Clienteling

Clienteling is a technique that allows companies to build long-term and trustful relationships with customers focusing on increasing their satisfaction. They implement an individual approach that helps create relevant offers based on clients' preferences, purchase history, behavior, and other data. With a CRM system, you can collect, store, and use customer data to your advantage. SendPulse provides a built-in CRM that lets marketers keep all information about clients and launch campaigns on a single platform.

In this article, you'll learn the benefits of clienteling, how it works, and how to implement this technique in your business.

Why is clienteling important?

Clienteling is all about personalizing the interaction with a customer at each buyer journey stage. According to McKinsey, this tool helps reduce acquisition costs by up to 50%. Instapage states that 77% of customers are ready to pay more and recommend a product if a brand provides a personalized experience. SmarterHQ states that 90% of users prefer sharing their behavioral data with companies if it saves money or improves customer experience. According to Grenis Media research, 40.5% of online users would like to see ads targeted to their preferences. Statistics prove that 56% of online customers will likely return to a brand recommending products based on their previous interactions.

Personalization is a powerful tool that helps brands reap numerous benefits.

Benefits of clienteling

The statistics mentioned above let us list several advantages of this sales technique.

• Clienteling helps reduce customer acquisition costs. Brands often concentrate their strategies on working with existing customers rather than acquiring new ones since it's much cheaper to keep your clients engaged than to invest in reaching new audiences. Your satisfied customer will likely return to your brand after having a positive experience. So, it's a surefire way of increasing sales and reducing costs.
• Clienteling allows you to increase sales. Customers appreciate brands that take care of their needs and want to provide the best experience. Creating personalized offers, assisting at each stage, and providing an excellent after-sales service encourage clients to pay more and recommend a brand to their friends.
• Clienteling enhances building an advanced customer base. Since online shoppers are happy to share their behavioral data with companies to get a better experience, it's a great chance to collect valuable insights about your audience. The more data you have, the more personalized and targeted offers you can provide.
• Clienteling enables companies to create highly effective targeted ads. Consumers make their customer profiles expecting to receive personal discounts and hot offers and be in the know of the latest releases and new collections. They would like to see ads based on their preferences, interests, and previous interactions since it saves them time searching for the necessary product and shows that the brand cares.
• Clienteling boosts the number of loyal clients. Loyal customers help brands grow. They bring them more money, show what can be improved, and promote the company organically. Every satisfied client can become your potential customer. So approaching each consumer individually will make them return to your brand and become its ambassador.

Now that you know the benefits of clienteling, discover how it works in the next section.

How does clienteling work?

To realize the power of clienteling, let's have an example.

Say you're visiting a pet store you've already bought from before. You enter the store and walk down the shelves until the assistant offers their help. They ask you what kind of pet you have, its breed, and age, and identify if he has any health issues. Then, they need to determine which food your pet prefers and how you care for him. After the discussion, they can make their suggestions. You make the final decision, purchase, and leave the store.

It seems like a pleasant experience, right?

Now let's model a situation where the store uses clienteling.

An assistant recognizes you when you enter the store and asks how your pet is doing. He opens your profile and gets all the necessary information about your pet. Then the assistant might be interested if your pet loved the food or accessories you've bought before. You share your impressions and tell what you need. Analyzing your pet's profile, the assistant quickly finds the best-fitting product. He can also recommend new products or toys for your pet. You buy several items and get a bonus card. An assistant can also ask about your pet's birthday and include this data in the profile for you to have a discount on this special day. As a result, you've spent less time finding the necessary items, got some bonuses, and were offered to get even more on your pet's birthday.

The second situation seems much more attractive, and you may want to return to this store again because it provides a highly personal approach.

This is how clienteling work. You need to collect data about your consumer, their history of interactions with your company, preferences, and interests. Then, leverage this data in your strategy to build long-lasting relationships.

Collecting this data manually will take much time and effort, so you can use a CRM system. It will store information about your clients and record all the deals, and you can access customers' profiles anytime and make informed decisions.

SendPulse CRM allows you to manage all your sales processes, launch campaigns, store customer data, and connect with them from a single platform. You can invite your team members and share access for better performance.

Below you can see the board with all the deals created categorized based on their status.

Opening a deal card, you can see the information about the deal and the lead, the history of interactions, comments, and the sales rep responsible for it. You can add fields and comments, contact a customer right from the card via email or chatbot, or close the deal.

SendPulse allows you to establish long-lasting relationships with your customers, generate more sales, and automate business processes with the help of email, SMS, web push campaigns, landing pages, chatbots for Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and even sell your online courses. It is a multifunctional marketing platform for small businesses and established brands.

Now we'll share four recommendations that will help you master clienteling.

4 Clienteling Tips

To create an effective strategy, you should consider several important aspects, including your customer care team. Take a look below.

1. Implement an omnichannel approach. Customer experience is the top priority in omnichannel marketing. Consumers have touchpoints with brands on websites, social media, promotional emails, web push campaigns, etc. Implement an omnichannel approach to provide a consistent and smooth buyer experience across all the channels. You can acquire leads through your website, nurture and qualify them via a chatbot or live chat, and convert them via emails. Unlike multichannel marketing, omnichannel marketing focuses on delivering a positive experience rather than communicating the message through all possible channels.
2. Ensure the cooperation of your sales and customer care teams. For your sales reps to provide users with targeted offers, they should know their pain points and issues preventing them from buying from you. Since a customer care team deals with consumers more than other departments, they can provide the necessary answers. Ask them to record FAQs and the most popular issues to analyze this data and improve your sales strategy.
3. Choose a reliable CRM. Since this tool is fundamental for a winning clienteling strategy, it should satisfy your needs. Look for an intuitive CRM to help beginners get started without hassle. Make sure it provides communication tools to work on a single platform. To evaluate the benefits of a CRM, choose a service with a free plan or a free trial. This way, you'll know what you are paying for before investing. You can use SendPulse CRM for free for 5 users in your account.
4. Segment your customer base. Segmentation is one of the primary personalization tools, and it allows you to divide your list based on common characteristics such as age, gender, occupation, income, country, etc. With a segmented list, you can create personalized campaigns and send them to different groups in one click. SendPulse offers both ready-to-use segments and advanced options for better results.

Congrats, now you know the benefits of clienteling and how it works, so get inspired by the tips and register with SendPulse to boost sales and establish long-lasting relationships with your customers!

Last Updated: 04.12.2023