Relationship Marketing: How to Start from Scratch? [+EXAMPLES]

Relationship marketing is one of the many types of marketing strategies that can be applied and combined to help your brand achieve sales success.

We’ve already covered topics like lead generation and remarketing here on the blog. Today, it’s time to talk about relationship marketing, a strategy aimed at retaining customers, creating a sense of community, and providing an amazing shopping experience.

Continue reading the article to understand what relationship marketing is, how important it is for your company’s strategy, and how to implement actions that will bring results for your brand.

What is Relationship Marketing?

If you’ve ever thought about customer loyalty, you’ve already thought about relationship marketing.

This is the main goal of this strategy: to strengthen the bonds between the brand and the consumer, offer satisfaction during their experience, and encourage repeat purchases.

As the name suggests, relationship marketing is carried out through a set of actions that aim to maintain a healthy and positive relationship after your lead makes a purchase or hires your services, turning them into a customer.

🔎 Check this out: What is Holistic Marketing and How to Start Doing It Today

How Does Relationship Marketing Work?

With a good relationship marketing strategy, you create an important post-sale relationship for your brand: customers are more likely to return and make a purchase again and even become brand advocates, recommending your business to family and friends.

To implement this strategy, it’s essential to keep in mind that the focus of relationship marketing is on the consumer.

The actions need to make the customer feel like the most important part of the relationship, ensuring their needs and opinions are heard, and that benefit-driven actions are tailored accordingly.

Here’s a look at the differences between relationship marketing and traditional marketing:

What is the Purpose of Relationship Marketing?

Companies invest in relationship marketing with several objectives. Here are a few that you might relate to:

Provide a better shopping experience;
Bring the consumer closer to the brand;
Develop the post-sale sector;
Improve customer loyalty by encouraging repeat purchases or services;
Turn customers into brand promoters;
Create a community that interacts with the brand and with each other;
Increase brand recognition and create a more positive brand image.

What Are the Benefits of Using Relationship Marketing?

As we mentioned, relationship marketing brings many positive results for companies.

Of course, the biggest benefit is the satisfaction of a customer who is well-served, feels close to the brand, and resolves their issues while being respected and prioritized.

This consumer forms a positive image of the brand and remembers it when they need to make a purchase or contract a similar service.

Furthermore, if the company offers various solutions or types of products, it can turn a customer into a brand fan who will always prioritize your business due to their trust in it.

Companies that align quality with solid relationship marketing strategies are remembered, admired, desired, and gain market share, as seen with brands like Starbucks, Nestlé, Nike, Apple, and Netflix.

Why is Relationship Marketing Important?

As we discussed earlier, relationship marketing offers benefits such as customer loyalty and turning customers into advocates for your products and services.

But what does this practically mean for your company?

Increase in LTV

Lifetime Value (LTV) is the metric that tracks the “lifetime value” of your customer.

It represents the return a customer provides to your company over time.

Therefore, the longer you keep a consumer buying from your company, the better.

With a strategy focused on retaining your customer, you also increase the value of this “lifetime” with your business, boosting LTV and leading to better ROI from your marketing investments.

Savings on Marketing and Ads

The efforts and resources invested in retaining a satisfied customer who is already buying from you are much smaller than those needed to gain the trust of a consumer who has never heard of your brand.

Therefore, investing in relationship marketing also means reducing expenses on campaigns focused on large reach and attracting new customers.

Better Communication

Not to be overlooked, another result of relationship marketing is improved communication with your customer.

By understanding post-purchase needs and maintaining an open channel, you increase your chances of building a strong relationship.

Step-by-Step to Implement Relationship Marketing from Scratch in Your Company

Now that you understand what relationship marketing is and why it’s important, it’s time to learn how to implement it in your business.

Here are four steps to follow:

1. Analyze Your Organizational Culture

Make it clear to all employees that customer success isn’t just the responsibility of a few departments, but of everyone.

That means everyone is responsible for customer success, regardless of area or role.

And, to achieve customer success, emphasize—especially in marketing, sales, and customer service—that maintaining excellent post-sale service is crucial for both the business and the customer.

2. Identify Your Best Customers

Keep an up-to-date database with all your customers’ information.

This way, you can segment them into the best ones—those who spend the most and make frequent purchases—ensuring no one is left out of your relationship program.

With this information, you can:

Contact customers with promotions that suit their past purchases;
Celebrate special dates with them;
Conduct surveys to assess their perception of your products and services;
Offer gifts and advantages to connect them to your brand.

