Navigating the Marketing Maze: The Crucial Role of Omnichannel Strategies in Customer Connection

Do you ever feel lost in the world of expanding marketing channels? As a small or mid-sized business (SMB), building strong customer relationships can feel like navigating a maze. New platforms emerge constantly, and juggling them all seems daunting. The good news is there’s a way to simplify your approach and create a more connected customer experience: omnichannel marketing.

At Green Apple Strategy, we’ve witnessed a massive shift towards omnichannel marketing in recent years. Customers increasingly expect seamless integration between traditional advertising, digital channels like social media and email, and the growing field of mobile marketing, text marketing, and loyalty programs. This growing demand is one of the driving forces behind the launch of our sister brand Olive + Leo, a platform that provides hospitality businesses with an affordable solution to build a comprehensive and effective omnichannel experience for their customers. 

This article aims to provide valuable best practices for developing an omnichannel customer experience for both B2B and B2C businesses.

What is an Omnichannel Customer Experience?

Think of it this way: traditionally, businesses interacted with customers through isolated channels, like email or print ads. Omnichannel marketing takes a more holistic approach. It’s about nurturing, selling to, and supporting customers across various interconnected channels.

Imagine a customer researching a product on social media, then receiving a personalized discount code via email, and finally making a purchase through a mobile-friendly website. This interconnected approach fosters a cohesive brand experience that builds trust and loyalty.

The power of omnichannel marketing is undeniable. Here are some key statistics that illustrate its impact:

  • Marketers report a 250% higher engagement rate when using an omnichannel strategy compared to single-channel marketing. (Source)
  • Studies show an average order value increase of 13% when businesses leverage omnichannel marketing. (Source)
  • Businesses employing omnichannel strategies boast a remarkable 89% customer retention rate, compared to 33% of companies with weak omnichannel engagement. (Source)

These numbers clearly demonstrate the power of connecting with your audience across all relevant touchpoints.

Developing Your Omnichannel Customer Experience Strategy

Building a successful omnichannel strategy requires careful planning and execution. Here are some essential best practices to consider:

Know Your Audience

Before diving into channel selection, take the time to create buyer personas. Clearly define your ideal customers, understand their online behavior, and identify the platforms they frequent most. This will allow you to prioritize your resources and tailor your messaging to the channels where your audience is most actively engaged.

Start with the Basics

Building a robust omnichannel experience takes time. It’s essential to get the basics right before expanding. Focus on optimizing your website for a seamless user experience across all devices. Establish a strong presence on relevant social media platforms to ensure consistent engagement. Remember, customers expect a cohesive experience—neglecting questions or inquiries on your website while actively engaging on Instagram creates a negative brand impression. Consider using social media management tools to provide timely responses to customers and build brand integrity.

Prioritize Mobile Messaging 

We live in a mobile-first world. First, ensure your website is optimized for mobile devices. Next, know that many customers also prefer to engage with businesses via text message. Studies show that a significant portion of consumers (statistics vary, but some report upwards of 90%) are open to receiving marketing messages via text, making it a powerful channel for reaching your audience.

Craft a Consistent Brand Narrative

Develop a clear and consistent brand narrative that resonates across all channels. Your messaging, visuals, and overall brand personality should be recognizable and engaging, regardless of whether a customer encounters your brand on social media, on your website, or through traditional advertising.

Measure Impact Through the Customer Lens

When evaluating your omnichannel marketing experience, prioritize the customer experience. Move beyond simply asking, “Are we getting our message across?”  Instead, focus on whether your message and approach are actually making your customers’ lives easier and more enjoyable. Track relevant metrics such as customer satisfaction scores, website conversion rates, and social media engagement to gauge the effectiveness of your omnichannel strategy.

Building Customer Loyalty in the Age of Choice

While embarking on an omnichannel marketing journey may seem daunting at first, the rewards are substantial. By combining marketing and technical expertise with data-driven insights, you can develop a strategy that fosters positive customer experiences and drives loyalty. 
 

Ready to take your marketing efforts and customer experience to the next level?

Green Apple Strategy can help you develop a comprehensive marketing strategy tailored to your unique needs. Learn more about our approach to building a marketing strategy or contact our team.

If you work in the hospitality industry, we’d love for you to check out Olive + Leo, a customer loyalty platform to help hospitality businesses create an omnichannel experience for customers through mobile messaging, social media marketing, and email automation. Visit Olive + Leo to see how this innovative platform can streamline your communication and elevate your customer experience.

