templates, and embedded polls and surveys can help you engage and entice your customer base. They will appreciate your business more, and you will save time and money in the process.

FYI

The best email marketing services offer marketing automation tools that can help you create and send effective content more efficiently.

Examples of good automated emails for customer service

The following example offers a personalization option so you can directly address the customer. The email provides business hours to let the customer know when to expect a response.

Hi, [insert name]. Thank you for reaching out. We received your email and will get back to you as soon as possible. Our regular business hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET.

This second email lets the recipient know you’re working on the issue and that they can expect a reply soon. It also offers an expedited way to contact your business if the issue can’t wait.

Hi there. We are reviewing your message and will get back to you as quickly as possible. In the meantime, feel free to contact us by phone to speak directly with one of our associates.

Matt Shealy contributed to the writing and research in this article.

How Much Does Email Marketing Cost?

Today every business is using email marketing irrespective of their niche. The cost of email marketing does have some ups and downs in the process. Read on to know more about the same!

Now digital marketing is a huge concept with tons of processes and modules. But the one that strikes everyone’s mind after hearing about digital marketing is Email marketing. E-mail marketing is one of the main and most used modules of digital marketing.

From very small businesses to multinational giants, every company or even famous personalities use email marketing to grow their business and increase their user base. But still, many small businesses don’t know how much does email marketing costs, and due to no or less knowledge about pricing, they ignore it. This blog will discuss what e-mail marketing is and how much it costs.

What is Email Marketing?

So, a person can easily understand what e-mail marketing is by its name. It simply means marketing through E-mail. So, basically, E-mail acts as a marketing channel through which brand or business do their marketing campaigns. Now the reason why it is popular and effective is its user base.

Pricing of Email Marketing

E-mail marketing is a huge concept, or you can say it is a well-ordered process with proper planning. Now, there is nothing like email marketing cost; pricing is calculated for email marketing campaigns. And the cost of an email marketing campaign depends upon multiple factors. So, let’s see what factors does cost of e-mail marketing depends

E-Mail Service Provider or Tool

Well, you can’t do everything by yourself. Even if you are a small business owner with a tight budget, you must spend some money on E mail service provider or tool. Don’t confuse this with email marketing agency because it is different. An E-mail service provider is a tool or software which allows you to run your e-mail marketing campaigns. It is only limited to the delivery of your e-mails and reports or the performance of your campaigns. You have to do all other things on your own, which is why it is a cheap option compared to hiring an email marketing agency. Now, these tools or software have different plans, and the more the features more their pricing.

Size of Email Lists

Now, this is very important because if your email list is huge, you have to pay a lot. Doesn’t matter which software you use or even if you have hired an agency; pricing will increase with the size of e-mail lists. Both software and agencies offer some limits in their plans, and the costlier the plan is, the more limit they provide. Every business or brand wants to increase its email lists, so ultimately, your cost for email marketing will increase in the future. The would-be no chance that you cut down your costs once you start email marketing, and if you do so, it will negatively impact your business growth.

Volume of Email

This factor also directly impacts the cost of email marketing. Volume simply means how many emails you want to send your subscribers in a specific time frame. Now, this specific time frame is a part of your email marketing strategy, but for e-mail service providers and agencies, this time frame is one month. It means they set their pricing or plan every month, so you will get a specific number of emails in a month. Here also, the costlier the plan, the more volume you will get. So, it depends upon your strategy and other factors also. For example, some businesses must send mail daily to keep their customers updated, while sending mail in a month is sufficient for some.

How Much Does Email Marketing Cost

But the question of how much does email marketing costs still exists. By telling you the factors, we wanted to tell you the cost is not fixed; it depends upon your marketing goals, strategies, and business requirements. But to give you an idea for a small and new business, email marketing can cost between $25 to $300 per month. For medium businesses, it can cost between $500 to $1000, and for a well-established business, it can cost more than $1500 per month.

Wrapping up

Email marketing is undoubtedly one of the most effective marketing strategies, and it is also considered the cheapest one as compared to other techniques. After reading this blog, you will understand that e-mail marketing costs may vary from business to business because it depends on multiple factors. However, we have given some rough estimates to clear your doubts regarding how much does email marketing costs.

