There’s no denying that your website is a huge component of your marketing strategy. Many inbound marketers put lots of time and energy into developing their online presence, creating remarkable content, and optimizing the user experience. While your website may be attracting tons of new visitors and converting numerous leads for your business month-after-month, you shouldn’t neglect one of your most important contact segments -- the current customer.
Make sure that you are nurturing and delighting your existing customers by tailoring your website for them through smart content. This post will cover four ways to customize and optimize your website experience for the returning customer.
#1. Spruce up your "home"
Starting with a common entry point for new and returning users alike, take a close look at your homepage content. Does your homepage describe who you are and what you do? Have you optimized the content to the fullest for search engines and users to understand what your website is about? More than likely, your homepage has been carefully crafted to appeal to the first-time visitor. That doesn't mean that a current customer won't visit your homepage.
Take a look at your homepage through the lens of one of your customers. Is the homepage helpful to them? Does it provide a customer any new information about your company, products or services?
Rather than trying to strike a balance with your content to appeal to everyone, you can use Smart Content to ensure that you have homepage content that serves the needs of both new visitors and returning customers. What’s really great about smart content is that you can “set it and forget it”. The smart content tools will serve up the correct content for the first time visitor and the returning customer automatically.
Consider tailoring your homepage copy to your returning customers by:
- providing timely information. Example: a webinar or live event that is a good fit for your current customer.
- exclusive news. Example: a new product or service.
- saying thank you. Example: thanking a customer for their business on your homepage or providing a special incentive or discount to customers only.
- personalizing the homepage. Example: using personalization tokens on your homepage to provide a unique experience to each returning customer.
Take a look at a homepage:
Again, now with personalized content for the returning customer:
#2. Develop a new purpose for connecting
Another commonly-visited page on your website that you will want to evaluate through the lens of a customer is your "Contact Us" page. Consider what would motivate a returning customer to visit your "Contact Us" page. A returning customer has presumably been in contact with your company be it via email, phone or in person.
One approach to fine-tuning your "Contact Us" page for a returning customer would be to make a text module smart based on country. Do you have multiple offices or specific points of contact for certain countries or regions? Rather than displaying your main phone number on your homepage, show more specialized information to a customer.
For example, if all questions for Sales in Sweden are sent to your Business Development Manager, Emily, allow your Swedish customers to view a direct way to connect to Emily, as shown in the example below:
Non-Swedish customers would see:
And Swedish customers would be shown Emily's information instead:
This is just one customer-tailored option for your "Contact Us" page. Another customized option would be to use smart content to show the correct map code for each office, if you have offices in multiple countries.
Your customers that have navigated to your homepage may have an urgent reason to get in touch with you: perhaps they are trying to find your office for an in-person meeting or maybe they cannot find their point of contact's information. By providing your customers with more relevant information on the contact us page, you'll be helping them get in touch with the right person all the more quickly.
#3. Rinse and do not repeat
A common communication vehicle that is used on your "Contact Us" page is a form. Let's revisit the example from a moment ago and narrow in on the form fields:
Now imagine that a returning customer has made it to this "Contact Us" page. Does asking for first and last name help the sales or marketing team understand more about a returning customer? Definitely not.
Use a smart form on a "Contact Us" page to ask the right questions on your form. Your smart form will allow you to display a form that's geared towards what a customer would need by contacting you. A customer-oriented form could ask questions that get at the customer's need, ("What can we help you with?"), their preferred contact method or timeframe such as the example below:
Even though you've already had contact with a current customer, you can use a smart form on your "Contact Us" page to gather even more information about your customers and in turn, nurture the repeat sales process.
You could evaluate your entire conversion strategy this way. You could examine all of your content offers and forms across your website and Landing Pages by asking questions like: "Why would a customer be interested in this particular whitepaper?" and "What else does our team need to understand about this customer in order to close another sale with them?" While you may not want to tailor all forms across your website for returning customers, you might be identify landing pages that customers visit often, which would be a great fit for a smart form for the customer.
#4. Give them something special
With returning customers, you'll really want to win them over each time they interact with your website. Your current customers probably don't need to read testimonials about what it's like to work with your company. They already work with you! By using smart content, you could use the testimonial text space for customer-only content. You don't necessarily have to give a customer a huge discount with a coupon-code in that space, but consider what you could offer a returning customer that would help them want to buy from you again!
Across your website (and your blog too), you can help your returning customers navigate by using Smart CTAs. A smart call-to-action on your homepage that promotes a top-of-the-funnel offer could change for customers. Instead, it could display a call-to-action for a demo request. To ensure high visibility of a new product offering you could turn your top CTAs on your website and blog posts into smart CTAs so that your customers are seeing the new product content offer instead.
Don't feel limited when optimizing your website and using smart content. These are just a couple of suggestions for how you can tailor to your returning customer. Do you have some other ideas to share? Let us know in the comments below!