How Text Marketing Can Build Customer Loyalty for Nashville Restaurants

With more than two million people in the metro area, Nashville restaurants have plenty of potential customers. But it takes more than getting a customer in the door to build a sense of loyalty. Modern-day marketing techniques can help, ensuring your brand is showing up in their email inbox, social media feeds, and more. However, with an open rate of 90 percent, one method is making it easier to get your message heard: text message marketing. 

Text message marketing can be a great marketing tactic for local and corporate brands alike. In this post, we outline best practices for using text marketing to engage with customers, increase loyalty, and stand out in a crowded market.  

Text Marketing Tips for Restaurants 

Opt-Ins Only

Text marketing is highly effective, but only among the customers who want to hear from you. With this in mind, only send messages to customers who have permitted you to do so. You can encourage them to opt-in on your website, in a newsletter, or through other digital channels. You may even offer a one-time discount in exchange for signing up for text messages. 

Even after a customer opts in, go the extra mile with a text that allows them to confirm their subscription to marketing and promotional messages. On the other hand, make it easy for a customer to unsubscribe, too.

Choose Words Carefully

Writing text message copy differs from writing for email, social or other channels. Because you have limited space to communicate, be sure to introduce your restaurant promptly and then stick to one call to action. Is there a sale you want to promote? What about a new menu item or a special event? Choose one call-to-action (CTA) and craft a clever message around it.

A casual tone works best for text messages when writing your copy. Yes, we give you permission to use abbreviations and emojis if that makes sense for your brand! Remember that although you can use a relaxed tone, customers still expect you to be professional and respect their time by not sending too many texts and contacting them during regular business hours. Avoid late night or early morning send times.  

Have an Omni-Channel Approach 

Text marketing for restaurants is an excellent way to build customer loyalty. However, it should not be your only approach. Part of successful marketing is meeting customers where they are, and not all of your customers will subscribe to your text messages. With this in mind, it’s critical to continue building out strategies that include marketing via email, social media, and at your brick-and-mortar location. Depending on who your target audience is, you can even use direct mail. This way, your brand can be top of mind even when customers are away from their mobile phones.  

Follow the Rules 

The path to text marketing success comes with rules and guidelines that can vary based on where you live. These include getting written consent (such as through an opt-in text), identifying your brand in the message, providing clear terms and conditions, offering an opt-out option, and always respecting your customers’ privacy. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)  provides essential and detailed information on privacy laws and regulations for SMS marketing that can protect you from future legal issues. 

Amplify Your Marketing Strategy 

When building a successful text marketing plan, our team at Green Apple understands that it can look different for every restaurant brand. We will take time to understand your business and your needs to develop an omni-channel engagement strategy to ensure you can engage with all your customers—wherever they are. Contact us today, and let’s get the conversation started.

From Visitors to Regulars: Building Customer Loyalty in the Hospitality Industry

We all know a restaurant that always seems to have a line out the door. And if you live in a city like Nashville, you may even have a favorite coffee shop or bar where they always remember your name. It’s no secret that these cherished local spots hold onto their customers with something more than just delicious food and good coffee. They’ve mastered the art of customer loyalty. 

In the competitive landscape of the hospitality industry, where competition is constant and customer options are abundant, loyalty is everything. Here are just a few of the facts: 

  • A 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by 25-95%. (Source)
  • A loyal customer spends 67% more than a new one. (Source)
  • Loyal customers are: (Source)
    • 5x as likely to repurchase
    • 5x as likely to forgive
    • 4x as likely to refer
    • 7x as likely to try a new offering 

With numbers like that, it’s no surprise that restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and hotels are prioritizing customer loyalty programs and strategies more than ever.

Here at Green Apple Strategy, we’ve had the pleasure of working with incredible hospitality businesses, witnessing firsthand the transformative power of fostering genuine connections with customers. While there’s no magic formula, there are certain key ingredients that cultivate customer loyalty and keep those doors opening (or tables turning)!

Key Ingredients to Build Customer Loyalty

Here are a few insights into what it takes to foster customer loyalty that we’ve learned through our work with numerous restaurants and venues over the years: 

Service with a Smile (and a Listening Ear)

Customer loyalty all starts with the basics. Friendly, attentive staff, prompt service, and a genuine desire to exceed expectations go a long way in creating a positive experience. But remember, service doesn’t end there. Actively seeking and incorporating customer feedback through surveys, online reviews, or even casual conversations shows you care about the customer experience and are committed to improvement.

