How to Understand your Customers Video

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How to Understand your Customers

The Power of Relationships Susan: Hello and welcome to SBTV.com I’m Susan Wilson Solovic. Thanks for joining us for our series The Power of Relationships with our email marketing expert Eric Groves. Eric is the Senior Vice President at Constant Contacts and Constant Contact is the leading email marketing and online survey company helping all kinds of small businesses succeed with their email marketing strategies. Welcome, Eric. Eric Groves: Thanks, Susan. It’s great to be here. Susan: Now, we have covered a lot of ground in this series, The Power of Relationships then we have not though talked about online survey then how small businesses can use them to succeed in our businesses. First of all is it affordable and easy for small businesses to implement an online survey strategy? Eric Groves: It’s incredibly affordable looking at our pricing, we charged $15.00 to get started and based on the number of email responses you have it can go up to $30.00 but that just to do a survey so you can leave it live for a period of time and you only need a $15.00 a month so no reason not to get involved and try doing it. Susan: And now you talked about three reasons that small business would want to utilize online survey so let’s start out and just talk about the first one which is learning more about your customers so that you can target messages etcetera. Eric Groves: Really, it’s an extension of the email marketing. As we talk earlier about really trying to be relevant with your audience. You can use an online survey to understand what your customers are interested in so, for example if you’re a business that has multiple lines of products that you sell. So if you’re a ski store you may have snow boards and skiing during the winter and water skiing during the summer and you want to know you built a list of all your customers, you don’t know which customers are interested in which ones of those products that you offer. Well, if you want to be really relevant when you’re sending out your communications you want to deliver us a water ski promotion to the people who understood water skiing. So by using the survey you can reach out to your customers and say tell us what you’re interested in and then based on their response you can deliver a message to them that spot on for what they’re interested in and by doing that you increase the relevancy and you increase the open rates that drive through your campaign. So that’s the first really use of survey as it kinds of connects into an email marketing strategy. Susan: Absolutely. Now the other thing you said is to learn more about how your customers are finding you. Eric Groves: Exactly. So for your customers coming in the very first time, it’s great you know to follow up that the first purchase with an email communication to him that says thanks for coming in to the store, we’d appreciate if you could tell us a little bit more about how you found us and in return for that we’ll give you a coupon for your next visit so you can drive repeat purchases with it but the most important thing is by understanding how they’re coming to you. You can figure out where you want to spend your marketing dollars through track customers and you can see where it’s really working. So did they get you from the yellow pages, from article that you had written in the newspaper about your business, from a magazine article, radio ad, how did they hear about you, how did they come to you and then can use that information to do your targeting in the future. Susan: And then the third thing you were saying is a lot of small businesses use online surveys in actual product development and really targeting the products and services for their customers. Eric Groves: Exactly. When you think from product directions standpoint you don’t want to be taking bits and pieces that you get from people that say, “Oh, you should do this with your product, do that with your product” because you don’t really have a comprehensive you of where all of your customers are thinking you can deliver more products and services. So by doing the survey out to your most valuable customers and saying you were thinking of the following three things we’re I thinking of doing next year which would be of most value to you then you get feedback from a broad audience that you can act upon to help set your direction. So it’s another great way that you can use surveys to help figure out what strategy you should do in the years to come. Susan: Because it is difficult a lot of us if we have small businesses we think we know what the customer wants but really being able to ask them and get that input is going to invaluable. Eric Groves: Yeah, it’s something that we use every week in Constant Contact. We survey our customers all the time because we realize that not often that we have great circuit for our customers and the more feedback we can get from them the better job we can do in meeting their needs. Susan: Absolutely. Well, this was greeted by if I appreciated you taking time you talk to us about online surveys and we look forward to having you back again. Eric Groves: Thanks, Susan. Susan: And thanks for all of you for joining us for our series The Power of Relationships with our guest expert Eric Groves from Constant Contact and don’t forget to check out Constant Contacts website which is what ConstantContact.com. You’ll find great resources and information and always stay tuned to SBTV.com, where small business is our only business.

