Engage with Customers Across All Channels
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain the different ways customers interact with a brand.
- Personalize communications based on member engagement.
- Engage members through widgets.
- Describe the use of Loyalty Management’s Contact Center feature.
- Explain the use of mobile apps to drive loyalty.
Identify Customer Touchpoints
Customers interact with a business in different ways, at different times, and via different channels. A customer’s journey includes all the interactions, or touchpoints, that they have with the brand across different channels. For example, a customer sees an ad on social media for a product and visits the brand’s website for details. They read product reviews and recommendations and make comparisons before deciding. The customer wants to try the product, so they contact customer care to check which store it’s available in. Finally, they visit the store and purchase the product.
Although the final purchase was made at the store, the customer’s journey with the brand started online with several interactions across other channels. It’s up to the business to convince customers to stick with the brand at each point. But because each customer’s journey is unique, the communication must be personalized. And the brand should provide a unified experience across all the different channels: stores, online, mobile, customer service, social media, and more. A personalized and unified customer experience is crucial to the success of a loyalty program.
Create Integrated Experiences
Different teams come together to integrate loyalty across business operations.
Mary and the team use Loyalty Management integrations with Marketing Cloud Engagement and Service Cloud to create a unique and unified customer journey. To create this integrated experience, they must do the following key tasks.
- Personalize rewards and experiences in real time.
- Engage members across channels.
- Drive unique service experiences.
- Deliver immersive experiences across touchpoints.
Let’s follow along and find out what they do for each task.
Personalize Rewards and Experiences in Real Time
Set Up Personalized Emails
The team sets up a series of emails for members of the Outdoor Enthusiasts segment. The first email announces the promotion. The second email reminds members of the promotion. And finally, the third email thanks members for participating in the promotion. Because Loyalty Management is integrated with Marketing Cloud Engagement, Mary easily imports loyalty and segment-related information to Marketing Cloud Engagement using Marketing Cloud Engagement Connect. The team creates personalized emails with ready-to-use loyalty content blocks.
If you’d like to learn more about how this works, check out the Integrate Loyalty Management with Marketing Cloud Engagement help documentation.
Create Open-Time Email Personalization
The team uses Marketing Cloud Engagement Personalization to add a sophisticated touch of automation with open-time email personalization. The feature delivers personalized product recommendations each time a recipient opens an email. When the member browses the website and views products, the email updates to reflect the latest products viewed. If you want to know more about this feature, see Open-Time Email Use Cases.
Offer Promotions in Real Time with Marketing Cloud Engagement Personalization
The team wants to offer members targeted promotions in real time. When members log in to the commerce site, they’re notified of their eligible promotions. Promotion-related data and segments are available in Marketing Cloud Engagement Personalization, which drives real-time personalizations when members are on the commerce site. For example, the feature alerts members when they’re close to being eligible for a reward.
Engage Members Through Widgets
Mary wants the Cloud Kicks Inner Circle loyalty program to offer program members immersive loyalty experiences on the company website and across third-party websites. She considers adding more widgets to the website. Previously, she used a widget to collect customer data. This time, she uses the following widgets templates.
- Join Promotion: Lets members join a promotion
- View Cumulative Promotion Progress: Lets members view their progress toward achieving the target of an engagement attribute
- Select Member Benefits: Lets members select benefits from the ones available to them
Drive Unique Service Experiences
Mary recalls her own experience with a loyalty program she was part of. She had trouble redeeming her points and reached out to customer care for help. Not only was it difficult to reach a service agent, but they also couldn’t help her resolve the issue. That was her last experience with the program. Mary doesn’t want this for her loyalty program. She wants to ensure that customer service representatives (CSRs) are well equipped to handle service requests.
Loyalty Management has a new Contact Center through which CSRs can resolve issues, clarify questions, manage requests, suggest promotions, and more. When a member calls the Contact Center, the CSR uses the Service Console to perform the following activities.
- Verify the identity of the member.
- Review the engagement timeline.
- Check the loyalty profile for personalizing interactions.
- Perform loyalty actions for service recovery.
Members no longer have to provide long histories of transactions or past issues. The CSR has all the details of the members and their activities to provide differentiated service.
Drive Loyalty with Mobile Apps
Millennials and Gen Zs worldwide spend a record number of hours on their mobile devices. They use their mobiles to complete many everyday tasks, such as keeping in touch with their loved ones, banking, grocery shopping, blogging, researching, and meditating. You can see why it’s a great channel to drive loyalty.
Mary creates a mobile app for the program so that members can access their loyalty profiles, view their rewards, and shop on the go. She wants to keep members engaged constantly and make it easier for them to use the benefits of the loyalty program.
Members can log in to the program and browse products in the app. They can also view their tier benefits, reward points balance, vouchers, and ongoing offers.
In the Cloud Kicks example, the promotion is getting more and more hits and is directly influencing customer share of wallet. With more members spending, the program is seeing increased revenue and partner profitability. The time spent analyzing customer interests and designing the promotion has paid off. The Cloud Kicks Inner Circle program is all over social media, with members posting product reviews and tagging the program in pictures and videos from the concert.
In the next unit, you learn how to encourage members to evangelize the brand.