SuretyCam customers happy to connect

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Ryan Boder, president of SuretyCam, an Alarm.com dealer based here, believes that keeping in touch with customers keeps attrition in check.

He'd tried customer email campaigns on his own, but resources and time are limited when you're running a small, growing business. So he jumped at the opportunity a couple of months ago to be part of a beta project for Customer Connect, a sales and marketing tool that Alarm.com is launching Nov. 14.

“It's essentially a CRM [customer resource management] system,” Jay Kenny, alarm.com VP of marketing told Security Systems News. It's an opt-in program that customizes email “drip campaigns,” a series of emails, for each dealer's customer base.

The emails are branded with the dealer's name and logo, and the emails include “welcome letters and then a week later, they get a message that says, 'Hey have you set up a notification, added a user or a user code?'” Kenny explained. He added, “We send targeted messages and also quarterly newsletters.”

The emails are targeted to customers that have certain profiles. “They vary by the type of customer you have and this is where the up-sell becomes powerful,” Kenny said. You help customers understand their system, options and newly available products, he said. 

“We administer [Customer Connect] on the dealer's behalf,” Kenny said. “It gives enterprise tools to local dealers, yes. But on the other hand, it gives all dealers big and small an advantage in the marketplace. It gives them the ability to leverage intelligence about the customer base and do smart things to drive engagement, retention and up-selling.”

Kenny said the program is a “bit defensive” as well. With the cable companies entering the business and advertising heavily, these emails remind customers of the services their security dealers can offer them.

SuretyCam's Boder said that sending short, frequent messages is definitely the way to communicate with the customer, and is a good option to overwhelming the customer with manuals or lengthy instructions.

“This is something we attempted to do,” Boder said. “[Alarm.com] did it for us. They automated it and it's done in a much more professional manner than we were able to do.”

After one month, Boder said, “what I saw clearly, is that people actually contact us and tell you how they feel about the email.” After the first email, he had customers “reply or call or [engage via] live chat on our website.” 

He has not had any negative responses to the email. Customers have either contacted the company with questions or said, “Keep up the good work,” Boder said.