Perhaps one of the biggest challenges online retailers face is creating a personal experience. If a customer walks into a store, they are greeted, given service, and assisted in making a purchase. With a web site, that personal connection just isn’t there. I wanted to share a recent case study with you to show you how we helped a client create that personal connection with their customers.
For starters, my client is a rather small e-commerce company, shipping fewer than 100 orders per day during non-holiday seasons. Customer service representatives are able to spend time on the phone with customers when they call, and they’ve done a great job at “getting to know” many of their most loyal customers personally. The shipping manager even personally writes “thank you” on the packing slips that go in each box. Customers have appreciated this for years, even mentioning it when they call customer service.
This client launched a new web site — one that replaced the web site they’ve had for nearly six years. It’s served them well. We optimized the old site for conversion and made it as user-friendly as possible, but their feature-set was lacking and we needed to bring it up to today’s technology.
The site was finished early, but rather than launch it in the middle of the holiday selling season, we decided to wait. Rather than let the site sit dormant for another month or two, I pitched an idea. We would film a video of the owner announcing the new web site, talking about its features, and invite people to try it before it replaced the old site. We set up an online survey to collect feedback from their most loyal customers, and in exchange for the feedback, the customers received a 10% off coupon for their next online order (old site or new).
We pulled the most frequent and loyal customers from their order database — ones that often ordered over 20 times in the past six years. We then sent these loyal customers an email with a link to the video greeting and more information about the new site, inviting them to take the survey and receive the 10% off coupon.
This e-mail had better than a 75% open rate, and about 80% of those who opened the e-mail filled out the survey. A few even called the company with feedback.
While the e-mail was sent only to the most loyal customers, we think the response was so good because of the personal connection the video created. The customers had seen the “thank-you’s” on the packing slips and heard the owner’s voice on the phone before, but this was their first chance to see the owner and listen to her talk.
This is just one example of how online video can create a personal connection with customers. What’s your example?