Strategies for Suprise and Delight

Who doesn’t love a little unexpected treat? Going beyond the expected and sprinkling in moments of joy can be an invaluable customer loyalty tactic! You could offer birthday treats, complimentary tastings, or loyalty program rewards that feel special and personal. Remember, it’s the little things that often leave the biggest impression.

Speak to Customers Directly Through Personalized Communication

Personalized communication is a high value for today’s customers. Rather than sending generic marketing blasts, it’s essential to utilize platforms like segmented email marketing and targeted text message campaigns to send offers and updates that are relevant to individual customer preferences.

Track Progress and Measure Success

You can’t improve what you don’t track! Implement tools to measure key metrics like repeat customer rates, average order value, and engagement with loyalty programs. This data-driven approach enables you to identify what’s working well and where adjustments are needed so you can enhance your strategies as you go.

Questions to Spark Your Customer Loyalty Strategy

Whether you’re a local coffee shop or restaurant franchise, here are a few thought-provoking to evaluate your current approach and identify opportunities to cultivate deeper customer loyalty:

  1. What are my customer demographics and preferences? Knowing your audience is key to personalization.
  2. What are my current customer touchpoints? Are you utilizing all channels effectively?
  3. How do I encourage feedback and actively listen to my customers?
  4. Do I offer unique experiences or moments of surprise and delight moments?
  5. Is my loyalty program engaging and rewarding?
  6. Am I tracking and analyzing data to understand what’s working and what’s not?

Ready to Turn One-Timers into Regulars?

Building customer loyalty takes effort, but the rewards are undeniable. By focusing on these key ingredients and asking yourself the right questions, you can transform your hospitality business into a cherished destination, turning visitors into regulars and building a community that thrives on loyalty and love.

At Green Apple Strategy, we’re committed to helping businesses thrive by cultivating meaningful connections with their patrons. Through our customer loyalty platform Olive + Leo or our marketing agency services, we’re here to help you build enduring customer relationships. Reach out to our team today and let’s embark on this journey together.

How to Harness the Power of Storytelling in Event Marketing

Let’s be honest… it takes a lot of time, attention, and energy to plan and execute an event. The last thing you want is to waste your resources on an event that falls flat. After planning and executing dozens of events for clients over the years, we’ve learned some of the most important best practices for creating an effective and unforgettable event. Harnessing the power of storytelling is one of the foundational pillars of effective event marketing.   

Building your event around a compelling story is beneficial for several reasons. It makes promoting your event easier by creating a more intriguing hook for guests or media outlets. It unlocks creative ideas and opportunities to engage attendees. It is easier to promote, and it creates a more memorable experience for attendees. Ultimately, it enables you to connect with your audience on a deeper level.

How to Harness the Power of Storytelling in Event Marketing

Here are some specific tips and ideas that marketers can use to harness the power of storytelling in event marketing:

Start with a Strong Story

The first step is to come up with a strong story that will resonate with your audience. You need to decide on the core idea behind your event. The “story” of your event should be relevant to your brand, your values, and your overall blueprint for your brand story.

Here are a few questions to consider: 

  • What is the overall purpose of the event? What messages or emotions do you want to convey to the attendees?
  • What are the core themes or ideas associated with your brand or organization?
  • Are there any key moments or events in your company’s history that could be used to tell a story?

Make it Personal for Your Audience

Helping your audience see themselves in the story is an important factor. The events that resonate the most are ones that allow you to connect with the audience on an emotional level. When your attendees can see themselves in the story, they’re more likely to remember and enjoy the event.  

Creating an event that resonates with your audience can be challenging because so much of your attention is focused on your marketing goals. Taking time to ask these questions can help create an event that personally resonates with attendees: 

  • What is the target audience for the event? What are their interests and pain points?
  • What could make it a must-attend experience for your target audience?
  • How can you improve their experience or their life through the event.

Engage All the Senses

Visuals can be a powerful way to tell a story, but it’s equally important to think beyond visuals and incorporate elements that appeal to sight, sound, touch, taste, and even smell. In the iconic words of Marshall McLuhan, “The medium is the message.” The way you deliver your story determines its impact on your participants, so have fun with it! 

Here are a few ways you can create an “immersive experience” that supports the story you want to tell:

  • What emotions do you want attendees to feel during the event? 
  • How can you evoke these emotions using sound and lighting design or visual elements?
     
Real-World Examples of Storytelling in Event Marketing

Over the past few months, we’ve been able to design and implement several event marketing strategies for our Green Apple clients. Here are some examples of how storytelling has been used in their event marketing plans:

The Skylight Grand Opening Event: Sip & Sample 

After months of renovation, The Factory at Franklin wanted to create an opportunity for guests to explore the reimagined space and celebrate the grand opening of The Skylight—the new bar at The Factory at Franklin. We designed an event called Sip & Sample that highlighted The Skylight’s narrative of being a space for the community. We brought together new and current vendors of The Factory and invited the community to join us for this exclusive grand opening event.  

