Even though email marketing remains the most powerful means of reaching out to customers, it’s not always working. Only 20% of companies with less than 500 subscribers believe their email marketing strategy is effective. Companies with a more extensive customer base get better results, but they are still far from perfect.

The same relates to other traditional marketing channels, like content marketing, social media, contests, or trade shows. As consumers get tired of repetitive marketing hacks, old-school channels for reaching out to customers start losing effectiveness. Although companies have to use them for omnichannel customer experience, the need for new touchpoints emerges.

Under such circumstances, the best option for reaching out to customers is to supercharge traditional communications with new approaches. You can combine them with micro influencing, in-app messages, triggered offline communications, and other channels. It will help you reach a broader target audience and improve customer metrics through a more comprehensive marketing strategy.

Want to know what new ways companies use for reaching out to customers? Discover five approaches and how to implement them in our article.

What Are Traditional Marketing Channels and Why Do They Fail?

As generations shift, customer expectations change. Consumers perceive personalized emails as something casual and want every company to send such notifications. Instant automated replies on social media, 24/7 support, and other pleasantries no longer surprise consumers. These means have turned into a standard pack.

Every brand has an online store, social media profiles, and several kinds of customer support. Many also offer corporate blog posts and website chatbots. Therefore, for reaching out to customers and enhancing your brand visibility, you need alternatives. The combination of traditional and new channels is the only way to exceed potential customers’ expectations and make them notice you.

For example, 66% of 18-34-year-olds say that now they expect more from customer service than a year ago. At the same time, it’s the only age group of Americans who are more likely to tell others about a positive experience than a bad one. Hence, if you find how to win their hearts, you get strong brand ambassadors that promote your business.

Many channels used by millennials, like messengers, self-service portals, or apps, are also popular among other demographic groups. Hence, these alternative touchpoints aren’t age-specific, and you can benefit from them in many ways companies use now. Discover some of them below.

Learn What Market Leaders Think About the Latest Omnichannel Marketing Trends

Five New Ways Companies Use for Reaching out to Customers

If you wonder how to reach out to more customers and boost loyal customer engagement, we’ve got some great strategies. These ways companies adopt to establish customer relationships with a target audience that ignores traditional communications. What we love about these approaches most is that they are still not used by many business owners. It gives pioneers a competitive advantage over other companies in a similar niche.

#1. Online Self-Service Portals

90% of customers expect any business or organization they are interacting with to have an online self-service portal. It’s a web resource or application that includes all the necessary information and capabilities to enable customers to troubleshoot on their own. New and existing customers can visit it to find the answers without contacting support. Such customer service helps to build trust and optimize interactions between a business and buyers.

How to reach out to more customers with self-service portals

Create a Help section on your current website or an independent portal. Separate portals are suitable if you offer a complex product with extensive functionality and have many materials to share. Before launching the portal, write self-service content and test the suggested steps to make sure they work.

#2. Social Media and Online Search Reviews

As the number of products and services keeps growing, buyers are pondering how to choose the best one. That’s why 54% of social browsers research the products they are about to order on social media. This makes social media and online search reviews an excellent alternative for reaching out to customers. Positive feedback is better than any well-written promises or offers.

How to reach out to more customers with online reviews

Though you might get some comments naturally through review sites, we recommend encouraging buyers to share reviews. Send them an email asking for feedback or offer a 5-10% discount on the next order for a review.

#3. Trigger-Based Offline Communications

Online marketing is one of the main ways companies use to interact with consumers, and, generally, that’s the right approach. The problem is, they often neglect offline messages. Personalized direct mail based on triggers can get through banner blindness, and hence, it has returned as an effective marketing technique. Make sure to send offline messages like postcards, flyers, or tailor letters, only when a trigger event happens and avoid bulk marketing.

How to reach out to more customers with trigger-based offline communications

To implement triggered offline communications, you need a reach enablement platform that supports direct mail. Inkit is one of the options. Once you integrate it with your marketing software and set up workflows, the platform will automatically print and deliver offline messages. To get a better understanding of how it works, check one of Inkit’s case studies.

Discover Five Triggers to Use in Mailing Campaigns

#4. Messengers Like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or WeChat

Messengers boast billions of users globally and continue to grow their customer base. WhatsApp has 2 billion monthly active users, followed by Facebook Messenger with 1.3 billion users, and WeChat with 1.22 billion. QQ, Telegram, and Snapchat are some other super-popular messaging solutions. Since so many potential customers spend their time on messengers, you just have to use them for marketing. It’s a newer channel that hasn't tired users yet.

How to reach out to more customers through messengers

There are several ways companies leverage messengers. You can launch your brand channel for reaching out to customers, show in-app ads, send marketing messages, and/or provide customer support through messengers.

#5. Micro-Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a hot trend since 49% of consumers rely on influencer recommendations on social media. Whereas Instagram superstars may be too expensive for most small businesses, micro-influencers with 10,000-100,000 followers are quite affordable. That’s one of the ways companies working locally and small businesses should consider for reaching out to customers.

How to reach out to more customers with micro-influencer marketing

Contact someone you already know or use hashtags to find bloggers related to the required subject. You can also analyze the subscriptions of your existing target audience to spot micro-influencers.

Inkit Reach Enablement Platform (REP) for Customized Customer Interactions

Inkit is a reach enablement platform (REP) that provides several alternative ways of reaching customers. You can use its Send product to deliver trigger-based messages, convert HTML into PDF with Render, or use Verify to validate customer shipment details.

Inkit is super easy to connect with other tools. It supports over a hundred integrations and can be added to any existing software through an API. This allows companies to combine several channels for reaching out to customers and launch complex omnichannel campaigns.

Have any questions on how to reach out to more customers with Inkit? Contact us to get the answers and test the platform.