How To Use A Knowledge Management System To Improve Customer Service

A knowledge management system (KM) could be defined as any system that identifies, organizes, stores, and disseminates information within an organization to make it easily accessible and usable. Whether a single, purpose-designed tool or a collection of integrated systems, a knowledge management system can provide value to an organization in a wide variety of ways.

One common business use is to improve customer service. In this context, a knowledge management system makes it easy to provide relevant and personalized information to customers and the staff who support them. This article looks at specific ways a business can use knowledge management systems to improve their customer service.

A knowledge management system can help a business break down information silos that prevent different parts of the organization from having access to relevant information or being able to see more holistic views of customers and their interactions.

For example, information in the customer database is not available to the analytics system, or management collects sales data that is not made available to front line workers that spend their days contacting customers.

A knowledge management system implemented in a call center or customer service setting can eliminate these information silos using the following best practices:

Consolidate knowledge repositories. Implementing systems that make it possible to unify knowledge repositories and databases will help keep all relevant information in a single system accessible by all.

Adopt federated search. Consolidating data and providing federated search tools make it possible for front-line staff to search all data sources based on one query.

Design systems from the point of service backwards. A customer-first approach will help ensure all customer data is available at each stage of their interaction with the company.

The easier it is for staff to find customer information, the easier it will be for them to provide high quality call responses and overall customer service.

Call centers can no longer rely on a phone line for customer service. In this multi-channel world, customers looking for support expect online knowledge bases, social media access, chat tools, and more. This can pose challenges for organizations looking to provide consistent information that is optimized for viewing across all channels.

Businesses looking to implement knowledge management across multiple channels should:

Deliver consistent multi-channel data. Users don’t want to have to repeat themselves by reentering data or explaining their issue multiple times at each stage of their interaction with customer service.

Optimize content so it is viewable on any channel. Information might look different on a smartphone than on a web browser, and graphics-intensive sites might provide lousy user experience for low-bandwidth customers.

Integrate all channels. Customer service agents should be able to seamlessly move among the different channels to provide a more seamless, unified customer response.

Some people prefer to call, some want to email, others would rather chat or post on social media. A knowledge management system can make it easier to accommodate all customers, regardless of their preference.

Customer service often depends upon a rapid, user-friendly response. Knowledge management systems can facilitate this by making data available rapidly, on a single screen if possible, with drill-down features that make further information available when necessary.

Businesses looking to speed up customer response with knowledge management should:

Design systems to answer queries fast. Impatient customers won’t be forgiving of underpowered hardware or glitchy software.

Provide a single dashboard or screen. Identify the key information to help serve customers quickly and summarize key customer data on a single, easy-to-read dashboard for customer service representatives.

Include comprehensive drill-down features. When a representative needs more information about a customer or transaction, they should be able to get to it from the main screen without going into another system or location.

Prevent unnecessary delays. Any additional steps or unnecessary information can result in customer frustration, dropped calls, and customer churn.

Callers expect quick answers based on the correct data. Doing everything possible to provide them with those answers is essential.

Online knowledge bases may be giving way to artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots in some cases, but they are not going away—and many of them are poorly designed or outdated. A knowledge management system can be used to help overhaul a business’s online knowledge base with the following steps:

Enhance online search. Making it easy for users to find information quickly, without wading through endless documentation, will improve user experience and customer satisfaction.

Devise good systems of taxonomy. Identify the information customers want and how they search for it, and then make it easy for those keywords and search terms to provide relevant results.

Customers are comfortable and familiar with online searches, and delivering bite-sized answers in an easy format can help improve their experience.

When designing or implementing a knowledge management system for the specific use of customer service, there are a few things to consider that will help ensure a better result.

Organizations often focus their knowledge management efforts on the customer, but it must be a resource employees can use to better serve customers. When designing the system, incorporate training modules, use the knowledge base as a training aid during calls, and make it easy for representatives to find the data they need.

Without well-trained agents, any knowledge management system will flounder. Ensure the system serves both customers and agents, especially those learning the trade. Knowledgeable agents provide the best service.

