Marketing and customer success go together like peanut butter and jelly – cultivating happy, loyal customers with optimal lifetime value. Unfortunately, most companies run these departments separately, often leading to miscommunication and customer frustration. Instead of marketing focusing on identifying potential customers and promoting the brand, while customer success is working on engaging and retaining current clientele; align them like one customer retention superpower! Here are three steps to successful unification…
Cultivate
It would be great if customer loyalty stemmed solely from making a good product or providing amazing service. Instead, brand advocacy is earned over time through a steady stream of positive interactions and inspiring content. Aligning the messaging of the marketing and customer success teams creates a consistent experience for clients based on:
- Integrity
- Credibility
- Trust
- Genuine interest and concern
Companies who use each step of the sales cycle to provide value to the prospect before they ever become a customer are off to a good start. After that client is onboarded, marketing and customer success can nurture clients into loyalists who view the company as their solution provider and industry expert. (And are more than happy to spread the word about their satisfaction to everyone they know!)
Consolidate
In a world where one unhappy customer can result in $2 million in lost revenue, failing to understand a buyer’s goals and metrics – from every angle – is a costly company mistake.
Consolidating customer data across the marketing and customer success departments paints a holistic view of the client’s account standing, past issues, and requirements for happiness and engagement. This technological transparency makes for a consistent experience, highlighting the customer’s value and the company’s competence.
Rather than the marketing team viewing customers as opportunities, while customer success focuses on their service and complaints, successful companies merge the departments into churn mitigation machines! By sharing information and leveraging each other’s skillsets, these two divisions form a unit dedicated to customer engagement and loyalty. As collaborators, customer success fulfills the promotional promises made by marketing, while marketing targets existing customers with relevant content – turning buyers into brand advocates.
Coordinate
Aligning marketing and customer success is a winning strategy, but it doesn’t happen magically. Even when the goal is securing customer loyalty, it takes coordinated leadership from both teams to put the plan into action. Management must lead by example, instilling confidence in the new approach and patience in the process.
Instead of asking the two departments to act as a cohesive unit, leadership should treat them as such by providing opportunities for collaboration and growth:
- Hold regular meetings between marketing and customer success
- Build cross-departmental collaboration by developing a “Customer Marketing and Success” task force
- Select integrated software so they can access the same customer data (hint: we are a Hubspot partner and would be happy to help you with that integration.)
- Have them sit in on each other’s calls and meetings to hear feedback first-hand
- Ensure all content reflects a unified brand voice and message
- Encourage sharing input for blogs, webinars, promotions, services, and incentives for existing customers
Aligning marketing and customer success may feel overwhelming, but keep in mind that setting a positive tone for learning new methods, adopting shared technology, and embracing different philosophies will help the transition go smoothly. Members of both teams understand that loyal customers are happy customers, and that happy customers bring in new business, which benefits everyone.
That, or just rely on the knowledge that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.
If you’d like assistance turning these strategies into a workable model for your business, we’re here to help! Contact us for a free 15-minute phone consultation.