Crain Construction’s 90th Anniversary Celebration

Known for building relationships and structures that last a lifetime, Crain Construction wanted to celebrate their 90th anniversary alongside team members, former employees, customers, and industry partners who supported their growth over the years. By hosting the event at Prancing Horse of Nashville Ferrari Dealership—one of their most recent projects—we were able to create an immersive experience that celebrated the past while generating excitement for the company’s future. 

United Communication’s Project UNITE Celebration

United Communications is a local internet company making tremendous strides in providing high-speed internet access to rural communities across Middle Tennessee. They came to Green Apple Strategy looking for a way to celebrate a state-funded grant for their Project UNITE initiative. Every aspect of the event, including the location, speaker list, and food choices, was designed to demonstrate the company’s commitment as a local provider.

Let Green Apple Plan Your Next Event

Special events are a powerful tool that can be used to enhance your marketing goals. If you’re ready to develop a compelling story or theme for your upcoming event, ensuring a memorable and impactful experience for your attendees, we’d love to talk. Reach out to us for a consultation.

Marketing and Customer Service: Improve Collaboration to Enhance Experiences

Overhead shot of two people working on laptops

Businesses need both marketing and customer service to survive. While each team’s day-to-day activities look very different, both play an important role in engaging clients, increasing new sales opportunities, and generating more profit.

Collaboration between your marketing department and customer service team is critical for creating a more customer-centric culture. But where do you start? In this article, we want to unpack a few helpful principles we’ve learned over the years when it comes to collaborating with our clients’ customer service teams to enhance the experience for their clientele.

3 Reasons to Cultivate Collaboration Between Marketing and Customer Service 

Before we dive into the “how,” here are a few important reasons to break down the silos between your marketing and customer service teams:  

1. It’s more profitable to retain current customers than acquire new ones.

Let’s face it. Attracting new customers is hard. It requires a lot of time, energy, and resources to engage a prospective customer all the way through the sales cycle. In fact, numerous studies have found that it is 6 to 7 times more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to keep a current one. On the other hand, a 10% increase in customer retention levels results in a 30% increase in the value of the company. Because of the role that marketing plays within the organization, it can be a valuable asset when it comes to developing an intentional retention strategy. 

2. Marketing can learn from customer service to develop smarter campaigns. 

Your service team has a front-row seat to understanding how people really feel about your products and services. They know the challenges your customers face every day. They also know how people use your solutions to make their lives better. This information can be an invaluable resource for your marketing team as they develop marketing campaigns that speak directly to the pain points of prospective customers. 

3. You offer the same personal experience and congruent messaging for your customers.

The last thing you want your clients to feel is that you only cared about closing the sale. That’s why retaining business requires as much involvement from marketing as it does from your service team. Today’s consumers expect a consistent journey from the brands they support. In fact, 78% of customers expect consistent interactions with your business from the time they first engage your brand until they become a customer. Combining the efforts of marketing and service not only benefits your customers, it ultimately impacts your bottom line. 

5 Ways Marketing and Customer Service Can Make Each Other Better

If you’re looking to create more collaboration between your marketing and service teams, here are a few best practices to consider: 

1. Ensure your product marketing resonates with new and prospective buyers. 

Creating buyer personas is an important part of building a marketing strategy. If you want your messaging to resonate, it’s important to know what prospective (or current) customers are thinking, feeling, and facing on a daily basis. Because your service team is talking to your customers all the time, they likely know more about them than any other department in your company. Make time for these two teams to work together to create buyer personas. Their collaboration will make sure your marketing materials are targeted and relevant. 

2. Leverage the expertise of your service team in your content creation.

Your customer service team also knows your products and services better than anyone else. They’re often the ones helping clients find ways to solve challenges or provide helpful information. That’s why they make incredible thought leaders within your company. Your marketing team should collaborate with your service team around content ideas to capture helpful best practices and share valuable knowledge about prospective customers. 

3. Collaborate to monitor and respond to customers on social media. 

Social media put the power of brand perception into the hands of your clients and customers. Today, people can leave comments or reviews on social media platforms, Google, or industry-specific message boards. Many times, it’s the marketing team’s responsibility to monitor these channels. But working with the customer service team is key for transforming a negative comment into a more positive experience. 

