Your company would not be where it’s at today without your loyal customers. And yet how much time is spent toward improving and increasing value among your steady core versus the time--and money!--spent on obtaining new leads, getting through closed doors, and eventually realizing you’ve been beating a dead horse that is not going to win any races for you Why do so many companies take valuable time and resources away from focusing on their heartbeat and go off on mad pursuits of hypotheticals that have already proven to have a remarkably low ROIEvergreen exposes this nonsensical chase for what it is: a brief spike in metrics and an ongoing revenue drain, as one-time customers fail to return. It then proposes that the better solution is to shift resources from attracting new customers to engaging the base--every company’s path to stable growth, season after season. The entertaining stories and action steps weaved throughout these pages reveal how anyone can: • Cultivate the 3Cs of evergreen companies: character, community, and content• Build loyalty programs that turn satisfied customers into enthusiastic advocates• Nurture profitable customers while pruning those who sap time and money• Inject authenticity into social media communications• Invert the expectations gap that can drive customers awayNo matter the business--whether it is a tech software giant or a mom-and-pop laundromat, customer retention is the key to sustaining success. Evergreen will help you turn satisfied customers into enthusiastic advocates and steady profits.
Table of Contents:
C O N T E N T S
Foreword by Alan Weiss xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Seeing the Forest for the Trees 1
Why I Wrote This Book 3
Who This Book Is For 5
Why You Should Read This Book 6
PA R T O N E
Establishing Roots
1 Debunking the Myth: New Customers Will Not Save Your
Business 11
The Allure of New Business Can Be Fatal 12
We're All Addicted to Sex--and What That Means for
Your Business 14
The Latest Boardroom Buzzword: Customer-Centricity 17
The True Value of a Customer 19
Introducing the Evergreen Marketing Equilibrium 24
2 Surveying the Landscape: The Essential Components
of an Evergreen Organization 29
Introducing the Three Cs 31
Orchestrating the Three Cs, So They Play in Harmony 36
3 Examining the Principle of Character: The Botany of Your
Company 41
The Power of Telling a Good Story 42
Building the Character of Your Organization 44
Distinguishing Between Character and Caricature 47
Articulating the "Real You" 49
Creating Your Corporate Character 52
4 Examining the Principle of Community: Creating a Forest
from a Single Seed 61
Why Should You Build a Community? 62
The Difference Between a Tribe and a Community 64
The CrossFit Community 68
Building Your Customer Community 72
5 Examining the Principle of Content: The Beauty of Having
a Multitude of Branches 79
What, Exactly, Is "Content"? 80
Why Is Content So Important? 82
Evaluating the New Customer Experience 85
Knowing What Business You're In 88
Keeping Focused on Why You Do What You Do 89
Knowing When More Content Is Better--and When It's Not 90
The Evergreen Diagnostic 96
Going Beyond "the Transaction" 99
PA R T T WO
Fostering Growth
6 Becoming Intimately Familiar with Your Customers:
Getting Your Hands in the Soil 105
Why Customer Lifetime Value Is Broken--and How to Fix It 107
Creating Your Ideal Customer Archetypes 111
Communicating with Your Archetypes 118
Capitalizing on the Natural Synergy of Thoughtful Marketing 124
7 Getting Loyalty Programs Right: Building a Tree House
and Letting Your Customers Climb to Reach It 127
Where Loyalty Lost Its Way 129
Developing (or Refining) Your Loyalty Program 135
Designing Your Customer Loyalty Action Plan 144
8 Articulating a New Approach to Customer Service:
Tending to Your Garden (and Pulling Those Weeds!) 155
Giving Yourself Permission to Fire Bad Customers 157
Determining Which Customers You Should
(and Shouldn't) Fire 159
A Commonsense Approach to Customer Service 164
Scrutinizing Your Company's Weak Spots 172
Why Authenticity Is Important 176
9 Gathering Customer Intelligence: Examining the Botany
of Individual Leaves 181
Recognizing When Customers Leave Money on the Table 182
Choosing Your Data Collection Tools 184
Getting Your Customers' Information 187
Tracking (and Changing) Your Customers' Behavior 192
10 Bringing Back Lost Customers: Bringing Wilted Leaves
Back to Life 203
Identifying When the Customer Relationship Is Over 205
Figuring Out Why Customers Leave in the First Place 208
Solving Your Customer Attrition Problems 212
Establishing Constant Contact 215
Building Effective Attrition Alarm Systems 217
Implementing Your Reactivation System 220
Managing Your Expectations About Reactivation 225
11 Bringing In New Customers: Creating Optimal Growing
Conditions 227
Managing the Expectations Gap 229
Creating Customer Loyalty with the First Transaction 231
Onboarding New Customers 234
Communicating with the Customer After the Honeymoon
Is Over 238
Preparing for a (Hopefully Insanely) Successful Promotion 243
Afterword: The End Is the Beginning 249
Notes 255
Index 261
About the Author 271
