6 Components of Successful Relationship Marketing for December

Table of contents:
✅ Importance & benefits of relationship marketing
✅ How to define a successful strategy
✅ Boosting your next December campaigns

What is relationship marketing?

Relationship marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on building long-term and mutually beneficial relationships with customers and is often focused on customer retention and satisfaction. It’s often regarded as an essential component of customer relationship management. By building relationships with your customers, you can foster loyalty, trust, and better communication. The quality of the connections with your current and prospective customers is the key to long-term success in business. But it’s easier said than done. You can’t force customers to like you - you have to earn their trust and loyalty through real, meaningful connections. Email marketing is an example of a commonly used method in relationship marketing. Relationship marketing includes a series of overlapping strategies and technologies:

Strategies
☑️ Lead generation and customer data management
☑️ Tailored access and targeted information
☑️ Customer experience management 

Technologies
☑️ Marketing automation tools
☑️ Multichannel strategy, mobile and social CRM
☑️ CRM integration with other systems 

88% of consumers say it takes three or more purchases to build brand loyalty - Exploding Topics

Importance of relationship marketing

One of the best ways to earn trust and loyalty is by implementing relationship marketing strategies. It’s important to note that relationship marketing isn’t a one-and-done. It’s a long-term strategy that requires consistent effort. You can’t expect to implement a few relationship marketing tactics and then disappear. Customers will quickly lose interest if you don’t follow up with them. That’s why it’s important to make relationship marketing a year-round effort.

The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5% to 20% - Markinblog

Benefits of relationship marketing

There are many benefits to relationship marketing. This includes a growth in customer loyalty, increased sales, better feedback, improved operational efficiency, higher customer lifetime value, reduction in marketing and advertising spending, and a customer-centric approach. Here’s an in-depth overview of 6 different relationship marketing benefits:

☑️ Growth in customer loyalty
A strong relationship with your customers can lead to greater customer satisfaction and loyalty. This is particularly true when you can meet their needs and solve their problems. Happy customers are more likely to stay with and recommend your brand.

☑️ Improved operational efficiency
Stronger relationships with your customers can also lead to improved operational efficiency. Customers who are satisfied with your brand are less likely to complain or make demands on your company. This can help you save time and money that would otherwise be spent handling complaints and resolving issues.

☑️ A customer-centric approach 
Practicing effective relationship marketing means that the entire team, or business, needs to be onboard. Emphasizing relationship marketing throughout an entire organization ensures that there is a stronger organizational alignment around the customer, ensuring a customer-centric approach not only in marketing but in all areas. 

☑️ Increased sales
Customers who are happy with your brand and are loyal to your business are likely to spend more with you. Relationship marketing can help you build the right connections with your customers to increase sales

☑️ Higher customer lifetime value
Growth in customer loyalty is the first step to reaching the status of brand insistence with your loyal customers. Once you’ve accomplished this, your brand has the potential to stay connected with the customer for a lifetime. Customers like these are to be cherished, as they most likely become brand advocates or brand ambassadors. And word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful marketing methods of traditional and modern marketers. 

☑️ Reduction in marketing and advertising spend
The audience that has been following our content for a while knows that customer acquisition can be much more expensive than customer retention. Up to 7x as expensive, as a matter of fact. Businesses that focus more on relationship marketing will not have to spend as much budget on attracting new customers as before since retaining the existing ones offers a better ROI and does the marketing job for them. 

Loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones - Markinblog

A successful relationship marketing strategy

6 components of successful relationship marketing for holiday marketing strategies

First, you need to determine the right components that align with your business goals and your customer’s needs. For many businesses, a rewards program is a good method. It encourages customers to make more purchases by rewarding them with points, special discounts, or other incentives. There are many loyalty program benefits. But be aware, they come with several downsides and inefficiencies as well. Mobile-first blockchain loyalty programs have been the revolutionary solution to these issues. When implementing a loyalty program like this, a new world of opportunities opens up for your business. Here are some examples of components the loyalty software adds to your business.

