✨ Everybody wants to be a VIP. It feels good to be treated specially and cared for. It’s human nature.
So there is no reason why you should keep ignoring your best customers!
But we can’t treat them to extra discounts, special offers and early access to sales and product offerings if we can’t identify them. The first step is to find these customers and segment them from your main list.
? How?
It’s quite simple, but you have to decide between some alternate options:
1️⃣ By segmenting according to the total value of money spent, you identify the Big Spenders.
Customers who have spent over X amount of money over Y amount of time
2️⃣ By segmenting according to the total number of purchases, you identify the Frequent Purchasers.
Customers who have purchased X number of products over Y amount of time
3️⃣ By segmenting by both the amount of money spent and the number of purchases, you identify your most Frequent, High-Dollar Purchasers.
Customers who have purchased X number of products AND spent Z amount of money over Y amount of time
Which one to go with and what cutoff numbers you will use depends on many factors, as you can imagine. These include your products, store, pricing, target audience, etc. We recommend experimenting with these segments. Focus your VIP efforts on segments with more than 1000 customers for best results.
✂Three reasons to start segmenting your VIPs
?Rewarding loyal customers builds a stronger brand.
?VIP campaigns can improve sales, increase customer engagement and enhance the average customer lifetime value.
?If you make your VIP benefits clear, you will also encourage regular customers to strive for VIP status, encouraging further purchases!
Results speak for themselves! This is a very simple example.
Here you can see a VIP campaign generated $618 from only 448 people. Considering the main segment is 30K, this amount of revenue was quite impressive!
VIP segments are even more powerful in the holiday season. Last Christmas, we generated nearly $90,000 for one client by sending separate campaigns to four key segments: Early Birds, High Spenders, Buyers and Non-Buyers.
The content across the four different emails was largely similar, but we offered VIPs a small additional discount and addressed each segment slightly differently. This resulted caused the points we made to each segment to resonate. They were relevant to each of them in particular.
In general, VIP promos work better when they treat recipients with gratitude and invite them to exclusive opportunities. These promos generally need less product information and testimonials than, say, emails to non-buyers.
? Finally, here are some ideas of what to send to your VIP’s and how to engage with them:
1️⃣ Create a VIP welcome flow – Once they achieve VIP status congratulate them! Send them a welcome email and give them a gift (free shipping, discount, BOGOF, etc.)!
2️⃣ Run exclusive sales for VIP customers – Simply send the same campaign but separate VIP’s and give them a % off on top!
3️⃣ Open sales early to VIP customers – Give them exclusive access to New Arrivals earlier than the rest or open big holiday sales earlier just for them.
What VIP successes have you had? Share in the comments below to open up discussion!
Sócrates Lozano and Thomas McClintock, Hustler Marketing