One of the flaws of software design is that programmers don’t always understand or take the time to discover the needs of system users. When designing or implementing a knowledge management system, make sure that the system meets the needs of those front-line workers who will use it. Gain their input, let them try out the system at various stages in the build, and find metrics that align with their duties.

Knowledge management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), contact center and key sales or management systems should not be separate islands within the enterprise. Avoid systems that are difficult or costly to integrate in favor of platforms that can easily fit into existing infrastructure. A centralized knowledge hub should align fully and integrate well with all other key customer facing systems.

Some call centers use automated voice response systems to reduce call volume, but automation can also be used to deliver better customer service. Implementing response chat systems that provide easy call turnovers to customer representatives can prevent long wait times and boost caller satisfaction. Implement chat systems that provide useful answers rapidly, ensure the system knows when to refer the customer to an agent, and provide a call-back option within a specified time.

AI systems like ChatGPT can be introduced into customer service to forward the mission of enhancing overall customer experience. For example, Natural Language Processing (NLP) AI can help interpret user intent rather than expecting users to know the right keywords to get the answer they need. NLP even takes into account industry-specific terminology, different languages, and special content like product names. Self-learning search engines continuously learn from every interaction to deliver increasingly accurate and targeted results.

The modern customer is far different from those of even a decade ago. Knowledge management systems must be adjusted to cope with current needs by providing integrated, multi-channel systems that serve data in the format needed by agents and customers. Considering both customer and customer service representative needs when designing and implementing a system can help improve customer service and customer satisfaction while making staff more efficient and more effective.

21 Essential Customer Feedback Questions To Improve Your Business

Without customers, none of us would be in business. So to stay in business, we need to listen to the feedback of our customers. The thing is that customers don’t always come running to us to share their thoughts, which means that we have to actively seek feedback.

But what questions are worth asking? Which ones will get you the most valuable insights with which to improve your business? And how do you ask for customer feedback in the first place? We’re sharing the top customer feedback questions you need to know broken down by:

Questions related to customer profiles

Customer feedback questions about your company and offerings

Questions about your marketing and messaging

Customer feedback questions about your competitors

Plus, we’re sharing how to ask for customer feedback and how to use the answers to benefit your business big time!

Customer feedback questions related to customer profiles

Smart marketers understand the value of detailed customer profiles, also known as buyer personas.

Image source

At the very least, you’ll want to gather demographic information about your customer base including the most common shared age ranges, locations, education levels, professions, and so on. This is where marketers stop, not wanting to seem like they’re prying or pushing for personal info.

However, it’s also important to ask questions such as:

1. “What are your biggest challenges?”

Of course, you’ll be especially interested in the challenges that your company provides solutions for. However, other pain points your target customers experience can inform and enhance the way you engage with them, making your marketing more effective.

2. “What are your main goals?”

Your customer’s responses reveal what they really want and, more importantly, what they care about most. This keeps you from guessing at what you think they want or prioritizing selling points that, while beneficial, are not the main things your customers are after.

Plus, you can also gain insight into the differences between their long and short-term goals, which can help you plan for each stage of the buyer’s journey.

3. “Where do you go for information on [your industry, product, or service] and why?”

Answers to this question reveal your customer’s mindset and who they currently trust as it relates to your industry. This can teach you how to earn and maintain their trust.

4. “How do you like to make purchases?”

Do your customers prefer to do a demo or product tour before they buy? Do they prefer to meet in person or virtually for a consultation first? Or do they like to have the time and space to do their own research and purchase online when ready?

Image source

Whatever the answer, spotting patterns in customer behavior can help you choose the most persuasive calls-to-action (and help other teams within your company to nail the user interface and user experience).

5. “What are your hobbies and interests? How or where do you spend your free time?”

While this might seem off-topic and not necessarily relevant to what your company does, this information can be surprisingly useful.

For example, let’s say that many in your audience share a certain passion. You could use that as inspiration for examples and analogies in your content, case studies, or the language you use in your copy.

Customer feedback questions about your company and offerings

Next up are some important customer feedback questions to ask regarding your company and what it offers.

6. “What solutions (products, services, or specific features) do you associate us with?”