We all know when a brand’s social media response seems cold and canned. Developing a process for marketing and service to respond collaboratively, even personally reaching out to the customer through their email, can make a tremendous difference when it comes to reputation management.  

4. Capture client success stories and testimonials for marketing collateral. 

While learning from complaints is important, capturing positive feedback can be just as valuable for your marketing efforts. When customer service and marketing work together, it helps the marketing team find testimonies or case study candidates more efficiently. This is particularly helpful if you want to turn customer reviews into a solid content marketing plan for your business. 

5. Create exceptional experiences for clientele with a loyalty program or a “surprise and delight” campaign. 

Your service team spends most of its time “in the weeds,” supporting customers. Finding the time or mental capacity to consider outside-the-box ways to strengthen the bond with clients can be difficult. As a department that’s generally known for being more creative, your marketing team can help enhance your customer experience with surprise and delight efforts. 

Despite having different job responsibilities, marketing and customer teams share common goals of attracting and converting new visitors into customers and providing exceptional service to retain those customers. To learn more about how we can help your internal teams cross-pollinate, reach out to schedule a meeting with us.

5 Best Practices for Marketing Project Management

Person sitting at a desk with a notebook and laptop

Let’s be honest – managing all of your marketing efforts is tough. There are dozens of steps to move a single project from an idea to a completed deliverable and requires collaboration between multiple parties. While there can be a lot that can go wrong, the good news is that there’s a way to bring order to all the madness that marketing campaigns bring with them – marketing project management!

Project management is more than a way to make sure your team is staking on time and budget, it actually increases the ROI of your marketing efforts. Marketers who plan projects are four times more likely to be successful.

At Green Apple, we’ve learned quite a bit about the foundational principles and best practices for effective marketing project management. While some of the lessons we learned the hard way, others were discovered through the creative problem-solving of our team. Today, we’ve built a team of gifted client relations specialists whose primary focus is to execute an effective project management process. 

For this article, we’ve asked one of our assistant client relations specialists, Kayla Reyes, to share a few insights she uses when it comes to “keeping all the plates spinning” for our clients.

5 Best Practices for Marketing Project Management

There are dozens of elements that go into managing your marketing projects effectively. From creating your overall structure and procedures to defining the communication processes, there’s a lot to consider. But how do you go about implementing these foundational principles for marketing project management? Here are a few best practices we’ve learned over the years:

1. Hire the right people.

Many of the tasks and responsibilities of a project manager require a certain mindset and skillset. Some people are big vision, whiteboard dreamers. They typically make better strategists that project managers. 

At Green Apple, we use a couple of tools to assess a team member’s project management acumen. For example, we have several enneagram ones who embody the characteristics of being honest, detail-oriented professionals. We also use the Culture Index to evaluate the interpersonal skills that are required for project management. 

2. Find tools to help.

Once you have the right people in your project management role, it’s important to equip them with tools that can help them be successful. In today’s digital-first world, this often means finding the right project management software for your team. As a hybrid marketing agency, we’ve found a lot of success in using tools like Basecamp and Asana for project management and collaboration with clients. 

3. Build consistent processes and systems around your tools. 

Investing in project management software is only helpful if your team knows how to use it. It requires intentional planning to discover how the match the features that are available in a project management tool with the internal processes and structure of your team. Training is another important factor to ensure everyone has what they need to fulfill their task and nothing slips through the cracks during a project. 

4. Take a detail-oriented approach to execution.

Organizing and streamlining ideas and projects is essential to keep on track with deadlines. This is even more true in a fast-paced agency environment when you’re serving multiple clients at once. 

While moving a project through the stages of development is one key, making sure it’s done well and nothing is overlooked is another. The people who are really great at what they do focus on executing – not just the big things but also on all the little details. A good project manager recognizes that even the tiniest details matter. They make sure everyone has what they need for their specific task and address any mistakes that are made along the way.  

5. Periodically ask what’s working and what’s not.

Consistently asking, “is this working?” is just as important with your project management process as it is with other areas of marketing. At Green Apple, we make sure our project management approach integrates with our client’s internal processes. We’ve found it helpful to host quarterly meetings with our project managers and Orchard members to identify ways to improve our project management processes internally. 

“As a project manager, I love getting into the weeds to help our clients launch a strategy or create a campaign that makes a tangible difference in the world,” Kayla described. “It’s always meaningful to look back and celebrate the hundreds of steps that are taken — and all the people who are involved – to execute all of the marketing efforts for our clients.”

You can learn more about Green Apple’s unique approach or connect with our team to discover how we can become your marketing partner. 

