A Virtuous (and Profitable) Cycle
We’ve all had some good shopping experiences, and hopefully it happens regularly. When you do have a great experience with a merchant, the interaction leaves you satisfied, happy, and wanting to return. What actually happened? Simply put, the merchant was able to provide you with their goods and/or services in a manner which either met, or exceeded, your expectations. In most cases, the interaction with the merchant plays a pivotal role and today there are powerful software solutions that can enable you to deliver superb and unique interactions that will keep your customers coming back, again and again – whether you have a hundred or hundreds of millions of customers.
How Does it Work?
Using souped-up algorithms that leverage powerful CRM capabilities, these software solutions enable merchants to interact with massive numbers of customers throughout the day, whether or not the customer is actually in a store, or on a merchant’s website. These solutions are automatic and leverage social media platforms, and span all modes of customer interaction, from PCs to mobile devices, print, and everything in between.
For example, a pizza store operator could – for pennies a month – have a solution that could remember a customer’s purchases every time they purchased from them. Software would track their preferences, sending customers meaningful, relevant and attractive discounts, offers and other exciting incentives so they could purchase more of their favorite pizza. Customers can have unique electronic coupons that they could share with their friends, and every time a friend enjoys a coupon, the customer would receive another valuable incentive, reinvigorating the virtuous cycle.
An almost limitless range of these and other valuable engagement scenarios can be easily created with minimal technical skills, making these solutions readily accessible to organizations with limited technical personnel and requiring only a thorough knowledge of their business in order to be successful.
What Kinds of Results Are Achieved?
Conservatively speaking, a merchant can expect to experience a minimum gain of 10%. Many merchants have reported increases in profits – yes – profits – of over 30% within the first few months of deployment!
What Does it Take to Get Going?
Like any software solution, proper set up and configuration are vitally important. You may have heard of an old software adage, “garbage in, garbage out”. That age old adage still applies! Many powerful solutions today are hosted in the cloud, and only require a modest of amount of work to properly reflect a merchant’s operating environment. Within a few days, typically, merchants can be up and running with a powerful set of capabilities that will surely have shoppers and customers coming back for more!
About the author
Stephen Wu is managing director at Memberson, Inc. Memberson provides powerful solutions that enable merchants to “Connect, Engage and Transact” with millions of customers, with unique, tailored and customized interactions powered by software across social media, mobile and desktop channels.