One, this can give you an idea of what products or solutions are most important to your customers.

Two, it can reveal gaps in their knowledge of what your company offers. For instance, you could find that you’ve been unknowingly promoting certain offers more than others, although your target audience could benefit from your less popular products, services, or features as well.

7. “What prompted you to search for or switch to our product or service?”

The better you understand what business or life events that start people on the road to becoming your customers, the more potential customers you can attract and convert. How?

By showing that you understand those triggers, and making your company visible when and where ideal customers are entering the buyer’s journey.

8. “Before you became a customer, what were your expectations or hopes for our product or service?”

Similar to the question about goals, this one also reveals what people want from what you offer. The better you understand their goals, the better you can market to them.

Not to mention that you can pass the information along to other teams to improve your product or enhance the level of service you provide.

9. “Has our product or service helped you achieve your main goals?”

There’s no point in asking about initial expectations without also inquiring about the post-purchase experience. Is what you offer really getting results for people? Does it meet or exceed people’s expectations? You need to know.

Image source

10. “What don’t you like about our product or service? If you could change one thing, what would it be?”

It feels great to get outstanding customer feedback and to hear success stories. But customer experience is rarely all peaches and cream. So don’t be afraid to ask for constructive criticism. Only when you know what customers dislike about your offerings can you consciously, strategically give them something better.

And don’t just ask what they don’t like; narrow their options by requesting a single thing they would change. That way, they’re more likely to share their biggest dislike, which will help you to prioritize improvements.

11. “How often do you use our product or service?”

Responses to this question can say a lot about the severity of your customer’s pain points, the importance of their goals, and the quality of what you offer.

For example, if you offer a product that’s meant to be used daily to solve a major challenge, but your customer only uses it a few times per month, you’ll want to get to the bottom of why. Is the product not meeting their needs? Are they lacking the motivation that you can help to spark with your marketing?

12. “How would you feel if you couldn’t use our product or service anymore?”

Understanding the emotional connection people have to your brand is crucial. Unless your company has a monopoly on the industry and customers have no choice but to pick you, they have other suitable options. So, you can’t appeal solely to logic in your marketing; your competitors will be doing the same.

To get on top and stay on top, you also have to forge deep customer relationships (AKA emotional connections) with your target market so that they have extra motivation to choose and stick with you.

Related: 120 of the Best Words & Phrases for Marketing with Emotion

13. “What would make you stop doing business with us?”

Customer feedback questions about your marketing messaging

As an extension of questions about your company, you can and should ask for feedback on your marketing messaging specifically. Your interviews or customer feedback survey questions should dig into how people understand and feel about it.

Image source

14. “What content formats and channels do you prefer?”

Customers have the power of choice. They can choose you, they can choose competitors, or they can choose nothing at all; the choice is theirs until you as marketers meet their requirements for engagement.

If you don’t produce content in formats or on channels they like, they can and probably will choose not to engage. So, instead of going with personal preference or what’s trendy, ask about and be respectful of the preferences of your audience.

15. “What topics would you like to see us create content around?”

Find out what topics are on your customers’ minds and focus on those; they will appreciate you listening to their feedback.

PS: Get more customer appreciation ideas here!

16. “How would you describe our [unique value proposition, product, or service]?”

This question is pure gold because can singlehandedly tell you if your messaging is clear and if the way you present it matches with how your customers talk about your brand and company.

If the description your customers give is not aligned with the message you’re promoting, you know you need to go back to the drawing board. If it’s mostly aligned, you either need to clarify the message or sync your brand language with that of your audience. And, if your customers’ responses are spot on, you know to keep doing what you’re doing.

17. “If our brand or company were a person, how would you describe it?”

Similar to the last question, this can help you see your brand through customers’ eyes and make sure that the vibe people are getting is on par with the impression you want to make. Even better, customer responses can lead you right to the root of any misalignment so that you can fix it.

Related: Get tips to build a brand personality here.

Image source

18. “Is there anything you dislike about the way we present our products or services?”

True, not all customers will answer this question honestly; some may dodge it to be nice or sugarcoat their criticisms. But there are customers who will be brutally honest with you, and their feedback is invaluable.