Creative rewards

There are many traditional incentives for engaged customers that are being used daily. Think of 10% discounts, free shipping, free trials etcetera. But by implementing blockchain in your loyalty and marketing strategy, a whole new spectrum of rewards opens up for businesses to leverage. Blockchain-based loyalty rewards, for example, come with a great set of benefits. Crowny is the first to offer blockchain-based loyalty rewards in the form of both crypto and loyalty points, a combination that’s mutually beneficial to both businesses and users. 

Enhanced giveaways

Giveaways are a very common method in holiday marketing strategies to reward (online) communities and get the audience excited. When doing a giveaway, businesses always seek something in return. Most of the time, especially after the covid pandemic, it’s social engagement. And that’s important, sure, but what if you could do more? With Crowny, you can use the mobile app as a safety net for engaging consumers, ensuring they are accommodated in the perfect environment to increase brand loyalty.

Interactive content 

By having a mobile-first loyalty program, the potential of loyalty programs suddenly became much greater. The opportunities that come with having a loyalty program in a mobile application are unmatched, especially once you combine content with rewards. You can think of polls, but also gamification, incentivized review generation and website landing pages the audience can be forwarded to in order to perform the next desired action. With the Crowny App, businesses will find they have all the tools they need to get creative and publish unique content for their community to engage with.

64% of loyalty program members spend more money to maximize points earnings - Bond Brand Loyalty

Incentivized messaging

Think of social media engagement, for example. By incentivizing your community to like and share, you boost the performance of your giveaways. With Crowny’s interact-to-earn mechanism, partnered brands experience a new range of opportunities to make this happen. Incentive-driven messaging will allow businesses to always keep their community in the loop, while also rewarding them for their interactions with the content. 

Holiday themed promotions

The opportunities to express themed branding in applications are unmatched compared to any other environment. It’s the perfect way to really give your community that holiday spirit. By adjusting brand assets and sending unique content relating to the holidays, you’re anticipating the holidays in a way your content recipients will truly appreciate. It is proven to drive more conversions and sales, and the Crowny App is the perfect environment for any business to do so. 

Improved customer experiences

In order to have a streamlined user experience, businesses need to have their omnichannel marketing strategy streamlined for their (potential) customers. An application fits perfectly in omnichannel marketing strategies, and connects all the dots in the perfect mobile environment. Crowny is the newest addition to a marketer's toolkit globally, providing an application that fits perfectly in the scope of wishes and demands from both consumers and businesses.

For most industries, the average customer retention rate is below 20% - Markinblog

How to boost your holiday campaign for next December

If you want your relationship marketing campaign to be successful, there are a few things you can do to boost your results. 

Create a holiday marketing plan 

Make sure that you have a solid plan in place for your holiday marketing campaign. What goals are you trying to reach? What type of content are you planning to create and share? If you’re running a holiday marketing campaign this December, make sure to monitor it closely. Gather data, and make sure you know what the outline for your plan will be for next year. Learning from your experiences is one of the most important aspects of business growth. 

Optimize your holiday marketing strategy

Determine what went well this year, but most importantly, what could be improved. Whether you are a business owner, marketer, business developer or in any other way involved with business performance, you always want to improve. Be on the lookout for new initiatives, follow the trends closely, and dare take a risk. Industry-leading businesses didn’t get there by playing it safe, but by taking a risk and gaining an edge over their competitors. 

Get your systems in place, and allow yourself some time to test

Make sure that the systems that relate to your CRM, marketing automation, multichannel strategy, mobile presence, and social presence are to handle your relationship marketing efforts. That includes things like managing customer data and adding notes to clients. 

The Crowny platform is looking to revolutionize relationship marketing strategies, aiming to be included in major holiday marketing campaigns globally in 2023.

Curious about what we have to offer? Get early access to a demo of our platform.