 

Surprise and Delight: Tips and Ideas to Show Appreciation and Enhance Customer Satisfaction

Sqaurespace employee having coffee with a coworker

Marketing plays an important role in every part of a buyer’s journey. From creating a memorable first impression to finding ways to turn customers into raving fans, it’s important to know how to create experiences that enhance customer satisfaction. 

The concept of “surprise and delight” is one of our favorite tools in our marketing tool belt. In essence, surprise and delight is a strategy to reward customers when they’re not expecting it. These customer experience tactics have proven to trigger positive feelings, create a deeper sense of brand loyalty, increase referrals, and multiply revenue. These moments work as a brand differentiator, and they can also be a highly effective strategy for fostering long-term customer loyalty. 

Some of our favorite marketing campaigns over the years have included helping our clients find ways to “surprise and delight” their customers. It’s always fun to show appreciation and bring joy to someone’s day. We’ve also learned a thing or two about how to enhance customer satisfaction using this technique. Here’s what we’ve learned: 

3 Tips for Incorporating “Surprise and Delight” Into Your Marketing

As you look for ways to surprise and delight your customers, here are three best practices to consider: 

1. Make it Personal 

The best surprise and delight campaigns are personal. Giving a gift or reward to a customer can inspire strong brand loyalty. If you have a small number of clients, consider how to make each gift or reward as personal as possible. Companies with a large number of customers can still find ways to have a personal touch. Customer segmentation is an effective tactic to incorporate personalization into your surprise and delight campaigns so that particular types of rewards target the customers who will appreciate them the most.

2. Make it Genuine

Today’s customers know the difference between a gift and a marketing tactic. For example, some companies create “surprise and delight” campaigns based on coupons or discounts. Other companies use location-based services to reach customers on mobile devices and offer discount coupons when they’re near a particular physical location. But these are classic sales promotions, rather than surprise and delight campaigns.

The best surprise and delight campaigns show customers you genuinely care about them. It could be bringing unexpected gifts or simply creating special moments in the purchasing process for consumers. Even website design can include moments of surprise and delight. For instance, an unexpected 404 error page can bring levity and playfulness to website navigation. The more small moments of joy you can include in the customer journey, the more likely customers are to retain positive feelings about your brand. 

3. Make it Simple 

One obstacle that keeps businesses from investing in surprise and delight is a fear of the unknown. Established brands may have trouble finding places in their customer experience for a breath of fresh air, a moment of joy, or a truly human connection. Our advice to these brands is to start small and go from there. Don’t overthink it. Maybe your sales presentation could incorporate a meme or pop culture reference. Your merchandise or packaging could include a character, pun, story, quote, or tasteful joke. With attention to detail and an understanding of your customer base, you can find places to spread joy and build brand integrity. 

3 Ideas to Enhance Customer Satisfaction with Surprise and Delight

As you consider how to incorporate surprise and delight into your marketing efforts, here are three specific scenarios you can create campaigns:

1. Send Client or Customer Appreciation Gifts 

According to data from Merkle HelloWorld Loyalty Report, the best ways to engage consumers is through surprise offers or gifts for being a customer. Many companies send gifts during the holiday season. But sending gifts randomly throughout the year is a great way to create a more memorable experience. In today’s digitally connected world, virtual client appreciation gifts are also valuable tools to enhance customer satisfaction. 

2. Incorporate Surprise and Delight into Client Onboarding 

The onboarding process is important for establishing the foundation of the relationship with your clients and customers. While creating a seamless onboarding experience and setting expectations are important for creating an outstanding onboarding experience, why not find a way to surprise and delight them from the very beginning? 

3. Celebrate Your Customers’ Personal Wins

One way to show customers you care about more than just their business is to celebrate their personal victories and successes. This is where social media channels can help you stay connected with customers. As you get to know them, find ways to show you have a genuine interest in them as humans. It could be sending a personal birthday card, congratulating them on an educational milestone, or sending a meal or gift card for their newborn. 

The best way to enhance customer satisfaction is to make them feel like you’re going above and beyond for them. Surprise and delight customers by doing something unexpected to show appreciation and let them know how much you value knowing them.

A Marketing Agency’s Review: Delighted Survey Platform


It’s a dilemma many businesses face: how can you capture accurate customer reviews without being invasive? For B2C businesses, review platforms like Yelp and Google Reviews do provide some feedback. How can B2B companies also leverage the type of feedback B2C organizations have more access to? While we’ve used several survey platforms to capture customer responses for our clients, Green Apple recently began using the Delighted survey platform. What were our experiences? Keep reading to find out! 

