How to improve customer engagement in 2021?

Posted by Stephen Taylor on January 28th, 2021

2020 saw a fundamental shift in how businesses approach customer engagement. Priorities have switched and new lines of communication, as well as superior marketing technologies, have been adopted at speed to engage customers. Customer’s perception towards brands has also witnessed a sea change. In everything, digital has emerged as the key channel, with traditional marketing being almost dead and consumers being the new market-makers. In 2021 if your brand doesn’t have a sound customer engagement strategy, you could be missing opportunities to interact with the evolved consumers and build a relationship with them. 

Competition is stiff as your competitors are coming out with new advertising campaigns, engaging content, and catchy promotions. In these challenging times, brainstorming customer engagement ideas can be a daunting task for brand marketers like you. With the shift in the dynamics of customer engagement, here we look at some of the  innovative ways to improve customer engagement in 2021 :

1. Interact More Virtually 

Businesses have realized that every single customer interaction decides whether they come back and tell others to engage with their brand. With the ‘new normal’ setting-in, businesses should be exploring innovative ways to interact and engage with customers effectively. In 2021, they should be adding interactive elements to their customer communication getting more engagement. They should embrace a customer engagement platform like moLotus with multiple advance customer response options like SMS, Callback, Click URL, USSD, etc. The interaction should not only be about products and services but also innovative ways of using them in the context of current situations to build trust and confidence without actually meeting customers.

2. Transform Customer Processes

To keep pace with evolving consumer expectations, businesses are looking for better ways to meet them. The shift from traditional to digital customer processes can be seen as a key driver for business transformation and superior client engagement. In 2021, with disruptive platforms like moLotus are playing the pivotal role as it is digitally transforming processes like new customer onboarding, document submission, recurring services, loan processing, contract renewals, etc. for better speed, effectiveness and cost savings.

3. Create a more personalized buyer experience

If there’s anything the COVID crisis has taught brand communicators, it’s that the days of bland, generic messaging are officially done—personalization is now essential for marketing campaigns across the buyer journey, influencing engagement. In 2021, businesses should use buyer data, AI, and advanced algorithms via the latest tools like moLotus to hyper-personalized mobile marketing campaigns. 

4. Reach More Customers At Their Place

Customers’ normal patterns of life have come to a halt in 2020. In 2021 too, customers are expected to go completely digital, staying at-home, with low-touch options. Digital-led experiences will continue to grow in popularity and businesses should innovate their delivery model with a digital platform like moLotus to help consumers who are confined at home. moLotus, having massive reach and scalability, can quickly deliver automated messages to the ‘home-confined’ clients, directly into their inbox on all mobile handsets, irrespective of phone type or model – 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G smartphones, i-phones and feature phones without requiring any app download or data connection, without physical contact, ensuring superior client engagement.

5. Reward Loyalty Better

In 2021 loyal customers would continue to be the foundation for a profitable and successful business. These valuable customers not only help businesses to grow quickly when time is good, but they also help them stay afloat when time is tough, ultimately costing a business comparatively less.  Brand marketers should employ various tactics such as using a new-age mobile advertising tool moLotus for rewarding loyal customers with special offers, discounts, contests, or coupons. Businesses can run specialized reward campaigns which are hassle-free, cheap, and fast with superior response and user engagement. 

6. Generate Customer Feedback 

For brand marketers, customer feedback is a gift. New-age consumers would love to speak their mind to you. Take the help of innovative feedback capability of moLotus to help you understand customers’ expectations in the changing times. Send instant messages directly to the inbox of your customers. You can use their responses to further improve your engagement strategies, customer service, marketing, products, services, and more. Other options like HubSpot, SurveyMonkey, GetFeedback, CustomerSure, etc. are also good for feedback. 

7. Observe Customer Behavior via Analytics

Businesses need to observe the behavior of customers in real-time by relying more on analytics. Understanding customers can help businesses understand not only how to reach customers, but how to better serve them. They can use the insights to build new products and services which the customers actually need. In 2021, tools offering strong analytics like moLotus, Google Analytics, Google Trends, HubSpot, Trifacta, Vertica, etc. could benefit brands in getting a better understanding of customers, capturing latest trends appearing in the customer's journey. Moreover,  moLotus is going to be the biggest game-changer in customer behavior analysis with advanced data curating, analysis, and detailed reporting capabilities.

8. Maintain Regular Communication via Contextual Messaging

In 2021, it would be of primary importance to have frequent communication with your clients. Even after making a purchase, businesses need to keep delighting them to promote repeat -buying. The best way to keep your brand stand out is to stay connected with your customers and prospects. It is possible by sending innovative contextual messages in real-time, direct to their mobile inbox instead of spamming them with unwanted emails. Interestingly, moLotus messages directly reach the customer’s mobile inbox in real-time without spamming.

Conclusion

In 2021, a primary barometer of customer engagement marketing will be how the businesses frequent and depend upon delivering out-of-the-box experiences and services that meet new needs with empathy, care and concern. Now is also the time for business leaders to position themselves at the forefront of the longer-term shifts in consumer behavior. Keeping a real-time pulse on changing consumer preferences and rapidly innovating via breakthrough platforms & technology like moLotus would be the key to success this year.