your 3-step guide · premium customer revenue could be your opportunity to succeed through trying...

Your 3-step guide to customer engagement during COVID-19


Emarsys is taking a practical stance to help our community of marketers

respond fast and efficiently to rapid changes in consumer behaviors.

With this 3-step guide, you are empowered to make the most of out-of-

the-box solutions, features, and tactics available to you.

We hope this guide will provide structure and clarity, as well as convey a

sense of trust and optimism. Together, we lean on each other and learn.

How this guides serves you

Use this guide to build a monthly customer end-to-end engagement plan

and roll it out efficiently, until the rest of the world can recover and return

to normal.

As we go through each step, you will be guided to the appropriate places

on the Emarsys platform. Think about it as a time-saving action plan that

helps you switch from being overwhelmed and reactive to being more

confident and empowered. With your plan in hand, you will be able to

apply your skills, knowledge, and talent to deliver valuable, empathetic,

and supportive messages time and time again.

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Quick tone of voice checklist

Start executing this quick customer engagement plan once you have clarified how

the brand’s tone of voice has shifted based on the current context. Here is a short

checklist that helps you to fully align with your brand’s tone of voice:

Is it appropriate for your brand to make use of humor at

this time? If not, make sure you are using social listening

tools to see what type of empathetic communication

people respond to in various geographies.

Is there critical information you need to include in any and

all communications, such as customer support updates,

refunds, or cancellations?

Which communications ought to be short and clear, and

which lend themselves to to an extended format?

Check that your communications do not sound

opportunistic or standard. Brand authenticity is essential.

Clarify who is your go-to person or board to speed up

approvals or make last-minute amendments.


https://www.emarsys.com/

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Tone of voice: 3 attributes (empathetic, calm, no humor)

Critical information about refunds

Critical information about customer service

Critical information about deliveries

Critical communication for priority groups (families, working from home, caregivers)

Critical communication for non-priority groups

Critical channels for urgent and in-the moment communications: special Twitter account, chat, WhatsApp

Community pages

Ethos, key message of encouragement, hashtags

Board of approvalTeam check-ins before communications

Creative and assets availability



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Dealing with uncertainty

As much as there’s a pull to predict the future, the outcomes

depend on too many variables that are still changing, hence

your prediction for the next few months can look different

should one variable – such as public sentiment, policy, or

supply chain restrictions – change.

To deal with uncertainty, streamlining your processes to focus

productively on key metrics is key. Loyalty metrics matter. Your

proactive, timely efforts will always be appreciated, shared, and

positively engaged with by loyal customers. Hence, increasing

Premium Customer Revenue could be your opportunity to

succeed through trying times while delivering exceptional value

and service.

Revenue from active customers is another key metric you

have the ability to influence and keep at a healthy level with

omnichannel campaigns that account for demand, stock

availability, and price variations.

And lastly, your Web Traffic Metric will be crucial. While web

traffic can spike organically as businesses and customers

move to online-only interactions, you can also use it to gauge

the effectiveness of your critical business-as-usual and out-of-

the-ordinary campaigns.



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Keep an eye on your MoM revenue, visible in

the Strategic Dashboard, which you access by

clicking on the dropdown menu under Dashboard.

Compare your revenue to last period and set new

realistic targets.

Your customer churn is also available in your

Strategic Dashboard. Note that right under this

metric there are helpful Tactics to reduce churn

with email, web, and CRM Ads as core channels.



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Web traffic metrics will spike and dip rapidly.

Stay focused on your execution, and set your

comparison period to realistic intervals.

Your opportunity sits with loyal customers. You

may provide special access to existing high value

customers, while you’re still managing nurturing

new valid or waiting-to-be-verified accounts.

Now that we have the key metrics in focus, let’s get started.



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Step 1:

Use your data — it will tell you how to navigate change as it happens

Customer, engagement and product data are connected to

Emarsys’ CDP, constantly enriched, unified and aligned to

your ongoing efforts. As a first measure, do not delete your

contacts. Accessing the full, clear picture of how your business

is doing is predicated upon you keeping all records.

Your customer data also tells you what types of customer

personas will most likely want and need to hear from you.

Families need to balance work from home with childcare and

care for extended family and friends. Working professionals

need to be able to carry on with work and personal

responsibilities, and most importantly, they are concerned

with the availability of merchandise. Working from home is a

habit changer but still requires a range of work supplies that

promotes safety and productivity.

