Turning Retail Subscription Customers into Brand Ambassadors
How can retailers convert subscription customers into powerful brand advocates? Is it realistic and affordable? The good news is that there are multiple things a business can do that don’t involve hiring expensive influencers and massive ad campaigns. This article outlines what brand ambassadors are, why a brand must deliver what customers want, and the best strategies to create brand ambassadors who will get attention and boost the brand’s competitive edge.
In this article:
- What Are Brand Ambassadors?
- What Customers Want
- Why It’s Hard for Retailers to Give Customers What They Want
- The Impacts of Not Delivering Subscription Customers What They Want
- How Your Subscriptions Can Create Brand Ambassadors
- How to Make it All Possible, Faster and Easier
Is there anything that feels better than someone talking about how great you are?
We all love brand ambassadors, whether they’re speaking for us personally, or for our work and business. Because people tend to pay attention when someone takes the time to vouch for us on our behalf.
Brand ambassadors can do amazing work for a business. But on the surface, having brand ambassadors feels like an expensive undertaking. As a retailer who offers subscriptions, you might think that brand ambassadors might mean retaining expensive influencers. and launching massive ad campaigns.
But it doesn’t have to be like that at all.
In fact, chances are you already have an untapped resource that can give you the ambassadors you need. You just have to create the circumstances that bring them to the forefront.
In this article, we’ll talk about what brand ambassadors are, what customers want out of your business and why that relates to advocacy, and the strategies and tools needed to convert customers to brand ambassadors.
You can reap the rewards of word of mouth. Ready?
What Are Brand Ambassadors?
Brand ambassadors are game-changers.
They’re one step beyond loyal customers. They love your brand so much that they take the time and effort to promote your products, services, and brand to anyone who will listen.
It could be in-person recommendations, testimonials on their social media, or chats on message boards and review sites. It all counts.
They’re the ultimate organic growth drivers because people trust recommendations from people they know. We’ll get into how powerful it is later on.
The great thing about retail subscriptions is that there’s so much more potential for brand ambassadors because you’ve got more contact with your customers over a long time. It’s a deeper, richer relationship.
What Customers Want
Knowing what customers want is key to turning them into ambassadors for your brand. You can’t satisfy them if you don’t know what they’re missing or what they’re looking for.
Here’s what customers want:
- To feel valued and important: Retailers are customers too. You know how it feels to give money to a company that doesn’t care about you. They’re only around for your money. It’s annoying and doesn’t encourage you to stay. On the other hand, you know how good it feels when a company cares about you and what you think.
- Choice and flexibility: It’s frustrating to feel fenced in, without options. Customers like to feel a bit of control over the terms of their subscriptions. They appreciate it when you are flexible enough to allow them to make changes when necessary.
- Personalization: It’s something they expect, not just hope for. The best subscription experiences include offerings, pricing, add-ons, etc. that are uniquely personalized. Even little things like using their name in messaging make all the difference.
- Rewards for loyalty: Customers love bonuses for their loyalty. Everything from early access to products and services, exclusive discounts and offers, and content they’ll love will make them feel valued and appreciated.
- A seamless experience: Customers need things to be as easy and pain-free as possible. This includes everything from signing up, any onboarding, terms, on-time delivery, correct invoicing, ease of payment, and listening to feedback.
Customers need a consistent, positive experience. If they don’t get it, they’ll go somewhere else.
Which begs the question, why don’t all retailers offer this? What’s stopping them?
Why It’s Hard for Retailers to Give Customers What They Want
Just because a retailer knows that customers have expectations doesn’t mean it’s easy to meet them.
There are barriers that can make it challenging.
One of the most common ones is the lack of time and resources. Most retailers’ operations are stretched to the limit – particularly during this time of high competition and economic instability.
Finding the time and resources necessary to make consistent and personalized customer experiences can feel as realistic as climbing Everest. You’ll need clear communication between teams. The knowledge of which offerings and products each of your customers needs. The ability to always provide the right invoices without delay. And the ability to stay in touch with your customers 24-7.
Another challenge is not understanding or knowing what customers want. Any retailer that’s been caught in a stockout or overstock knows guessing needs won’t work.
And without reliable data and insights, mistakes can be costly and send customers to your competition. But the one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work either because then you’re stuck with a generic offering that doesn’t please anyone.
