Customer Engagement Through the Hallmark Connect Solution

The last few years have prompted large and small businesses to reevaluate their customer engagement strategies. Customer engagement is, after all, the most effective means of building long-term relationships with target audiences, and those relationships can eventually translate into a boost in brand loyalty, an improvement in customer lifetime value and an acceleration in business growth—and there’s data to back these claims up.

A recent McKinsey study found that improving the overall experience can cut customer churn rates by 75%. It can also increase the share of wallets from 5% to 10% and boost cross-sell rates by 15% to 25%. It can do wonders for upsell rates, as well. In fact, one company nearly doubled its revenue over a three-year period by taking a more experience-led approach to business customer engagement.

Though this should go without saying, using predictive analytics to deliver the right message at the right time to the right customer is essential. The same can be said for knowing the customer personally—or, at the very least, creating the perception through more personalized communication. It can help establish stronger bonds, nurture a sense of trust and differentiate a company from all the rest.

Putting the “Person” in Personalized Communication

As far as personalization goes, you can’t get more personal than Hallmark. We’ve been helping people share their love and admiration for one another for over 100 years. In an era where nearly everything has gone digital, it only made sense to launch a technology solution to help businesses elevate their direct marketing efforts and make the consumer connection that much more authentic and conversational.

The Connect solution from Hallmark provides a centralized location for your business to quickly and easily send more personalized communications to customers and prospects. Just access the online personalization tool to tailor a card—or gift, for that matter—to whoever is on your list, and should a member of your team come up short with what to say, assistance is available to help with writing the perfect message.

In addition to the personalization tool, the Connect solution also allows your team members to easily upload and update mailing lists. It comes fully equipped with both address book and list management functionalities. Plus, it integrates with CRMs to streamline the transfer of customer data, offers robust reporting capabilities, allows your business to set user permissions and more. You can even incorporate your logo, use personalized fonts and upload signatures to make the correspondence much more personal, which can be advantageous in direct marketing.

Everyone knows that when you send a Hallmark card, it will be read. And when that Hallmark card is personal, customers can't help but feel much more connected to your brand. According to our research, 82% of card recipients reported improved brand perception of the companies that sent Hallmark cards. Businesses sending Hallmark cards also experienced 85% higher retention with their clientele. Few tactics can match these direct marketing results.

Besides, emotion is the most influential factor affecting customer loyalty in 17 out of 18 industries, and that’s one thing Hallmark always gets right: the emotional connection. The Connect solution gives your business the opportunity to be there during those defining moments in life. A personal note to congratulate a customer on purchasing a new home, a toast to the addition of a new family member or simply celebrating their birthday can nurture the trust in those businesses that rely so heavily on that particular aspect of the customer-brand relationship.

Adding More Custom to the Customer Journey

Of course, there’s another element at play with how to engage customers, and it can be summed up in two words: customer journey. And while this journey is rarely linear or the same from one customer to the next, it’s often marked with a series of potential touchpoints throughout the year. The wide array of Hallmark cards and gifts available ensures that your team members will always have something ready to continue building relationships with their customers outside of the sales cycle. This makes it much easier to engage in those sometimes difficult conversations when the time comes for business renewal or review.

Think of it as providing your employees the opportunity to easily showcase their EQ (emotional intelligence) while building their relationships. They can shape the customer journey for their client base and provide the flexibility to determine when and what to send, which adds another layer of personalization to consumer engagement efforts. Your team members know these customers better than anyone else in your organization, so why not leave the correspondence in their capable hands? You can set parameters, of course. But doing something extra for customers helps create unique and personalized journeys, especially when tied to those special moments in life.

Direct marketing can often come off as impersonal, as if the message is a bit canned. The Connect solution can humanize your brand by putting faces to the names that directly interact with your customer base. Even something as seemingly small as a Hallmark card or gift, personalized for your brand and for the individual, shows that you care enough to send the very best. That level of attention can greatly impact your bottom line.