Using your data-driven segments, determine who are the

customers who need this attention and engage with them

meaningfully.



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Example:

Target households and primary caregivers who have purchased or shown interest in supplies for the family or in items to help increase comfort and productivity while working from home.

Go to Contacts > Segments > Create new segment.

Age and demographics are key. For example, females over 30 in Germany, UK, and France, where online shops are already go-to places. Then you'd segment based on past items purchased that reflect your stock and match their needs.



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Step 2:

Plan your campaigns and ask for consent

Critical communications require swift planning and execution.

Your communications are meaningful and appreciated, but

they may also be adding to a long trail of communications

received by customers at this time.

“We are seeing a COVID-19-related Tweet every 45 milliseconds, and #Coronavirus is now the second-most-used hashtag of 2020.”

— Alex Josephson, Global Head of Twitter Next

When you start your business-critical communications, also

ask for permission to continue. Why? Customers may be

navigating very different scenarios and dealing with them in a

way that best serves them. Some may not be open to receiving

communications that are not in line with what is happening in

their lives. Respect that and ask for consent.

For emails, you can use Send Time Optimization confidently,

in combination with channel affinity and predictive segments

to make sure your communications are engaged with at the

right time by customers who are open to offers, updates, and

support. With Send Time Optimization, you can significantly

improve open rates. As the algorithm learns from behavior

changes constantly, this is a great time to always have Send

Time Optimization enabled.



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Once you have created your campaign, enable Send Time Optimization on Step 5 – Scheduling.

What is Send Time Optimization?

STO is an algorithm that keeps track of ever-changing engagement habits. It learns on a 1:1 basis when is the most likely time a contact will engage with your communications.



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Step 3:

Tactics that will serve your strategy

Let’s prioritize your action plan now that

you have it in place. Emarsys Tactics is

the place to start. Some tactics will not

only streamline your execution, but they

also add a sense of certainty because

the tactics we are going to suggest have

been tried and tested across global

brands for years.

With the following tactics in mind, it’s

important to plan to make sure you’re

not overloading your internal team.

Instead of managing volume, you can

prioritize a focus on quality. And with

effective resource planning allocation,

clear action plans, and swift execution,

your teams will be able to tap into

creative thinking to make sure that your

communications do not come across

as standard; instead they should reflect

the tone of voice that your brand needs

to stand out in a positive way.



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Back-in-Stock tactics

Deploy these particularly for items pertaining to home

maintenance, personal care, work supplies, and productivity.

You may or may not have limited stock or limits on items that

can be purchased. This is an important type of communication

you want to start with right away, using Web Channel as well as

email and SMS.

When you use Web Channel, pay attention to frequency

capping. This is a built-in feature which allows you to show a

message to all visitors every time or only once a day. If your

stock is low or if you’ve just replenished your stock, let everyone

know to increase your conversion rate.

You may want to drive traffic to your website to gather data

around the types of products that are needed and relevant

to customers. When customers are informed about the

practicalities of placing orders and receiving them, they are

more likely to respond well to your stock and product email

campaigns.

Don’t disregard other channels. SMS and CRM Ads can be

especially helpful at this time. Google search is spiking for

specific products as well as for general advice on how to adapt.

They are also increasing interactions on social media, sifting

through good advice and bad advice. Your customers may have

missed your emails, but they are very likely to engage on SMS

and social media networks. Append these channels to your

tactics and tie it back to your critical customer types segments.



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If you do not have access to Back in Stock Tactics, here is a quick guide to

building a similar campaign:

• Make sure the products and categories most relevant to your customers

are available within one click from email, SMS, or ads. A dedicated URL

that is always up could be very helpful at this time.

• Segment your customers. Who are these products most relevant for?

Are these critical and helpful to all, or do you want to ask for further

consent?

• Design your campaign and make sure your assets are simple and clear.

If this is a critical communication, text-only campaigns might be useful.

• Include the link to your dedicated website section.

• Enable Send Time Optimization.

• Ensure your Web Channel campaign is enabled and capped / uncapped.

• Send your campaign and watch your key metrics.

• Have a fast-response strategy in place to follow through after the

campaign has been launched.

QUICK GUIDE

Product tactics are available to all customers with the Advanced Package, and you may need to talk to your success manager if you’re unsure about how to use it, or if you’re unsure if you have access to it. If you have access to it, it will be available in your Tactics section.