Don’t shy away from asking outright what people don’t like about your messaging. Often, they’ll point you in the right direction quicker than you could figure it out on your own.

Customer feedback questions about your competitors

Last up, it’s smart to ask for your customers’ thoughts on both direct and indirect competitors.

19. “What solutions did you try before ours and what was your experience (from the time you started searching to the point you decided to switch to us)?”

It’s important to be aware of who your top competitors are, whether they’re other companies that offer similar products and services or DIY alternatives to what you offer.

And it’s just as important to know the strengths and weaknesses of those competitors so that you can take every opportunity to stand out as different or better.

20. “What frustrates you the most about [your industry, product category, or service type]?”

This question goes along well with our earlier one about customers’ biggest challenges. Understanding their frustrations can help your company avoid pitfalls and clarify the most important aspects of your solution to promote front and center.

21. “What feature, product or service could [major competitor] offer that would make you consider switching?”

Responses to this question can help you identify what’s most important to your audience. And it can also give you ideas for staying ahead of the curve when it comes to new and improved offers that could help you gain and retain customers.

How to ask for customer feedback: Best practices

You might have noticed that all 21 of the asks above are open-ended. This is no coincidence. What’s the importance of using open-ended questions for customer feedback collection? Think about it.

If you were to primarily ask yes or no questions, you’d end up with oversimplified answers and little to no context on why your customers feel the way they do. Not only could that make it difficult to improve your marketing and business but being in the dark about the nuances of customer responses could even make your marketing less effective.

And what about leading questions such as “how satisfied are you with our product” or “how well did our services meet your needs?” They subtly assume that customers feel a certain way, which can prompt them to answer your questions differently than they otherwise would.

Ultimately, your goal is to get as much pure, honest feedback as you can. So whether you ask the questions above or others that are relevant for your business, make sure they’re open-ended.

How to use customer feedback to the fullest

Now that we’ve gone over what to ask and how to ask it, here’s an overview of a very effective process for using the feedback you receive from your customers.

1. Build a community around it

This is where a brand community comes in. It reduces friction when customers see that others share their experiences and validate their feelings. But it can also encourage them to continue sharing their thoughts with you, which earns you additional customer insights manual feedback collection needed on your end.

Image source

While you can find common themes manually or devise an internal system to spot them, it might also be worth looking into a way to let customers point you to the most important feedback.

3. Prioritize action on the most common customer feedback

Once top priorities are identified, it’s important to follow through and implement valuable changes and improvements. And not just within the marketing department.

As you can see from our list of questions, much of the information shared by your customers can also benefit other teams within your company so be sure to pass it on. It will keep everyone on the same page internally, and it will translate into a far better customer experience and higher customer acquisition and retention rates!

Ask for customer feedback to improve your business today

Customer feedback can help you improve your business and better serve your customers. Ask these 21 customer feedback questions to get started collecting valuable data:

What are your main goals?

What are your biggest challenges?

Where do you go for information on [your industry, product, or service] and why?

How do you like to make purchases?

What are your hobbies and interests? How or where do you spend your free time?

What solutions (products, services, or specific features) do you associate us with?

What prompted you to search for or switch to our product or service?

Before you became a customer, what were your expectations or hopes for our product or service?

Has our product or service helped you achieve your main goals?

What don’t you like about our product or service? If you could change one thing, what would it be?

How often do you use our product or service?

How would you feel if you couldn’t use our product or service anymore?

What would make you stop doing business with us?

What content formats and channels do you prefer?

What topics would you like to see us create content around?

How would you describe our [unique value proposition, product, or service]?

If our brand or company were a person, how would you describe it?

Is there anything you dislike about the way we present our products or services?

What solutions did you try before ours and what was your experience (from the time you started searching to the point you decided to switch to us)?

What frustrates you the most about [your industry, product category, or service type]?

What feature, product or service could [major competitor] offer that would make you consider switching?

Nia Gyant

Nia Gyant is a freelance writer and brand messaging strategist with a background in online marketing. She supports marketing agencies and small to mid-sized businesses by creating strategically-crafted, goal-oriented content and copy.