3. Establish Benefits for the Most Engaged Customers

Also, from the information collected and stored in your database, you will know the reasons why customers buy from you, what they really want, and at what stage of the purchase process they are.

That being said, it will be much easier to define benefits and rewards for those who are more engaged with your brand.

4. Define Your Strategies

Have a clear plan for what you want to achieve with relationship marketing.

You can create a scoring system for your customers, reward their loyalty, and turn them into brand advocates.

Here are some strategies for relationship marketing:

Relationship Marketing Strategies

By now, you should have a clear understanding of relationship marketing and how it can boost your brand’s actions and results.

Now, let’s get into the practical side!

Know Your Customers

Before deciding on the actions and tools to use for building relationships, you need to analyze who you want to engage with.

Knowing your customers is the first step in guiding your relationship efforts.

So, check if your customer database is up-to-date, analyze information about them, their consumption habits with your brand, and how they evaluate their experience.

Conduct surveys and train your team to engage in this communication.

You can offer benefits like a discount coupon or a gift to those who respond to the survey.

And remember: be open to receiving feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Segment and Personalize

With this complete information, you’ll be able to develop segmentation strategies.

Segmentation is key to relationship marketing, as customers need to feel that communication is personalized and that they will benefit from continuing to purchase from you.

For example, you can offer benefits to customers who frequently buy from you or to those who haven’t purchased in a while.

While the benefits may be similar, the communication with these two customer profiles needs to be completely different, right?

Understand the relevant segmentation criteria and use tools like nurture flows and targeted email marketing campaigns.

Create Actions to Encourage Return Visits

The most classic example of an action when talking about relationship marketing is the loyalty program.

It’s no surprise: this type of program is very successful, usually easy to implement, and helps build long-term relationships with customers.

Another example of an action to encourage return visits is satisfaction surveys associated with a gift or discount coupon that can be applied on the next purchase.

With this type of incentive, you encourage the customer to return and establish a service cycle that can continuously improve.

Stay in Touch

In addition to being stimulated with communication materials, benefits, and offers, the customer also needs to feel that there is a more personal relationship.

After all, we relate to other people, not brands.

So don’t contact them just sporadically.

Maintain regular contact in a personal manner, and for this, use conversational marketing tools like virtual assistants and chatbots, as well as marketing automation, which will make the process of contacting each customer much easier.

Listen to the Customer and Respond

More than speaking with the customer, relationship marketing also needs to work on the other side of this communication.

The consumer needs to know that they can reach out to the brand if needed, and of course, they need to be sure they will receive a response, no matter the reason or need for contact.

For this, the right channels need to be in place.

Pay attention to social media and the website, as many consumers end up using these resources to talk to the company.

And to optimize your team’s work, use automated tools for simple and common inquiries.

Here, chatbots and virtual assistants are also great solutions, providing quick and direct answers!

Keep the Customer Base Updated

Maintaining the data of your customer base is essential to ensure that communication is reaching everyone and to work correctly with the segments we mentioned earlier in this list of strategies.

With an updated database, you can also monitor the progress in Lifetime Value and customer retention after implementing relationship marketing actions.

Keep an Eye on the Results

Monitoring these results is part of any marketing strategy or sales campaign. Therefore, with relationship marketing, it would be no different.

Tracking metrics, customer feedback, and conversion rates will help you understand if the channels, tools, and actions are working, if they need adjustments, or even need to be rethought.

In this way, your relationship marketing will keep getting better!

How to apply Relationship Marketing? With Examples

If you’re ready to dive into practice and start developing relationship marketing actions, we’ve gathered some tips to get you started:

🔎 Read also: [GUIDE] What is Demand Generation and How to Start

Explore Social Media Beyond the Basics

Posting and interacting on social media with those who reach out to you is the bare minimum.

Responses to comments and inbox messages should be solved as quickly as possible and in a way that reflects the brand’s personality.

Remember that being robotic isn’t good; people like to interact with people.

Also, keep an eye on mentions of your brand, even those not made through page tags.

Take General Electric as an example: the company prioritized diversifying its content across multiple platforms, including social media, betting on relational advertising so that their creations fit into all stages of the buyer’s journey.

Invest in Post-Sale Processes

Post-purchase service is a key factor in building relationships with each customer. In addition to having their questions and problems resolved quickly and respectfully, the consumer today expects more than that.

Take the initiative for post-sale contact to check customer satisfaction.

After the purchase, you’ll also have valuable information about the customer, which can help with offering new products or services, providing discounts, sending coupons on special dates, etc.

