...And *POOF* They Are Gone!

Have you truly engaged them? A UiNIFICATION How To: Cultivate The Customer

Someone buys. They are thanked. A confirmation is sent. And then, a few days later, they are sent an advertisement explaining why they should buy the thing they just bought.

We’ve all experienced it.

Somewhere in the marketing system, a transaction occurred. But the conversation didn’t move forward. Sometimes it does, sometimes they are offered other things and affinities. But they do not buy.

The customer hasn't changed. You were on message. Have you cultivated a relationship with them yet?

They bought the product. Now cultivate their confidence.

A purchase gives us something to work with. Someone saw enough value in what we offered to choose us.

What we do next matters.

Have they received it? Do they understand how to use it? Is it doing what they expected? Are they satisfied? Is there something they need help with that they haven’t thought to ask?

These are good reasons to start a conversation. And they give us something meaningful to talk about beyond the next thing we want to sell.

That’s cultivation: the intentional work of helping a customer feel satisfied with their choice, building trust, and giving the relationship somewhere to go.

Stay on message. Give the conversation more to work with.

The message strategy should continue to guide us.

The positioning, value proposition, selling points, and reasons to believe that helped someone choose the brand remain our foundation. We should keep reinforcing them through what we say and what we do. Stay true to your brand and engage!

The topics can change.

If our promise centers on helping people feel confident about a complicated purchase, we can offer guidance that builds confidence after the purchase. If our value is thoughtful service, our follow-up should demonstrate thoughtfulness. If we stand for quality, we can help people understand, use, and care for what makes the product valuable.

Each topic gives us another way to deliver on the same promise. That’s how the brand becomes more credible over time. Customers experience the value we originally described.

A conversation needs room for an answer.

We send a lot of communication and call it engagement.

But have we given the customer an opportunity to participate? Provide a way: chat, a phone number, a survey, a DM, a place to comment on a post – there are lots of ways to create a dialogue.

A useful check-in might ask what’s working for them. A follow-up might invite a question. A service interaction might reveal something we should have explained more clearly in the first place.

Then we have to do something with the answer.

If a customer tells us they’re having trouble, the next interaction should acknowledge it. If they ask a question, they deserve a useful response. If they share a preference, we should consider it when deciding what to offer. This is how a dialogue develops. We demonstrate that their contribution affects the conversation. That what they see is noted, listened to, and acted upon.

A survey nobody acts on doesn’t accomplish much. Neither does an invitation to reply to an inbox nobody monitors.

Trust grows when customers can see that someone is listening.

Satisfaction gives us plenty to talk about.

Consider someone buying a mattress.

Before rushing to recommend pillows or a foundation, we could help them understand delivery, setup, and what to expect as they get accustomed to sleeping on it. We could make it easy to ask for help and check whether their experience matches their expectations.

For a theater patron, cultivation might include useful information before the performance, a thoughtful invitation to share their experience afterward, or a closer look at the people and ideas behind the production.

Those conversations belong to the brand. They reinforce the reasons someone chose it.

They also give us an opportunity to learn.

Was something confusing? Did the experience deliver as expected? What mattered most to them? What would make the next encounter better?

In my work across retail, loyalty, and theater marketing, these are the questions I keep coming back to. We need to understand whether people are receiving the value we believe we’re providing.

This is indeed a value exchange – not just a proposition!

There can be another offer. Give it a reason to belong.

Cultivation can absolutely include selling.

A relevant recommendation can be helpful. Someone may appreciate discovering a complementary product, another experience, or a service that makes their original purchase more useful.

But the recommendation should make sense in the context of the relationship established.

What do we know about their interests? Are they satisfied with what they already bought? Does this offer serve a need?

While it might serve our calendar, it could indeed also be a right time, right place offering.

And can we explain why we’re recommending it?

There’s a difference between recognizing an opportunity to help and assuming every buyer is ready for another transaction. We earn more confidence when customers understand that we’ve considered what would be useful to them.

Cultivation takes continuity.

In my lifetime value engagement continuum, cultivation is where we deliberately build the relationship that can lead toward retention.

That takes more than a welcome email followed by a promotional schedule.

It takes a continuing conversation, grounded in the message strategy and informed by what we stand for and what we learn in dialog. Sometimes the right topic is practical guidance. Sometimes it’s inspiration, a question, a relevant offer, or a response to something the customer has told us.

Timing matters, too. We should give people enough room to experience the product before asking them to evaluate it. We should pay attention when they need help. And we should recognize when another sales message is unlikely to be useful.

The intention is to become a brand they’re comfortable hearing from because the conversation consistently offers value.

Make the relationship part of the brand experience.

At UiNIFICATION, I think about message strategy as something that should carry through the entire experience.

The promise appears in our advertising. It should also be evident in the confirmation, the guidance, the service response, and the follow-up. Every one of those encounters gives us a chance to reinforce what the brand actually is all about.

That requires coordination. What customers tell service teams should help inform marketing. What we learn from their questions should improve our guidance. What we promise in a campaign should be understood by the people responsible for delivering it. And what we learn from AI and customer behaviors we track, all go into creating conversations that bring customers into retention and into best customer roles.

The conversation becomes stronger when the whole business understands its purpose.

Before sending the next communication, I’d ask:

• Does this reinforce our message strategy? • Does it help the customer feel satisfied, understood, or more confident? • Have we given them a way to respond, and are we prepared to listen?

Someone already gave us a reason to begin the broader conversation.

Stay on message. Find something meaningful to talk about. And keep earning their trust.