Customer Experience
We now come to the third step – the CDP is in place, the CLV has been calculated, and the Best Customers have been identified. The next focus is on creating a differentiated customer experience for the Best Customers so they maximise their spend with the brand, and also refer friends and family members. The attributes of the Best Customers can then be used to acquire new customers with similar characteristics, thus creating a Best Customers flywheel. As we discussed earlier, every category has a limited number of Best Customers, and a brand’s focus should be to maximise such customers. This is the key to generating ever-increasing profits despite competitive pressures.
Velvet Rope Marketing is the solution that can provide the differentiated customer experience. I have written extensively about VRM in previous essays:
- Velvet Rope Marketing
- Becoming Chief Profitability Officer
- The One Number to Predict Profits
- Rethinking Referral Marketing
Here is an overview of how VRM works:
The big idea in VRM is in differentiated customer experiences that go beyond a loyalty program. Every aspect of the business must be involved in ensuring that Best Customers are treated like royalty. Because such experiences are rare, businesses which do this will stand out. All we have to do is to look at our own interactions with brands – in most cases, we will find that even where we are loyal customers, the experience we get is ordinary. This is the monotony that brands have to break, and VRM provides an ideas framework to do exactly that.
More information is available on VelvetRopeMarketing.com, and the Ideas page gives a number of suggestions on how to get started with creating memorable customer experiences.
Tomorrow: Part 13
