Why It’s Important to Make Customers Feel Like Family

For most, family knows you better than anyone else. Family is there for you to rely on, know what you need when you need it, and always help you solve a problem. As we approach Thanksgiving, and many will spend time with their families, we think it’s time you introduced some of the understanding you share with family into your customer marketing.

So how do you treat customers like family without making them a home-cooked meal or sending them a birthday card? It’s simple – use data!

Discovering More About Your Customers

While you can draw on years of conversations and experiences to build out your understanding of family members, it’s not as easy to sit down and talk with your customers over dinner. And while longer forms with extra fields about age, gender, and marital status can provide these extra data insights, most customers won’t fill out anything beyond the required fields.

With all this in mind, the best way to discover more about customers is by using a service like Email Intelligence that adds a bit more context to the person behind the email address. Some of the categories and data fields included with a robust email intelligence service include:

• Demographics: Age, Gender, Name, Postal Address
• Household: Income, Marital Status, Presence of Children, Home Market Value
• Life stage: Millennial, Expecting, Engaged, Mom
• Lifestyle: Gamer, Cord Cutter, Beauty Seeker, DIY-er
• Buyer Type: Deal-Seeker, Online Buyer, Big Spender, Holiday Shopper
• Purchase Intent: Kids and Babies, Clothing, Electronics, Furniture

This enhances your contact record, allowing you to drive engagement and build connections with customers.

Personalizing Conversations to Connect

When a family member learns something new about you, they remember it. Not only do they remember it but they also might use this information in a conversation with you in the future or it influences a gift they give you. For example, after a joyous pregnancy announcement, your family will probably begin discussing things with you related to being a new parent or give you suggestions of products they found useful as they raised their kids.

The same tactics apply to the customer/brand conversation. If you have contextual insights about a customer, you can better segment your messaging and personalize offers. A big-box retailer wouldn’t send a special price drop offer on diapers to its entire database, including people without babies. Segmentation and personalization shows you understand where your customers are at in their lives and what is important to them, just like your family members.

Staying in Touch Throughout the Year

The holidays come and go in a flash, but some family members will stay in contact throughout the rest of the year. They make an effort to keep connecting, keep learning, and helping you out, should you ever need it. The same can be done with your customers!

When you understand what motivates your customers, you can continue sending relevant messaging. And as you continue to communicate, you can see what resonates with them the most. Maybe the 20% discount on hardware tools wasn’t what that home-owning father needed right then, but he was really interested in the new lawnmower promotion you sent him in the Spring.

You can safely, accurately tailor your messages throughout the year and continue learning what your customers need, when they need it, just like they’re part of the family.

It’s likely some of your family members wish it were as simple as obtaining key insights about you from data, but hey, you’re not obliged to tell your aunt everything. As email marketers, your goal is to create effective, engaging, personalized messages with context that speaks to your customers where they’re at.

Data allows you to understand customers, learn what motivates them, share specially tailored resources, and keep them engaged throughout the year. And Thanksgiving rolls around next year, well, you’ll have much more to talk about.

To enhance your customer conversations using insightful data points, get your free Email Intelligence match report when you sign up for an InstantData trial.