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The Power of Relationships

Susan: Hello and welcome to SBTV.com I’m Susan Wilson Solovic. Thanks for joining us for our series The Power of Relationships with our email marketing expert Eric Groves. Eric is the Senior Vice President at Constant Contacts and Constant Contact is the leading email marketing and online survey company helping all kinds of small businesses succeed with their email marketing strategies. Welcome, Eric.

Eric Groves: Thanks, Susan. It’s great to be here.

Susan: Now, we have covered a lot of ground in this series, The Power of Relationships then we have not though talked about online survey then how small businesses can use them to succeed in our businesses. First of all is it affordable and easy for small businesses to implement an online survey strategy?

Eric Groves: It’s incredibly affordable looking at our pricing, we charged $15.00 to get started and based on the number of email responses you have it can go up to $30.00 but that just to do a survey so you can leave it live for a period of time and you only need a $15.00 a month so no reason not to get involved and try doing it.

Susan: And now you talked about three reasons that small business would want to utilize online survey so let’s start out and just talk about the first one which is learning more about your customers so that you can target messages etcetera.

Eric Groves: Really, it’s an extension of the email marketing. As we talk earlier about really trying to be relevant with your audience. You can use an online survey to understand what your customers are interested in so, for example if you’re a business that has multiple lines of products that you sell. So if you’re a ski store you may have snow boards and skiing during the winter and water skiing during the summer and you want to know you built a list of all your customers, you don’t know which customers are interested in which ones of those products that you offer.

Well, if you want to be really relevant when you’re sending out your communications you want to deliver us a water ski promotion to the people who understood water skiing. So by using the survey you can reach out to your customers and say tell us what you’re interested in and then based on their response you can deliver a message to them that spot on for what they’re interested in and by doing that you increase the relevancy and you increase the open rates that drive through your campaign. So that’s the first really use of survey as it kinds of connects into an email marketing strategy.

Susan: Absolutely. Now the other thing you said is to learn more about how your customers are finding you.

Eric Groves: Exactly. So for your customers coming in the very first time, it’s great you know to follow up that the first purchase with an email communication to him that says thanks for coming in to the store, we’d appreciate if you could tell us a little bit more about how you found us and in return for that we’ll give you a coupon for your next visit so you can drive repeat purchases with it but the most important thing is by understanding how they’re coming to you. You can figure out where you want to spend your marketing dollars through track customers and you can see where it’s really working.

So did they get you from the yellow pages, from article that you had written in the newspaper about your business, from a magazine article, radio ad, how did they hear about you, how did they come to you and then can use that information to do your targeting in the future.

Susan: And then the third thing you were saying is a lot of small businesses use online surveys in actual product development and really targeting the products and services for their customers.

Eric Groves: Exactly. When you think from product directions standpoint you don’t want to be taking bits and pieces that you get from people that say, “Oh, you should do this with your product, do that with your product” because you don’t really have a comprehensive you of where all of your customers are thinking you can deliver more products and services.

So by doing the survey out to your most valuable customers and saying you were thinking of the following three things we’re I thinking of doing next year which would be of most value to you then you get feedback from a broad audience that you can act upon to help set your direction. So it’s another great way that you can use surveys to help figure out what strategy you should do in the years to come.

Susan: Because it is difficult a lot of us if we have small businesses we think we know what the customer wants but really being able to ask them and get that input is going to invaluable.

Eric Groves: Yeah, it’s something that we use every week in Constant Contact. We survey our customers all the time because we realize that not often that we have great circuit for our customers and the more feedback we can get from them the better job we can do in meeting their needs.

Susan: Absolutely. Well, this was greeted by if I appreciated you taking time you talk to us about online surveys and we look forward to having you back again.

Eric Groves: Thanks, Susan.

Susan: And thanks for all of you for joining us for our series The Power of Relationships with our guest expert Eric Groves from Constant Contact and don’t forget to check out Constant Contacts website which is what ConstantContact.com. You’ll find great resources and information and always stay tuned to SBTV.com, where small business is our only business.

Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services