Some retailers may be saddled with outdated tech. Obsolete, siloed, and analog systems can create bottlenecks in any point of the subscription lifecycle. No customization. Falling out of compliance. The wrong subscription details. Delays and mistakes. Missed sales opportunities.
None of these things make it pleasurable for the customer or the retailer, but they happen every single day.
And lastly, retailers might not have the logistics to offer loyalty bonuses, exclusive offers, or rewards. It takes a lot of organization and time to know what works and what gets each customer excited.
What impacts do these problems cause for retailers?
The Impacts of Not Delivering Subscription Customers What They Want
Every retailer knows there are consequences to ignoring customer wants:
- Churn: Unhappy customers leave. One in three consumers (32%) say just one bad experience can make them walk away from a brand they love.
- High customer acquisition costs and low customer lifetime value: These metrics are key to retail success. You have to spend more to replace the customers you lose, and you lose out entirely on the long-term investments that customers will make in your brand.
- Weak competitiveness: Customers have options. And they can find what they need on their devices with one Google search. Losing customers to competitors damages your brand, revenue, and market positioning.
It’s hard to stop the problems once they go too far. But turning things around with customers can mean turning things around for the business.
What does that involve?
How Your Subscriptions Can Create Brand Ambassadors
It all comes down to making the most of those long-term subscriptions to build trust and an emotional connection to the brand.
Here are the strategies that will convert your customers to the brand ambassadors you need, without bringing in costly brand consultants, marketing experts, or social media influencers.
1. Treat every single interaction with customers as a chance to reinforce your brand’s reliability and inherent awesomeness. This includes:
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- marketing messages
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- Emails
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- deliveries
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- billing statements and invoices
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- Your website and social media
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- customer service chats
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- any feedback you encourage.
2. Use personalized experiences to differentiate your brand. You’ve got the data, so use it! Crunch the numbers, segment your existing and ideal customers, throw in their buying behavior and individual circumstances, and meet them where they are. As time goes on and you collect more data, adjust.
And if you allow them to customize their subscriptions too, you’ll make the experience better.
3. Make the delivery and unboxing process special and memorable. On-time deliveries that feature interesting unboxing experiences, or personalized notes can encourage customers to share on social media.
And then the main way to convert your happy customers to brand ambassadors?
4. Incentivize feedback and ambassadorship. There are so many options. How about:
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- Creating a private community with special benefits for your top subscribers?
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- Competitions for customer content on social media?
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- Giving special ambassador status to true fans, complete with exclusive experiences?
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- Awarding with redeemable points, and extra personalized support?
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- Special status/incentives with other businesses that you work in partnership with?
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- Providing access to new products and launches?
No matter what options you go for, there’s one foundation that is ALWAYS essential to the creation of a brand ambassador. A happy retail subscription customer.
You might suddenly balk at the idea of brand ambassadors because it sounds like so much work. How on earth can you get it all done?
How to Make it All Possible, Faster and Easier
Automation will give you exactly what you need to get it all done for you.
The right software solution will deliver a personalized, consistent, exceptional customer experience. Here’s how:
- It harvests and analyzes your customer data to segment and create personalized offerings, pricing, and communication that speaks to the wants and needs of each customer.
- It smashes the silos between your teams that have historically caused invoice delays, contract term mistakes, missed sales opportunities, employee turnover from frustration, and crisis mode dealing with angry customers.
- It takes care of your billing, invoicing, payment collection, and reconciliation (while ensuring compliance).
- It identifies sales opportunities and feeds them to your sales team and customers at the optimal time.
- It enables customer self-service portals for customers who want to manage their subscriptions.
- It creates the framework for unique loyalty schemes including personalized data, purchase tracking, calculating usage and rewards, and automatic benefits and discounts.
- It relieves your operations and teams of all the time that’s wasted with manual financial, sales, and marketing tasks so that they’re free to focus on high-value work. That’s less cost for you.
Each customer gets that level of service and that experience that excites them and doesn’t frustrate them. Their needs and wants are met. They feel valued and special because they are valued and special.
And you’ll finally have those resources to show them, beyond all doubt.
And the best bit? Your business can scale as much as you want with no additional anything needed.
Curious to see how much things can change for you? Book a free Discovery Call with our team today.
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