“Where Everybody Knows Your Name…” [Cheers, 1990s TV Show lyrics]

How well do you know your customers? Is your business a place where everybody knows your name? Do you understand the importance and value in having strong types of relationships with your customers?

Last year, mobile marketing was all about customer engagement. It was the logical next step for companies realizing that mobile was so much more than just a “nice to have” element of their marketing strategy; it was, in fact, demanding to be a “mobile-first strategy” rather than an afterthought.

So, we quickly learned that it wasn’t enough to have a mobile presence; it had to be a mobile strategy that engaged markets and customers. But not engagement for the sake of engagement, it had to have meaning otherwise your engagement could become annoying.

Fortunately, the technology kept pace with the demand and gave us the ability to target our engagement so that it reflected the areas of interest as determined by the individuals. It’s no longer enough to be interactive with your customers; you now must be interactive with the individual customers and know what interests them.

As a former bartender, I had “regulars” at whichever bar I tended. I knew their names and what their drink preferences were often having them in place before they got their coat off and sat down at my bar. I often knew their birthdays, the children’s’ names and how strong their marriage was.

Now-a-days, that depth of relationship has to be extended to as many of your customers as possible especially if you want to turn them into regulars. And I’m not talking about just providing good customer service; I’m talking about caring about what they care about. So how do you capture that information? How do you build that kind of relationship?

Often it’s as simple as just asking. Mining the data you already have from your sales records; tracking individual buying habits and targeting your messages based upon their prior involvement with you.

If you own a pizzeria and Susan is a regular that buys only vegetarian pies, sending her a push notification about a great deal on a meat-lovers special probably won’t resonate with her but it definitely will with Joe who loves your pepperoni and sausage slices. Knowing the difference and correctly targeting the right message to the right person will make a huge difference in growing the buying history of your existing customers.

Engagements biggest promoter is push notifications so getting someone to accept push notifications when they first download your APP is very important. It can mean the difference between engaging with your app nearly every other day versus only about 5 times a month.

Also, it can extend the life of their engagement by more than three times as much. According to a recent survey by Localytics, 65% of APP users who opted to accept push notifications returned to the APP after 30 days compared to just 19% of those who opted out.

But pushing out notifications alone is not the only answer. Since the 1st quarter of 2015, the number of push notifications per APP has increased 64% to an average of 51 per month. And you better believe Susan will get pretty sick of hearing from you if most of the offers are about things she’s not interested in; your pizzeria APP won’t stay on her phone long. However, if everything she receives from you is about foods she already loves or new vegetarian dishes or a new vegan offering, then it’s worth her having your APP because you’re catering to her; a very powerful connection.

Segmenting your messages allows you, by virtue of the knowledge you’ve gained over time, to endear you to Susan so you become an important service to her. You’ll discover over time, she will return to your pizzeria more frequently and buy more from you because she’s come to know, like and trust you.

With the right strategy and technology giving you the information you need to make the right decisions on your marketing messages, the results of that strategy will mean growth for your business and a customer base that’s become your greatest advocates.