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Post-purchase feedback

Campaigns asking for feedback on past and current purchases

are an opportunity to engage meaningfully and thoughtfully

with customers. You can also use these to gather information

about upcoming demand, challenges around order delivery, and

pick-ups from stores or nearby locations.

SMS-first post-purchase feedback are highly conversational

and can return immediate results. Prioritize those and target

your most engaged customers, rewarding them for their

choices as well as offering them a chance to share their good

experience with friends and family.



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Lead to First-Time buyer and Lead Re-engagement

As your Back-in-Stock and critical communications are

deployed, web traffic can increase or dip rapidly. Lead

conversion and win-back are top-of-mind at this stage.

Emarsys Lead Re-engagement Tactics combine channels that

are historically most effective for this purpose. Emails have

traditionally worked very well, but as information overload

sets in, your next best channels could very well be web or

advertising.

Emarsys CRM Ads for Facebook and Google allows you to plan

effectively around who you target, so that you can reduce costs

and at the same time re-engage with leads who are the most

likely to go cold.

Budget efficiency is increased because when you’re sending

audiences through CRM Ads to Google, Facebook, and

Instagram, you’re supressing existing customers and only

focusing on the lead that does need to be re-engaged with. If

you do not have the CRM Ads add-on, you can still download

contact lists based on lifecycle stages, which can be generated

with Smart Insights.



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Go to Smart Insight, use Contact Attributes to narrow

down on yourleads, and save the segments. Then

export it and use it on your social media and ad

platforms to re-engage your leads. If you do have

CRM Ads enabled, the segment is sent automatically.

You just need to pick the Lead Re-engagement Tactic

that includes CRM Ads, or if you’re building your own,

include your audience in the journey builder.



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As product research is shifting to web and mobile-only, use

product affinity – that is, the products your first-time buyers

have historically purchased first for the past 30 days – to

streamline and focus the type of product ads you want to

continue investing in and those that can be paused.

Product Affinity, combined with the audience generation option

available in CRM Ads, will be a goldmine for your CRM and

digital marketers. When your team is working remotely, it can

be harder to gain access to product availability and product

affinity insights from commercial and merchandise teams.

However, Emarsys could help with bridging the gap, as all

relevant product, customer, and engagement information is

centralized and easily accessible.

If you are a retailer, Product Affinity can be particularly relevant

when your strategy is to target local communities with ads

about essential items that are available nearby. You can learn

from Product Affinity that customers who are interested in

household items will also be inclined to purchase items for

their work-from-home office or area. Or you can see which

items are bought most frequently by first-time buyers. With this

information, double down on creating segments with affinity

towards those items to increase your audience match.



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Churn higher? Show understanding to win back customers

with trust and compassion

Certain products and services will take a harder hit than others,

as priorities shift and preventive measures are put in place.

You will notice that from churning customer metrics in your

Dashboard.

It’s not a completely lost cause, though. Your hard work and

preparation will pay off. Churn could be caused by a variety of

factors other than lack of need or interest in a specific product.

To find out what may actually be the cause, you can use our

Benchmarking tool to compare performance with similar

brands in the same industry or geographic region.

Now that you are closer to understanding whether your churn is

caused by multiple external factors, you can address them one

by one, decide to re-deploy, and refocus your resources or build

new ways to address customer needs (for example, Deliveroo's

no contact delivery). Are there brands tackling the crisis in

innovative, thoughtful ways? You can find your opportunity

within the crisis ahead.



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Go to bechmarketing.io, sign up for free, and click the “Channels” tab. See

the media Open Rate and Click-through Rate at a glance. This information is

calculated based on Emarsys accounts, hence you have a good and accurate

comparison tool to understand whether your efforts are within contextual average

open rates.



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And last but not least, support your team

and employees

No doubt that working together and showing understanding

is going to yield better results than otherwise. Whether it’s a

laser-focused CRM team or a cross-functional team working

on significant data, your marketers will find Emarsys tools and

features that can help speed execution or clarify questions

in marketing, customer engagement, and brand awareness

programs.

Conduct short meetings to discuss who are the key go-to

people for each and every single campaign or initiative,

empower your team, and give them a voice.

The results will show within your company as well as in every

single customer-centric interaction.



© 2020 Emarsys. All rights reserved. Emarsys, the Emarsys Marketing Platform, Emarsys Artificial Intelligence Marketing and others are trademarks of Emarsys. The Emarsys logo and other creative assets are owned and protected under copyright and/or trademark law.

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your 3-step guide · premium customer revenue could be your opportunity to succeed through trying...

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