When’s the best time to contact a customer?
Right message, right customer, right time
When is the best time to contact a customer? As to be expected if you’ve been following some of my other posts, the simple answer is…it depends!
It depends on where they are on their journey with you and your plans to develop their potential.
Firstly, are they a new customer? Can you fast track them into a place of good value or do you need to nurture those early days?
Ultimately, you want to create that early habit, a frequent purchaser.
Gyms are a classic example. Come January or around this time of year when we are all thinking about our beach bodies, enrolment at the gym peaks but very soon a few clear customer types emerge – the true craver of fitness, those that start with high energy and attendance and then gradually fall away and those that really only go for the latte after class. Obvious really, but the skill is to let your behavioural data work its magic – courtesy of The Insight House – and to develop the appropriate timing and rhythm of contact to encourage a lasting habit that’s right for them, the customer.
It’s the same with lapsed customers, it’s so vital to catch them as quickly as possible before it’s too late and they are gone to your competitor, maybe forever. We even run a process that picks up when a customer goes out of cycle that triggers an action to try and prevent the loss.
- But timing is all the more important for your existing customers, in two ways:
- When you talk to them
- How often you talk to them
And that’s when our skills come to the fore. We analyse customer patterns of behaviours to assess when they will best respond to a contact and how often you need to utilise your expensive resources to maximise the value of each customer. Meaning you can pre-set the cadence on your email campaigns, or provision leads to your sales teams at the time that’s right for your customer.
Relevance is all in marketing. Right time, right message.