From Cold Visitor To Engaged Fan, What My Great-Grandma Daisy Taught Me About Digital Hospitality
This one hack will help you double the rate of feedback, increase customer happiness, and as I saw, create a 30% lift in the lifetime value of consumers.
It also will make your customers feel more at home wherever they are. And also, it’s just good manners so do it!
But before I go through and share it, it’s important to explain why this is important.
“But why Steven?! Why wait?! Tell me now!”
I thought you might saw that.
Although those above benefits sound great, a lot of people are going read the answer and not do anything about it.
But okay. You know how to win me over… You know what, I’ll give you the answer now, BUT YOU BETTER EITHER IMPLEMENT IT TODAY OR READ ON.
The one hack? The one life lesson that dramatically changed my business?
Welcoming your customers.
Yeap. It’s a simple tactic, but one that 95% of businesses (especially startups and small businesses) aren’t implementing.
What’s the first thing that happens when you walk into someone’s home (after being invited obviously). You’re greeted! You’re welcomed. And it feels nice. And if you ever visited my late great-grandma Daisy, you’ll also have pockets full of treats.
So why is the welcome so important? And how do we do it online?
Introducing the automated welcome email.
Validation
Welcoming a customer into your brand gives you a huge opportunity for validation.
If you don’t have a validation process in place then you’re business will soon be extinct. Granted you might have a good enough product or service now, but your competitors are getting smarter.
If you don’t have a constant process of innovation as the backbone of your business — good luck!
A welcome email gives you an amazing opportunity to not only welcome a user to the family which encourages them to stay longer and to engage more, but it also gives you the opportunity to ask the user a question… and get a response. No this isn’t witchcraft — it’s talking to your users and finding out what they think.
Imagine how quickly your product and service can improve if every single day, you’re receiving key insights from the very people who want to buy what you’re selling.
If you want to learn more about this, buy and read The Lean Startup.
Communication
A welcome email is a perfect opportunity to solidify your brand and your message with the user.
To the right is a snippet from my welcome email, although I’m always changing it up so make sure you subscribe to see the current version *hint* *hint*. As you can see it’s very informal and hopefully funny.
The users that see this and connect are much more likely to stick around for longer.
As the saying goes, if you try to please everyone, you’ll end up pleasing no one. Make sure you really get down and personal.
Micro commitments
This is something that is hugely overlooked. Every small action that your user takes, makes it more likely to take a bigger action.
There is a huge difference between the conversion rates of someone who lands on your site to see a $50 product and someone who has signed up to your email list, engaged with the CEO, had a free trial and bought your $5 eBook. The second user is much more likely to not only buy the $50 product but to buy everything else you put out.
Also, for you single gentleman and ladies out there, it’s proven that the more locations you take a date, the more likely they are to feel connected. This means that instead of going out to dinner, why not take a walk at the end to seal the deal?
Automation
Finally, you NEED to make sure it’s either automated or that you’re disciplined enough to welcome everyone to the party. You can argue that automated loses a lot of the authenticity, but 99% of the people that argue that haven’t implemented it themselves.
All the top email providers give you features to enable this pretty easily.
Do this well and enjoy some pretty nifty results.
So that’s it! That’s the first of 100 growth hacks that I’ll be using to grow my agency and my brand with. Make sure you sign up below to see the next 99 hacks, the results I achieve from each one, and learn as I grow my agency to $100,000 in monthly revenue.
And if you’re looking for more information, here are a few more great guides w/ examples:
Originally posted over on StevenSomething.
And finally, if you enjoyed it, click that like button so more people can learn how to treat their leads right :)