What Services Does the Delighted Survey Platform Offer?

Like many survey providers, Delighted offers seven different types of customer surveys, which include simple visual assessment measures. These include a smiley face scale, a thumbs up/thumbs down indicator, and a five-point scale survey. At Green Apple, we often use their more advanced survey types, which allow our clients to track things like a customer’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), a Customer Effort Score (CES), a Product Market Fit (PMF), and a Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). These data points can help our clients make informed decisions about product or service changes they plan to implement.

Delighted Provides Powerful Data Analytics

Green Apple originally chose Delighted because it’s user friendly and cost effective, but we’ve been impressed by the data and report options available. We also appreciate the email reports and the ability to track keywords in survey responses.

We’ve been able to really dive into the metrics offered by the platform by segmenting the customer responses and isolating specific keywords. We can also isolate reviews by the employee for the customer served. We have been able to track and report how well that employee has performed with customers. We have recently started reporting on this data monthly to show the client the top technicians and their NPS score or customer feedback. The client has implemented this data into their internal review efforts. 

Delighted Offers Multiple Survey Styles & Delivery Methods

Green Apple’s Digital Marketing Specialist Katie Jackson likes that Delighted offers multiple survey options, including SMS, surveys through a website, email surveys, brick-and-mortar kiosk surveys, and iOs in-app surveys. She finds the Delighted dashboard “simple and easy to understand” and says, “It’s very easy to upload and send customer surveys to our client’s customers!” Katie also appreciates the value-add that Delighted brings to our clients. 

“I think that Delighted has brought value to our clients because they are able to reach out quickly to the customer to fix any issues they may have if they leave a poor review. This has created better relationships with our clients’ customers because they are reaching out quickly after they submit a survey. We have also learned that SMS surveys have a really great response rate and customers like being able to text their responses back rather than going to a link in an email,” she says.  

Delighted Surveys: Our Takeaway

This survey platform has been a positive pivot for our Green Apple team. It allows us to gauge and track NPS metrics and offer actionable data to our clients. We’re also able to easily track data for customer responses through the platform. Over the past five months, we’ve come to appreciate all that Delighted offers. 

Want to Capture More Customer Reviews? 

Green Apple Strategy uses responsive, well-designed tools to help our clients gather and analyze essential data points. If you need more insight into your customers’ pain points, our experienced team can help provide you with the right data to make key decisions. From blogging and SEO to PR and social media management, Green Apple Strategy can craft a marketing approach to help you attract and retain qualified leads. Reach out to us today for a consultation.

Client Surveys: The Secret Ingredient for any Successful Agency Partnership


Client satisfaction is an essential ingredient for a successful partnership between a marketing agency and the businesses they serve. Whether it’s creating a website or driving your lead generation and brand awareness campaigns, marketing agencies exist to help your business achieve more than you could on your own. At Green Apple, we firmly believe that if our clients aren’t benefiting from our partnership, we want to know. This is where client surveys have become an essential tool for creating successful partnerships with clients.

Over the years, we’ve helped our clients to build customer surveys that produce the highest return on investment. Recently, we’ve decided to integrate that approach into our own workflow. In this post, we wanted to outline a few specific ways that client surveys align with our values as an agency and why we see them as an opportunity to continually learn, grow, and improve to serve others more effectively. 

4 Ways Client Surveys Help Marketing Agencies Improve 

Here are a few specific ways that client surveys help marketing agencies in the work we do each day: 

  • Client surveys provide insights that help assess client needs and identify effective solutions. It’s difficult to know what’s working and what’s not without qualitative and quantitative feedback. We believe in the value of making data-driven decisions based on campaign results. We also value the qualitative feedback of our clients. Client surveys are a way for us to assess client needs and identify solutions. To formulate our approach, we combine what the survey metrics are showing with what clients express through the surveys.
  • Client surveys provide perspectives on how to better serve and engage clients. Client surveys provide a valuable opportunity to assess how we’re working with our clients, in addition to evaluating the work we’re doing for them. Ultimately, they allow us to assess everything from internal processes that support the work we do to the dozens of interactions we have with clients in a given month.
  • Client surveys give direction for change and improvement. We believe that our clients’ opinions and feedback are two of the most important factors that validate the decisions we make for our business. For example, a few years ago, a significant number of our clients needed more sales-enablement resources than general branding materials. This allowed us to find creative ways to change directions in our service offerings to invest more in sales-enablement strategies that benefited our clients’ needs.
  • Client surveys capture a big picture perspective & track change over time. We’ve had the benefit of working with several clients for numerous years. Client surveys allow us to uncover seasonal trends or see how any recent changes have affected our client experience throughout our partnership together.

