How Brands construct Genuine Customer Intimacy

When you reflect on your most meaningful relationships, the strongest ones are likely with loved ones who really comprehend you. And while some connections are instantaneous, others develop slowly, reaching a deeper level through shared experiences. Building intimacy in any personal connection takes period and intention, and customer intimacy is no different.

What is customer intimacy?

Customer intimacy is a strategy document to align your brand with customer needs, so you can deliverpersonalized experiences. Using shopper data, companies can forge stronger personal relationships with their target spectators, which increases customer satisfaction, loyalty, and sales.

The term “customer intimacy” has been around since 1993, when Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema coined it in the Harvard Business Review. “Companies that excel in customer intimacy merge detailed customer knowledge with operational flexibility so they can respond quickly to almost any require, from customizing a product to fulfilling special requests,” Wiersema and Treacy write. “As a consequence, these companies engender tremendous customer loyalty.”

Developing a solid customer intimacy schedule is vital for ecommerce companies vying for the attention of shoppers with endless options at their fingertips. Demonstrating deep knowledge of your customers and conference their needs can set your business apart.

Effective customer intimacy strategies 

• Host customer events
• Reward and incentivize customers
• Conduct surveys
• Establish customer-centric policies
• Embrace vulnerability in marketing
• Engage with consumers directly

There are many methods for building intimacy within your customer base, including: 

Host customer events 

Hosting virtual or in-personevents allows customers to meet and interact with each other, as well as companyteam members and brand ambassadors. These may be official corporation-sponsored events, like panel discussions and promotional experiences, or customer meetups and joyful hours.

For Niall Horgan, CEO and cofounder of Gym+Coffee, personalized fitness events helped his companycreate a faithful customer base and flourish into an eight-figure lifestyle brand. Gym+Coffee now hosts more than 60 throng events, which continue to develop in scale.

“We’ve all been to events where you might not recognize people, you might feel a little bit awkward—maybe it’s your first ever fitness class,” Niall says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “We desire to shatter those barriers immediately. We [show] them around, inform them about us, and discover out a little bit about them.” 

Reward and incentivize customers

Rewarding shoppers is a tried-and-factual way to foster customer intimacy. inspire customers to stick around with incentives like free products, birthday gifts, discounts, early access to upgrades and recent models, and referral bonuses. 

Loyalty programs with a point or tier structure can also assist construct a connection over a customer lifetime. Seven out of 10 Americans consider loyalty programs a primary factor in determining brand allegiance. 

Conduct surveys

Surveys are not just useful for collecting customer concerns or positive feedback. They can also get shoppers more involved in your brand.

At luxury fashion corporation Modern Citizen, cofounders Jessica Lee and Lizzie Agnew use questionnaires to facilitate a exchange with customers. “We inquire customers anywhere between 40 to 50 questions for [them] to provide us feedback about their encounter with us,” Jessica says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “That covers everything from how they’re feeling about the macroeconomic surroundings and shopping in general to what they desire from us.” The schedule paid off: In 2022, 50% of the corporation’s turnover came from returning clients.

receive this one step further by forming customer advisory boards, hosting online forums, and inviting beta testers for recent products. 

Establish customer-centric policies

Companies dedicated to customer intimacy put consumers first and ensure their policies and offerings reflect this. This may cruel shouldering costs in pursuit of long-term growth and loyalty, implementing programs like no gain fees, 365-day returns, free shipping, guaranteed warranties, and excellent customer service—all of which assist retain existing customers and attract recent ones. Customer focus today yields upcoming rewards.

Embrace vulnerability in marketing

For a marketing throng, leveraging influencers and user-generated content (UGC) facilitates customer intimacy by leaning into authentic, vulnerable social media posts that resonate with different customer segments on a personal level.

According to Giovanna Alfieri, VP of Marketing for feminine worry brand The Honey Pot, teaming up with creators who are candid and open about vaginal health has been instrumental to establishing the brand. “We have to make a secure space where the micro-experiences of humans are actually leveraged as points of exchange,” Giovanna says on Shopify Masters, adding that partnering with vulnerable creators helps “define these core concepts or elements of our brand and throng.”

Engage with consumers directly 

Facilitating conversations and direct engagement with consumers across platforms fosters intimacy, and the key lies in doing so mindfully and intentionally. For example, the founders of soda brand Olipop have found that texting customers provides a much more intimate encounter than email—an intimacy they don’t treat lightly.

“The click-through rate on a text is exponentially greater than what you get on email,” Olipop co-founder Ben Goodwin tells the Shopify Masters podcast. “It’s an fascinating medium because it is the most intimate form of connection. There’s so many people in your email inbox. I’ve got a whole email address that’s pretty much spam now. Not many people text you. We keep the communication light. We regard the channel and the intimacy of it.”

Rather than spamming customers, Olipop only sends updates its customers are likely to enjoy. “It’s about having the discipline not to abuse that channel and to regard the intimacy of the communication while offering real worth to people,” Ben says. The corporation uses SMS for managing subscriptions, communicating recent flavor updates, and sharing behind-the-scenes photos of the founders formulating recent products.

How to assess customer intimacy

There are a few different ways to assess customer intimacy. Methods include:

Tracking Net Promoter Scores

A Net Promoter Score measures how likely person customers are to recommend your products or services to a partner, loved one, or co-worker. A straightforward survey asks consumers to rate their likelihood of sharing a product on a scale from zero to 10 and may include a field for notes or comments. This feedback can assist you better comprehend your existing customers. 

Keeping tabs on customer churn

Keeping tabs on customer churn rates provides direct insight into customer intimacy. The lower the customer churn rate, the higher your corporation’s customer loyalty and retention, pointing to successful customer intimacy efforts. On the flip side, high churn may indicate room for advancement in your customer intimacy tactics and can assist identify areas that require work. 

Noting customer satisfaction scores

Customer surveys can assist you assess a customer intimacy program’s efficacy by gauging satisfaction. Using a combination of open and closed questions, you can identify strengths and weaknesses in your program and use these learnings to inform ways to better connect with customers.