A clienteling program refers to the specific strategy, messaging, and processes a single brand has put together in order to increase sales coming through current customers.

While clienteling is a general retail industry term for high-touch customer outreach, a clienteling program is unique to each brand based on how they believe they can best serve their audience - for example, some brands may focus more on phone calls while others focus on email or text message. The more organized and structured a clienteling program is, the more likely it is to make an impact on your company's bottom line. Giving your sales team a structure to follow and goals to aim for as part of a formal clienteling program will likely result in more consistent engagement from them and the customers they contact.

Whether you're using an old-fashion binder or a new app like Endear to manage your program, these tools are only there to support the strategy you've developed through getting to know your customers and understanding how best to meet their needs.

If you're running a small store or even a pop-up, you may think that a clienteling app isn't necessary. But the beauty of a clienteling app like Endear is that it helps even the smallest teams stay competitive with larger retail stores that have the most sophisticated technology solutions. Your team can count on Endear to coordinate who is responsible for which customers, assign tasks, and even set reminders so that everyone is held accountable for their work. By rolling out a clienteling app when you're still young, you'll maintain these best practices as you grow.

Without a feed of real-time data, it's challenging to know who to reach out to, and when. Especially with changes in staffing and with multiple channels and locations, relying on overt signals from customers to determine who to contact is not a safe bet. By using a clienteling solution, you can stay up to date on your customers' activities in-store and online, and incorporate this behavior into relevant, timely messages.

Your salespeople have likely developed very close relationships to customers, but sometimes sales teams may want to share the same information with multiple customers at once. The right clienteling tools will enable your teams to reach out to a single customer or swaths of customers without sacrificing personalization, and certainly without generic copy like "Hey Friend". Your team should be able to seamlessly incorporate customer-specific details in their messages, while also taking advantage of templates and bulk-sending capabilities.

The old days of clienteling often revolved around coaxing customers into coming into the store to purchase. But today's shopper should be encouraged to purchase wherever and however she likes - that includes sharing product images that connect back to the item online, that way the customer can decide if a trip to the store is necessary. Even if she purchases online though, a good clienteling program and the tools it runs on will be able to track your team's role in this purchase.

On that note, it's important that the tools you use don't just let you carry out a clienteling program, but also also tell you how that program is doing. As customers continue to interact with more touchpoints throughout their purchase journey, your clienteling app should help you understand exactly what role your salespeople play in those journeys. Rather than relying on daily reports of foot traffic versus sales, more modern tools should give you a way to actually increase both those key metrics and indicate who on your team is following through.

And last but not least, clienteling apps will also help you deliver better service to your end customers. While associates may want to use their personal devices with customers, the problem with this approach is that it gives a brand very little visibility into what is being shared with customers, and also makes it very hard for associates to get credit for their outreach. But perhaps most important to everyone, sending messages from a personal device limits an associate's resources when it comes to enhancing messages and taking advantage of brand assets.

With a clienteling app, you can stay on top of the entire team's outreach to customers, so that no messages fall through the cracks. You can also ensure that if someone leaves the team, their customers are still looked after by someone else. You can use apps like Endear to encourage any customer to start a conversation when they are in need of guidance or have questions - rather than relying on one associate, customers should have the whole store team at their disposal! Encouraging everyone to participate in your clienteling program is onyl going to increase your brand's stickiness, so don't be shy about sharing contact info since those emails and phone numbers are for the business.