We can mention Panera as an example, which, alongside its post-sale process, addressed honesty with its customers.

The company declared that it would stop using artificial flavors, sweeteners, and preservatives in all its products, and it kept its promise, regularly sharing reports on its progress and following up with customers to show the quality of its products.

In other words, they didn’t just announce a change, but also made sure to communicate every detail to the consumer, whether they had purchased from the brand or not.

Create a Loyalty Program

Want to encourage your customer to come back for another purchase? Offer them an advantage at this moment.

Loyalty programs can be simple or even more complex, depending on what is feasible for your company right now.

Be honest about what you can offer and make the rules clear to avoid frustrating customer expectations.

Take Delta as an example, the oldest airline in operation in the United States.

The company has a loyalty program, SkyMiles, where customers who sign up earn miles based on the amount spent with Delta. These miles can be redeemed for future travel purchases, such as airline tickets, seat upgrades, etc.

Run Email Marketing Campaigns

Email marketing is one of the most personalized ways to send content.

In this channel, you can send specific content based on the customer’s situation, moment, and interest, as well as remind them of any offers or products they may have abandoned in their cart.

One example is Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation, which uses email marketing to redirect the audience to products, using life events like birthdays.

This way, the company reinforces its service offerings and stays present in the customer’s life.

Use Chatbots

Even though chatbots aren’t operated by humans, they can create that impression for the customer, making the relationship feel lighter.

Chatbots provide instant and personalized interaction with users. Once they have the visitor’s data, the platform will offer a unique experience tailored to the customer’s needs.

Leadster strengthens relationship marketing through its chatbot for sales and marketing. The tool allows the company to capture customers, answer questions, qualify them, and be available all the time.

How to use Chatbots for Relationship Marketing

There’s no better way to strengthen your relationship marketing strategy than by leveraging tools that enhance communication with your users.

That’s where chatbots come in: besides providing the necessary and personalized support to consumers, they also optimize your marketing processes, from qualification to post-sale, further strengthening the relationship with the customer.

Here’s how to take advantage of chatbots in Relationship Marketing!

Pre-qualify Contacts via WhatsApp

Stop receiving contacts on WhatsApp from people who don’t even know what your company does or wasting time manually qualifying leads.

By investing in a chatbot in your strategy, you can instantly qualify the lead in an optimized and personalized way, plus distribute them intelligently to your WhatsApp accounts.

Think of it this way: with pre-qualification, your salespeople will be more prepared to contact WhatsApp leads since the necessary information will already have been gathered.

In short, the benefits of using chatbots + WhatsApp in your relationship marketing strategy are:

Pre-qualification of the lead before it reaches this channel;
Leads with the chatbot can be placed in a relationship funnel;
All metrics are saved in the Chatbot;
The approach is proactive from the first contact;
With qualification, contacts can go directly to the responsible salesperson;
Qualified leads result in more sales.

24/7 Support for Simple Inquiries

The chatbot will be your employee, available to assist the customer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In other words, you’ll ensure fast and efficient service to consumers, even outside business hours.

A company that has generated good results with the chatbot offering 24-hour support is SmartFit – a chain of gyms – which, due to its rapid growth and large customer base, found itself with many users and few strategies to provide support and engage.

Until the brand decided to invest in chatbots with the help of Superare, a technology company, and from there, a team dedicated exclusively to customer service and relationship was formed.

From then on, the tool began to be part of all phases of customer interaction, from presenting and organizing services, to purchases and post-sale humanized support.

Offering a Consistent Tone of Voice from the First Interaction

Investing in a consistent tone of voice is key to good brand communication, ensuring the effectiveness of your Relationship Marketing campaigns.

Chatbots can be programmed to follow a standardized service script, ensuring that the company always conveys the same message in every interaction.

Delivery Services

Optimizing your delivery process is also a way to boost Relationship Marketing.

Chatbots can be used by restaurants and businesses offering delivery by integrating them into the sales system. This not only provides customers with more information during the order process but also offers faster and more efficient service.

Integration with Messenger and WhatsApp

The more channels your company is present on, the better!

However, managing multiple marketing channels can sometimes cause confusion due to the number of platforms to oversee.

That’s why having a chatbot is essential, as the tool will provide multichannel service, ensuring your customers can reach out through their preferred medium, with key data already collected, facilitating communication.

Personal Shopper

Personalized service? Yes, chatbots provide that too!

This tool recommends products based on the customer’s purchase history and preferences. This allows the company to offer a more personalized service, increasing customer satisfaction.

