One question I’m asked most often is ‘how do we I get more customers and make more money while keeping my customers happy.’ We all have been there, right? What business owner doesn’t want more happy customers and more money? In this blog post, I give you the answer that I give all of my clients: Adopt a digital transformation strategy!

What is digital transformation? It’s when marketing, customer experience, internal organization, and technology are aligned—creating a win for your brand, your employees, and your customers and prospects. In this post, we tackle five digital ideas that will help you attract your target audience and set you on the path to generate more revenue.

1. Stop focusing solely on followers and start building lists. What if I told you that only a small fraction of your social media followers actually see your promotions? Well, it’s true.

A Locowise study on Facebook fan pages found the average organic reach for pages with fewer than 10,000 likes was 11% while only 5% for pages with more than 100,000 likes. Yikes!

With an email campaign—if the addresses are good—your promotion reaches 100% of your fans’ mailboxes. Much better numbers, right?

Here’s some even better news, Convince and Convert reported that when marketed through email, consumers spend 138% more than people who don’t receive email offers.

And, according to HubSpot, email marketing has an ROI of 4300%.

1. Ditch your mass marketing tactics and segment your list. In today’s overcrowded marketplace, the brands that adopt more relevant and individualized messaging win. Mailchimp found click rates for segmented campaigns spiked 74.53% higher than non-segmented promotions.

Leading brands are taking this approach to understanding and segmenting their audiences based on many attributes. Some segments to consider include:

Demographics. For the novice, don’t overcomplicate your segmenting strategy. Start small by pulling the basic demographics that you collected in the opt-in phase, such as age, gender, occupation, etc.

Location and Climate. While segmenting by weather patterns may sound overboard, it could spark some creative marketing ideas since weather can motivate a purchase. The images below from a recent Brooks campaign is a great example. The athletic shoe company created multiple campaigns, based on weather conditions and temperature ranges. In the example below, the image and the email copy was crafted specifically for the weather conditions of the reader.

Sales Cycle Placement. Knowing where your prospects fall in the sales funnel helps better understand how and what messages you should send them. For a more laser-focused segmentation strategy, you need to determine where your prospects are in their buying journey.

1. Partner with Influencers

Some say that working with influencers is the fastest and most cost-effective way to acquire new customers. Why? According to The Shelf, sharing your content through influencers in your industry increases conversions by at least a 3 to 10 times higher rate.

Related Post: Five Simple Steps to Win at Influencer Marketing

So what is an influencer? An influencer is someone who has an active following and can move their followers to take action. Types of influencers include experts, popular You Tubers, bloggers, and celebrities.

Working with influencers can help reach many different goals. Here are a few good ones:

Establish credibility for your brand. According to a McKinsey Study, marketing-inspired word-of-mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising, and these customers have a 37% higher retention rate.

Amplify your content. By adding backlinks to your platform, mentioning your brand or referring to your content, an influencer can help improve your search engine rankings in organic search results. This signal is one of the factors search engines take into consideration. A quality backlink from an influencer helps in more ways than simply reaching your target audience alone.

Give your brand exposure to new and larger audiences. Let’s be honest. We work with influencers to tap into their extensive network of loyal fans. If we earn the buy-in of an influencer, they can spread your message to anywhere from thousands to millions of followers.

1. Find ways to surprise and delight your audience. “By showing sincere appreciation with unexpected rewards, brands can build a greater connection with customers on an emotional level,” said Scott Matthews, CEO of CrowdTwist, a social loyalty rewards platform. “If implemented successfully, brands can realize increased customer engagement, reduced churn, and greater ROI.”

Synchrony Financial’s customer experience study found that more than half of shoppers say they would pay a higher price for the customer experiences they value most, and 77% of shoppers would be more loyal to stores that provide their personal top … customer experiences.

MasterCard saw great returns with its “Priceless Surprises” campaign. The successful initiative allowed partners to geotarget consumers with spontaneous treats. For example, if a customer is in an airport, an airline will have the option to send them a “Priceless Surprise,” which could be anything from a complimentary drink to a free upgrade, or they could receive a ticket upgrade at a sporting event.

Stepping away from traditional strategies to give your customers unanticipated thanks, perks, and bonuses give them new found reasons to be brand-positive and brand-loyal.

1. Leverage holidays for integrated marketing campaigns. It’s no secret that holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s spur shopping. So how do you stand out when you’re competing with vertical brands? Deliver an omnichannel marketing campaign.

Tiffany & Co. nailed integrated marketing with this year’s Valentine’s Day campaign. Take a look.

Among all the marketing channels available, many brands are looking to integrate their email and social media efforts. In 2016, it’s estimated that there will be more than 2.7 billion global email users. Twitter has 320 million monthly users, and Facebook alone has over one billion registered profiles. Considering the large number of active social media and email users globally, all brands can benefit from creating campaigns that drive traffic and engagement between the two channels.

Digital transformation is about organizing around your current customer. It is about putting them at the center of the universe and using technology to create a customer-centric culture and a win for all.