4 strategies to manage customers in Salesforce

Customers are the lifeblood of any business, and building a foundation for future growth depends on your company’s ability to not only attract new customers but to turn existing relationships into repeat customers — ideally in as cost-efficient a manner as possible.

Nurturing customers toward their first business interaction with your company and beyond requires comprehensive customer management — something Salesforce is specifically designed to provide. That’s why today we’re going to look at four ways you can use Salesforce and marketing automation to manage your customer base, grow your new customer interactions and turn existing customers into repeat customers.

* Personalize your messaging. Every customer interaction you engage in leaves you with valuable data that Salesforce can harness to help you personalize future messaging. Integrating this data into Salesforce allows you to use it to send customers personalized emails or craft an appealing web page when they return. Adding your customer’s name, items from their most recent search history and special pricing based on things they’re interested in are all easy ways to make your customers feel special.

* Bring Salesforce to your customer service team. Website FAQs and email question boxes may have slowed the volume of questions your customer service team faces, but at the same time, it’s made these professionals more important than ever. Customers moving past these automated channels now reach out to customer service if they are deeply upset or their question is quite complicated. In either event, having an empowered customer service team is paramount to deal with these situations. Integrating Salesforce floods your customer service team with data, letting them know everything they need to know about a customer — including a list of all past interactions — so they can speak from a position of knowledge and solve customer concerns quickly.

* Reengage inactive customers. You want customers to sign up for your email releases or newsletters and Salesforce can also help you identify those who are no longer actively participating in your campaign. Pairing Salesforce with an email marketing solution allows you to identify inactive subscribers and “bring them back into the fold” via special promotions, discounts or other benefits. Research shows you’re 26 percent more likely to receive a new purchase from an inactive subscriber than a non-subscriber, so this work is worth your effort.

* Follow up. Customers want to do business with companies that do more than just sell them goods and services. They want to do business with companies that foster relationships with them. Harnessing the power of the data already locked in your Salesforce system allows you to personalize your messaging for recurring follow-ups and check-in milestones, delivering the one-of-a-kind customer experience that keeps buyers coming back. In essence, it takes a business transaction and turns it into a partnership, and that’s good for your company every single time.