| |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
| |
Building an Early Engagement Strategy
A strong early engagement or "onboarding" program
targeting your new SMB customers can reduce churn, boost
usage of your products/services and ultimately increase
retention. The first few days, weeks and months of the relationship
are crucial to converting new customers to active, enthusiastic
users. There are five key steps:
| |
1. |
Understand engagers and "bailers": Research your fully engaged customers, and those who depart early on, to get a clear picture of their attitudes and usage. Who are your best customers? What made them engage with your offerings? What causes un-engaged new customers to depart? What do bailers have in common? With this knowledge, you can develop programs to identify and nurture at-risk new customers, and refine your marketing programs to reduce acquisition of likely bailers.
|
| |
2. |
Mystery shop your own offerings: Have company representatives, or a third party, sign up for your products, and assess the purchase and onboarding process. Is the experience impressive or underwhelming? Are there annoying glitches – such as, for a bank, slow delivery of new checks – that can push a new customer away? |
| |
3. |
Reach out proactively: One Web-hosting service has set up an early engagement team that phones new customers to welcome them, walk them through service features and direct them to helpful resources. These calls also can uncover whether the customer purchased the right offering. |
| |
4. |
Educate: SMBs will tell you that frustration over not being able to get a service to work as promised is a key reason for disengaging. Tutorials, welcome kits, new user webinars, and dedicated "new customer" service reps can simplify adoption and build loyalty. |
| |
5. |
Customize communications: Newsletters and collateral for established customers may not work for new customers. An effective onboarding program includes dedicated communications such as customer success stories, how-to guides, peer-to-peer forums and online chats, all designed to build and maintain new customer enthusiasm. |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
>> Advanta Launches Ideablob
Taking a different angle to building SMB community, Advanta has created a new site to get aspiring entrepreneurs to share their business concepts. Ideablob.com lets users post their new business ideas; registered members can comment and vote on them. The top vote-getter each month receives $10,000. Advanta launched the site at the DEMOfall 07 conference in San Diego.
>> MasterCard Introduces New Savings Program
The new MasterCard Easy Savings program provides
its small business credit and debit cardholders with automatic rebate savings
at participating merchants. Partners include Adminstaff, Avis, Budget, DHL, HRTools.com,
Maggiano's Little Italy, Midwest Airlines, Mimeo.com, SurePayroll, Website Pros
and Wyndham Hotels and Resorts. The launch is supported by an extensive
marketing campaign, including a new look and feel for its "Priceless" campaign.
>> Wells Fargo Adds Small Biz Mobile Banking
Wells Fargo has launched a browser-based mobile banking solution for small businesses. For use on Web-enabled mobile devices, Wells Fargo Mobile allows small business customers to check balances of their small business and personal deposit and credit accounts, view transaction history and transfer money between eligible Wells Fargo accounts.
>> Verizon to Sponsor U.S. Chamber Summit
Verizon has signed on as the first sponsor of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Small Business Summit 2008, which will be held in April in Washington, D.C. The annual event is expected to attract about 500 small business owners, and will feature guest speakers (past events have featured former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Senator Hillary Clinton), as well as lobbying meetings between attendees and their elected officials.
>> Experian Launches Online Credit Resource
Experian has created an online resource to educate small business owners on business credit and credit reporting. BusinessCreditFacts.com contains
a Q&As on establishing and maintaining business credit; and tools to help
business owners update their company's information, obtain their business credit
report and prompt suppliers to report their payment experiences.
>> Microsoft Targets Hispanic Business Owners
At the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce conference, Microsoft introduced
resources for U.S. Hispanic small business owners. These include a Spanish-language business resource guide to be launched soon on MSN
Latino and the availability of Microsoft Office Spanish Language Pack in the United States.
>> SAP Goes On-Demand
Boosting its solutions portfolio for SMBs, SAP added its first on-demand software solution, SAP Business ByDesign. It is offering a personalized trial to selected prospects. To complement the introduction, SAP launched an expanded website that describes its suite of SMB applications.
Send us your news. |
|
|
|
Benchmarking Your Site
How do you ensure that your SMB site visitor experience is as effective as possible? For a major regional bank, we recently assessed its small business banking site relative to key competitors as well as best-in-class small business marketers outside of banking. The result? Specific recommendations to enhance small business relevance, user experience, navigation and usability, product presentation, online service presentation and value-added content. Contact
us to discuss ensuring that SMBs are satisfied with visits to your site.
BBI Presents on Marketing to SMBs via Web 2.0
CEO Stu Richards will present on SMB usage of and attitudes
towards Web 2.0 at the Marketing
Sherpa B2B Demand Generation Summits in Boston on October
16th and San Francisco on October 30th, and at the Small
Business Banking Conference on October
29th. He will also moderate a panel on small business product innovation at the Financial
Services Marketing Symposium on October 15th.
Subscribe a Colleague
If you have marketing colleagues who don't get The Bredin Report, subscribe them today. They'll be glad you did.
 |
| |
BBI helps Fortune 500 and emerging companies achieve their
SMB marketing goals through research, strategy
and communications. Contact us to learn how we
can help you. |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