Why We Invest in Client Surveys to Enhance Partnership with Clients

Here are a few more specific reasons we’ve decided to invest in client surveys to enhance the partnership we have with clients. 

  • We want to live out our values in every aspect of our business. One of our core values at Green Apple is to put the client first in every aspect of our process — that is our bottom line. We believe client surveys are one of the best ways to do that. Assessing client experiences allows us to listen to clients, hear their feedback, and work with them to help them face their specific challenges.
  • We want to continually look for ways to create strong partnerships with our clients. Partnering with an agency that has a general philosophy and approach to business that is similar to yours is key for effective partnership. Client surveys provide a way for us to make sure we’re in sync with how our clients want to achieve their goals. 
  • We believe that open and honest feedback is key to a successful relationship. Effective agency partnerships are based on achieving results and effective communication. Client surveys provide a way to create stronger partnerships with our clients by providing an anonymous way for them to clearly share their thoughts. 
  • We want to continually learn, grow, and improve how we serve clients. Continual learning and growth are essential in the marketing world. This is just as true in how we serve clients as it is how we keep track of the latest marketing trends. We believe client surveys are a way for us to continue to add value to our clients’ strategies because they provide a way for us to continually learn and improve. 

If you’re curious about Green Apple’s approach to partnership and how we work with brands, check out our services page or portfolio of projects to learn more.

How to Create a More Customer-Centric Culture

Cashier on squarespace register and lady customer


It’s obvious when companies genuinely care about their customers, not just as purchasers but as people. As a customer, you want to feel valued and reassured that your purchase, experience, or service is satisfactory. Building consistent and reactive communication helps you develop long-term and loyal consumer relationships. So, how do you do this? You put the customer first. A customer-centric culture revolves around making the customer happy before, during, and after their purchase, ultimately earning established loyalty and higher growth. This strategy means listening to your customers and implementing what you learn from them. Not only does this practice make consumers satisfied, it helps you stand out from the competition for potential customers. While there are several methods of the approach, we’ve gathered a top five for you to review while you begin to design a customer-centric approach in your organization.

1. Invest In Your Team

Imagine you want to make a complaint about a bad experience. If you encounter a less-than-helpful person when expressing your concerns, you likely won’t return to that business. That’s why you want to hire employees who understand the value of customer relationships. 

While these customer-facing individuals do drive revenue based on customer experience, that’s not their primary duty. More than anything, team members who work directly with customers ensure the customer is understood and satisfied with their experience. To avoid disconnection between customer service and other departments, strategically merge other divisions or schedule regular meetings. Customer service shouldn’t be only certain employees’ responsibility– it should be everyone’s. Though customer service isn’t the only factor in adopting customer-centric ways, hiring and collaborating with excellent people are guaranteed ways to make your customers feel more secure.

2. Have Empathy for Your Customers 

Responding with empathy is essential when developing a successful customer-centric approach. These responses consist of implementing progressive thinking, understanding emotional needs, and genuinely caring about the individual’s concerns. Empathy is a learned and valuable skill for your team members to possess.

According to a PwC study, only 38% of U.S. consumers say the employees they interact with understand their needs. That is a monumental opportunity for your company to specialize in empathetic proficiencies and automatically outshine your competition.

3. Be One Step Ahead

When planning your customer-centric strategy, think of previous customer experiences, including:

  • Frustrations
  • Clarity issues
  • FAQs
  • Miscommunication
  • BONUS: “What If” scenarios

As a team, compile these trouble spots and either solve the hiccups or list the solutions on your website so your existing and potential customers can have their questions asked as soon as possible. You learn these areas of improvement by listening to your customers and are rewarded by their appreciation and extended business.

4. Prioritize Your Relationships First

Did you know that customers who have a good experience are 5X more likely to recommend your product or service than if they have a very poor experience? Relationships and customer satisfaction matter. Whether it’s fun communication through social media interaction or substantiating trust in B2B discussions, you want to know what your customers’ needs and priorities are before all else. Maybe it’s the way you respond or how you market toward products that create customer attraction to your brand. Research and listen to what your audience specifies; you’ll continue to build mutually beneficial relationships.

Ready to Build Your Customer-Centric Culture?

If you’re interested in learning more about how your business could thrive initiating a customer-centric business strategy, contact us today for a consultation! We’re excited to investigate the precise approach for you and your audience.