How Personalization Helped me Find my Sneaker Family

No matter what platform customers use to engage with your business, they increasingly prefer to receive a personalized experience when they do engage with you. In fact, 80% of customers are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand that provides personalized experiences. 

I’m a fanatic about customer experience—a personalized customer experience. I also happen to like trendy, comfortable sneakers. I recently discovered a new sneaker brand called CARIUMA and ordered a pair of their fun sneakers. I was disappointed when they didn’t fit me comfortably, and I had to send them back.

Even though the sneakers didn’t fit, my experience with the company was awesome! They went above and beyond to engage with me, make me feel a part of their sneaker family, and show that they genuinely care about me as a customer.

Providing a personalized experience is not as difficult as most businesses think. With a few emails, CARIUMA created a highly personalized and genuine experience for me in three main ways.

Creating a Personalized Experience

Personal Email

After I placed my order, I received a personalized email from David, the CEO, thanking me for trusting his company to cover my feet in “good looking, crazy comfortable and consciously made sneakers.” The email was conversational, authentic, and fun to read. He told me more about the company and himself. I believe the company also cares about our environment and planet.  One interesting personal fact is that he is color blind. His email made me feel like I just made a new friend and I wanted to reply.

Personal Request for Feedback

In the email, David asked me for my feedback, and he didn’t give me a link to complete a painful survey. He stated the following.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about your experience with us so far. Please, feel free to drop me a line or two! What made you most interested in joining our sneaker family? We want to know you better, so that we can do better for you (the people) and our environment (the planet). 

The request is warm and feels like it was coming from a friend who genuinely wants my input. David refers to me as being a part of their “sneaker family.” They invite me to share my thoughts about my experience so they can get to know me better. Unlike surveys that drive customers to answer questions that are important to the business, the open-ended question lets me share what’s important to ME.

Personalized Discount

When I told David that I had returned the shoes, he offered me a personal 15% discount code if I wanted to give them another try. The unique discount code ended with “LovesGeorge”.  

Wow! At that point in our email exchanges, I felt like David and the company were truly engaged with ME. The personalized code really made ME feel like they want ME as a customer.

I realized that the special code will allow them to track my next purchase with them. That’s okay with me. They truly want to learn more about me as a customer in order to provide the personalized service I value.

Keep in mind that I don’t even have a pair of their sneakers in my closet yet, but this personalized experience have engaged me as a customer.

Why Engage with Customers?

Creates an Emotional Connection

CARIUMA interacted with me early in my journey with them and made an emotional connection with me. Emotionally connected customers are more engaged and bring more value to a business. Gallup research shows that a fully engaged customer represents 23% more revenue than average.

Builds Loyalty

Loyal customers are invested in the relationship they have with a business and give the business the first chance to earn additional business. The Pareto Principle shows 80% of profits come from just 20% of customers. That 20 % are the most loyal customers and they bring the highest value to your business.

Even though I don’t own a pair of their sneakers yet, CARIUMA created a loyal customer out of me with one purchase. They did that by immediately engaging with me, referring to me as being a part of the sneaker family and asking me for feedback on my experience.

We all like to feel like we are VIPs. Some businesses wait until you are a loyal customer to give a VIP treatment. In this case, I was immediately treated like a VIP and that fast-tracked me to be a loyal customer.

Creates Advocates

If customers like what you do, they’ll talk about it with just about everybody. They’ll recommend your business to others and give positive reviews. Nothing is more powerful or authentic than word-of-mouth marketing. Engaged customers already love what you do and will willingly provide free advertising to make sure others know.

A personalized experience increases customer engagement and engaged customers buy more, promote more, and are more loyal. With a few personalized emails, I feel a part of the CARIUMA sneaker family, and I plan to use my personal discount code to order another pair or two of sneakers. Wouldn’t you want to reap the benefits of keeping your customers engaged? It isn’t that hard and in a competitive market, the ROI is significant.

Categorized in: Blog, Consumer Experience, loyal customers

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