This is the fifth and final article in our business and marketing automation series. If you missed the other articles, we recommend checking them out too. Here's what we've talked about so far...

1. Sales Team Automations in Your CRM offers some specific ideas for automations you can setup to help your sales team close sales faster and make them work more efficiently. 

2. Email Sequences talks about the smart ways to use email automation that help your business and how they compare with email templates. 

3. Marketing Automations in Kajabi is a unique topic for our community interested in hosting online courses and using that platform. 

4. Automating Accounting and Bookkeeping shares automation ideas (mostly in the Zoho Finance Suite) to make your life easier. 

 Invest in Nurturing Client Relationships

What if you could increase your prices with current clients without push back? Well it's possible when you have done a good job nurturing them. According to PwC, customers will pay a 13% price premium if they feel a company’s customer relations are good.

The time and financial investment you put into client nurturing is well worth it and has a high ROI. That is why we wanted to look closely at the CRM automations that help you in nurturing relationships without losing your authenticity. 

CRM Automations to Nurture Client Relationships

Here are a few ideas to help you do a kick-awesome job of nurturing relationships without creating a ton of extra work or making your seem like a robot.

Value-Add Content

The content marketer in me is going to step up onto my soapbox for a moment. I hope that everyone listens to this important message about content. Sending non-sales content on a regular basis is more likely to help you close sales and increase up-selling efforts than the sales-pushing content, especially for B2B companies. Obviously, it's quite different for physical product brands. 

Value-add content includes ongoing education and news that contribute something valuable to your customers. It could be about smarter ways to use your service (i.e. Zoho sends out an email that shares a popular custom function to use in Zoho CRM) or content that is complimentary to what you offer. 

Examples of Value-Add Content

• If you are attorney, you may want to share legislative updates related to your area of legal expertise. 
• If you have a software platform, you may share ideas about unique ways to use the software that may be less obvious. 
• If you are in investing, you could share tips for smart ways to invest (that are not all about your company) for long-term returns.
• If you are a business coach, perhaps you want to share insights about how to spruce up your LinkedIn profile. 

How do you automate this value-add content?

Ah yes, that is what you really want to know... how to I set this up and have it do the work for me?  The most obvious ways are onboarding and subscriber welcome emails. 

For onboarding a new customer, you could set up a small 3 drip email sequence that teaches the customer how to best utilize your product or service. The email would be triggered by something in your CRM or bookkeeping software that indicates they are a new customer such as a Deal stage being set to "Closed and Won" or a first invoice going out. 

The email subscriber emails are a low-hanging fruit that people often forget about. While a subscriber may not necessarily be a customer, you should treat them as such (to an extent). After someone opts-in to your email or SMS list, your goal is to keep them engaged with your brand to buy something, buy more, or become a raving fan. A few days after opting in, you can trigger a 3-5 drip email sequence offers free resources, educates about "hacks" for your product/service, and maybe in the P.S. include a discount code.

Date-Based Nurturing Content

The simplest way to nurture any relationship is by showing that you care enough to remember important dates. This could include the work or sign-up anniversary, birthdays, closing date (real estate), or case completed date (legal). There are so many other special dates that probably exist in your business that are worth tracking and celebrating.

The first step is to collect this data in a field that is in a date formatted field. This will allow you to trigger an automation based on that date. If you use a CRM or email platform with custom fields, you can create an annual email automation to celebrate the special date. 

Regular Check-Ins

Another simple, smart idea to show you care that can be automated are check-ins. This largely depends on your business, so it may or may not apply to you.  If you have a hands-on service-based business such as coaching or consulting, this is a great tool.

You can create a weekly or monthly email that has standard copy and uses a merge field from your CRM that describes the last conversation / meeting / training to customize it. I might even recommend updating this email template on a regular basis to include something unique. Another approach to this is to use email templates and manually send them. 

Rewards 

Depending on your willingness to offer discounts or rewards for your customers, you can use this idea. The content can be how much the customer has saved or earned this month or year. It could also be used to incentivize the customer to spend more or refer more prospects to earn more.  

To make this work, you will need to have a platform that tracks rewards. It may be in your bookkeeping software or you may have a dedicated platform for it. I recommend connecting it with your CRM to be sure it is properly tracked. The trigger would be best as something date based. 

How Else Do You Nurture Client Relationships?

Tell us your ideas in the comments below, or email us at info at beckmanncollaborative.com. We would love to hear from you. And if your ideas are great, we'll update this post to include them and attribute you.

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