How to Help Clients Focus on Their Best Customers

“If you're not creating profiles as well as tracking transactions and interactions, you can't find who your best customers are,” Danny says. To harness that data, Danny recommends defining what info a client wants to collect first—and going beyond just addresses or email. Valuable dates such as birthdays or anniversaries are a good place to start. Or, if a business sells clothing, for example, they can ask about a customer’s style preferences.

The key to collecting this data from engaged customers, however, is making sure the business reciprocates with good, customized service. That can mean using Mailchimp to create customer segments, and then sending targeted automations like welcome emails or monthly updates based on their customers' profiles.

The secret to good data collection is to rejigger how clients collect data at all touchpoints. Because no one wants to feel like a statistic in a database, Danny recommends reframing the language in terms of benefiting the customer. Instead of saying, “Can I have your phone number?”, for example, a sales associate can say something like, “Let me make sure I put that on your account so you don't need to keep receipts.” Many point-of-sale systems have convenience benefits like this one that make customers feel like a business is going the extra mile.

Danny says businesses should send the message that “it's our brand in your pocket, not your data in my database.” If your clients worry that’s asking too much of customers, consider this: If businesses know their VIPs, they don’t have to bug them with advertising. Instead, they can speak to them directly.

Instead of shoehorning features into your clients’ marketing strategy, try identifying issues that actually need solutions. While a landing page may seem enticing, for example, it may not be what a client’s customers need. “Customer experience is using the business to solve customer problems, rather than using customers to solve their business problems,” Danny says. “That's why smaller businesses have an advantage, because it's usually 1 person wearing 4 different hats and can they think more broadly about how they can help their customer.”

You can stitch together the tech, marketing, and overall retail experience to help your clients create a unique customer journey. “Solve that job as quickly as possible in the most delightful way possible, because that's what they will talk about,” Danny says. That, in turn, should send more good customers your client's way. “Identify what your client's customers need from them, and then very quickly you'll find the feature in Mailchimp that supports that.”