Ultimate Guide to DTC Customer Relationship for Holiday Season


Published: | By Steven Macdonald

Strong customer service can help build a strong DTC customer relationship, win customer trust, ramp sales, and wrap up the year with a positive ROI. In fact, a survey states that 46% of customers are willing to spare more money for brands they trust.

What does DTC stand for?

A DTC (Direct To Consumer) model allows small businesses to cut down on customer acquisition costs, build solid brand-consumer relationships, and gain better visibility and control over their supply chain.

Unlike retail eCommerce, DTC brands directly sell, interact, and manage consumers.

Reports state that the DTC market is thriving at 15% YoY growth. Sales revenue, which was $20B in 2021, is expected to grow multifold in upcoming years.

The holiday season brings a golden opportunity for DTC brands to strike big. 

All these aspects prove that excellent customer service is pivotal for DTC's success.

This article will share how DTC brands can build a stellar customer experience to make the most of the holiday season.

Basic Steps to Build A Stronger Customer Relationship During the Holiday Season

  • Understand Your Customer Needs
  • Diversify Your Marketing Channels
  • Send Personalized Emails for Customer Loyalty
  • Go Beyond a Transactional Relationship

 

#1: Understand Your Customer Needs 

DTC brands deal with customers directly. So, understanding and fulfilling their needs is crucial for business success during the holidays.

Ask yourself:

  • What are their key pain points?
  • What products are they willing to buy?
  • What aspects influence purchases and conversions?
  • Are they happy with holiday-specific product quality and pricing? 

The answers to these questions can help you tap into the target audience's minds. Use this data to create strategies for improving customer relationships. 

Here are a few tips to gain customer insights. 

  • Implement a CRM: Customer relationship management software (CRM) can help DTCs analyze customer data, such as their behavior, purchase pattern, sales interactions, and more.

A screenshot reflecting the benefits of CRM for businesses.Source

Use this data to provide a seamless customer experience, optimizing sales processes.

  • Leverage Online Search Tools: Count on tools like Google Trends to identify holiday shopping trends. 

Notice how this tool offers helpful market insights. Search tools can help you sell relevant holiday products while attracting new business opportunities. 

A screenshot of the Google Trends tool highlighting its usability. Source

#2: Diversify Your Marketing Channels

Leveraging multiple marketing channels can help brands be omnipresent. 

Why is it crucial?

According to McKinsey, customers research 3 to 5 channels before buying. So, omnichannel presence can help reduce friction between a brand and customers, thereby capturing a massive target audience. It will also improve the chances for more conversions. 

Here are two tips to consider:

  • Identify the channels where your target market is present. 
  • Use tools like Buffer Analyze or alternatives to track your brand's performance on channels like Twitter, Instagram, and more. 

Notice how its intuitive analytics dashboard helps determine audience engagement. Analyze the metrics to create effective marketing strategies for the holiday season.

 A screenshot of the Buffer Analyze tool highlighting its featuresSource

Streamline customers' omnichannel experience with AI chatbots. 

Chatbots can help your team understand and resolve customer queries with a data-driven approach. For instance, you can check their past conversations, product-related issues, and more.

Count on no code bot builder like WotNot to integrate AI chatbots across multiple channels, including social media channels, websites, and mobile apps like Slack and WhatsApp.

A screenshot of the WotNot tool highlighting its featuresSource

#3: Send Personalized Emails to Build Customer Loyalty

According to research, worldwide email users will cross 4.3 billion by 2023. So, email marketing can prove a game-changer for DTC brands, especially SMBs. 

However, sending emails is not enough. 

Brands need to send personalized emails to engage the audience. 

The reason? Reports state that email personalization helped 50% of brands achieve high customer engagement. Besides, 67% of customers expect DTC brands to offer a personalized experience. 

So, personalized holiday-specific emails can help you drive customer loyalty and reducing churn

Here are a few tips to consider.

  • Use Customer-Friendly Language: This can make the customers comfortable while interacting with your brand, thereby increasing engagement. 
  • Address Their Pain Points: This can help you offer the best holiday-specific solutions according to customer needs. 
  • Offer Helpful Tips for Product Usage: This can help improve their experience with the product. Besides, this approach can increase the chances of repeated purchases. 

Here's an example of a personalized email. Observe how the DTC brand offers solutions for the holiday season. 

An image depicting an example of personalized email for the holiday season

Such an approach can strengthen your relationship with the customer in the long term. 

#4: Go Beyond a Transactional Relationship

Customer retention is a major growth-boosting factor for DTC businesses. 

But nowadays, customers can choose from an array of options. They can get quality products and services from thousands of brands. So, go beyond the transactional relationship and ask for feedback. 

Acknowledging and implementing their suggestions can help you provide a seamless customer experience. Listening to your customers more intently can help you maximize retention rates without any extra hassles.  

Here are a few quick ways to collect customer feedback. 

  • Share quick feedback polls over emails.
  • Deploy feedback forms on the eCommerce website.
  • Ask for feedback at the end of every interaction via phone, email, or other channels.

Pro Tip: Offer incentives to your customers for sharing their valuable feedback. For instance, you can offer discounts on certain holiday items. Discounts or other incentives will encourage customers to more readily share their feedback more. 

Conclusion

The surging demand for holiday-specific products each year can help DTC businesses multiply their ROI. 

However, the massive competition can become a barrier, especially for small-scale DTCs.

Reports state that 93% of customers make repeat purchases with brands offering superior customer experience. The shared tactics in this post can help you provide a great customer experience. 

Done right, your DTC brand can directly affect the buyers cycle, thereby increasing sales. So, implement the mentioned tips to create a happy holiday experience for customers.


About the Author:

Steven Macdonald is a digital marketer based in Tallinn, Estonia. In the last 10 years, he's helped e-commerce and B2B SaaS brands generate more than $100 million in new revenue through SEO, content, and conversion optimization. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Steven Macdonald

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