The e-commerce network ShopFacil, from Bradesco, is one company that has successfully tested and approved this use.

This case started in 2016, in partnership with eShoppers. The process took six months until the launch of the chatbot, which utilizes natural language processing, image recognition, and voice recognition technologies.

The result of this effort is a marketing chatbot that helps customers find products, compare prices, read reviews, and make purchases.

🔎 Check this out: Artificial Intelligence in Digital Marketing – 21 Use Cases

Offering Content

Finally, you can also offer your content through chatbots, thus strengthening your relationship with customers by educating them, as well as sharing tips, news, and updates.

This strategy was widely used by Itaú Bank’s chatbot between 2017 and 2018. The tool, in addition to offering simple and efficient service, also took the opportunity to send content that helped address users’ questions.

Is It Worth Investing in Relationship Marketing?

Relationship Marketing is a great way to enhance your company’s results, especially if you have low repurchase rates, need to improve your image with consumers, or want to build a more complex strategy for companies that don’t face these specific issues.

Businesses from different sectors, sizes, and business models need ways to serve customers after the purchase, and this is the minimum.

Relationship Marketing is indeed worth the investment, as it improves the relationship stage with the consumer, helps create loyal fans and communities, increases LTV and average ticket, spreads the brand, attracts new customers, and establishes relevant authority in the market.

Examples of Companies That Succeeded with This Strategy

If you’re still not convinced of the importance of applying Relationship Marketing in your company, here are some examples of companies that succeeded with this strategy!

Domino’s

One of the world’s most famous pizzerias reinvented itself through relationship marketing. Domino’s shared a series of negative customer reviews before promising a new and improved recipe. The negative ads caught attention and generated anticipation among the audience. Taking advantage of this moment, the pizzeria revamped its product and brand while engaging customers on their favorite digital platforms.

Fenty

The brand that revolutionized the market through inclusion. Fenty innovated with makeup shades and offered a variety of lingerie sizes. In addition, it invested in global messaging to connect with consumers beyond borders. All these measures created a sense of belonging with the brand: people started to feel included, as for the first time, a brand offered so many foundation shades (for all skin types) and lingerie sizes.

General Electric

We’ve already mentioned GE in this article. Let’s remember that the company focused on content diversification, sharing innovative stories from the perspective of its own employees, as well as producing works in the science fiction genre.

Metrics to Measure the Success of Relationship Marketing

After planning and implementing Relationship Marketing actions, it’s crucial to monitor the evolution of indicators.

These metrics will guide you on what’s working and, more importantly, if you’re getting closer to the goal you set for this investment.

Here are some important metrics to track in Relationship Marketing:

Average Ticket: This metric represents the average amount spent in sales or contracts with a company. The higher the average ticket, the more customers tend to spend. A satisfied customer with a good relationship with the brand tends to purchase more and in greater quantities.
Lifetime Value (LTV): This metric is particularly important for companies that rely on recurring sales or services. It tracks how much a customer invests in purchases or services over the entire period they engage with your company. For recurring sales, it’s crucial that the customer is satisfied, or they will seek out the competition.
Repurchase Rate: This tells you how many customers come back to make another purchase. If customers buy from your brand just once and don’t return, what are the reasons? It’s important to understand this rate and these factors before and after implementing actions to gather valuable insights for your Relationship Marketing strategy.

Common Mistakes in Relationship Marketing

The last point we want to bring up in this article is to be careful with actions that should be avoided.

If you want to build a strong, long-term relationship with your customer, pay attention to these points you should avoid:

Not Knowing the Customer’s Needs: If you don’t know your customer and their pains and desires, you won’t be able to create a relationship or communicate with them. It’s that simple. Know your audience to show how your company’s solutions are exactly what they need!
Focusing Only on the Company’s Interests: Once again, we emphasize that the focus of relationship marketing should be on the consumer, not the company. The customer needs to feel special and experience a sense of exclusivity and personalization.
Not Solving the Customer’s Problem: There’s nothing more frustrating as a consumer than contacting a company and not having your issue resolved or, worse, not receiving a response or experiencing poor service. This is one of the main reasons customers don’t return to make another purchase.

Conclusion

If you want to retain customers and turn them into strong advocates of your brand, investing in Relationship Marketing is an excellent strategy!

The relationship created with the consumer further propels brands in competitive markets, and a user-focused buying experience will maintain a healthy, positive relationship with your customer.

Did you enjoy the content on this topic?

Don’t forget to share your feedback in the comments and check out the next post on another important marketing strategy: Conversational Marketing.