by Cody McLain, founder of AptHost and PacificHost.
It seems hosting these days is becoming more competitive, and more difficult to acquire more customers. Shared Hosting is really one of those interesting products where it seems once a customer signs up, they could be with you forever. It's almost as if we're all playing a game of Hungry Hippos trying to gobble up as many prospects as possible.

So if we're all multi-colored hippos, what does that mean to the prospects we convert to customers? What value, if any do we associate with our customers once they signup?

When I was running PacificHost, I found myself just staring at the numbers and figuring out how to get more customers and grow, grow, grow!

It was only later on that I realized I really needed to spend more time giving a little bit of love to my customers. When you think about it, if you were a customer and you found the host of your dreams, would you ever move just because some other guy offers a cheaper price? Perhaps, but if your clients know what's good for them, they'll remain loyal to your company.

Once I understood this, I realized I needed to assign a higher value to how I viewed my customer base. It's one thing to simply keep track of the number of clients leaving every month (churn rates), but it is a completely separate thing to actually investigate why. While keeping your customers websites online is important, it's also the strength of that relationship between you and the customer that really seals the deal. So I had to ask myself, how I could do this? How could I increase my customer loyalty?

I figured I would first start by looking what how my current customers interact with me. It didn't take much effort to realize the majority of customers only contacted my staff when there was some sort of problem. "My site is down, your service sucks" seems to be something we all experience at one point or another. So why does it seem like we're all playing hot potatoes with our clients?



Each client is becoming more valuable than the last. If the majority of the interactions our customers have with our companies are negative, then that could affect everything from our reputation, to trust we have with each individual customer. It doesn't even have to be a website down, or a bad customer really. A customer who has an issue uploading a file via FTP creates a bad association between him and his immediate experience with your brand. Great support can't bridge the association a customer might create from experiencing multiple frustrations with your service. (Even if they're of the customers own ignorance, then you should not see it as a problem with the customer, but a UX issue that can be fixed for future customers.)

So, how can we solve this problem? Short from having a better service or a more streamlined customer experience, how do we create some positive exposure between our companies and our customers? Well what if I told you it was something that you could do with no added cost, very little effort and best of all will apply to future customers automatically?

It's called, the Email Marketer Tool.

This little feature was added back in version 5.0 of WHMCS. However in my experience the concept behind this tool and just how effective it can be was never fully explained. It was instrumental to the success of PacificHost in so many ways.

I think as hosting companies, we're often afraid to email our customer base. Perhaps we're afraid that they might be reminded that they're still customers of ours and decide to cancel with us. Rather, it's this inaction that helps strengthen the negative experiences our customers have, and this is the opposite of what we want!

Whereas instead of sending them emails only when their website goes down, we could send them emails about how our service is being upgraded, and how it makes their service better with us. Why not run a domain sale, or SSL sale and go crazy! Maybe even LOSE money on domains with no direct ROI.

Why do this?

It increases customer satisfaction (ie: Happiness). Our customers need positive reinforcement. That's really what the Email Marketer tool gives us. Think of it as a tool to help spread more joy and happiness to our customers. They then associate this with their provider and that strengthens the bond with the customer. With enough positive reinforcement we can perhaps override any negative experiences or frustrations our customers experience.



If a typical customer has neutral feelings, or worse - angry feelings towards our brand, then we might be doing something wrong. That is one issue to address, but regardless many customers experience problems and frustrations at one point or another. Being able to overrule these with positive experiences will create more loyal customers.

So you might ask, how can I use this amazingly simple tool to make my customers happier?

It’s quite easy really. Consider who your customers are, and ask what might they expect as a customer of yours, say a week, month or even a year down the road. Who is your average customer that signs up and what kind of positive reinforcement can you offer your customers?

Sending new customers a quick email a few days after they signed up, and ask them how they're doing can work wonders. With that in mind, don't be like everybody else and use a [email]no-reply@yourhost.com[/email] and rather use a personal email, even if all it does is open a ticket. Customers will feel more connected with your brand if they feel like you're trying to reach out to them in a genuine way.

One could even go one step further and use a service like L-Mail offered by QIQ. It integrates with WHMCS and can send out personalized snail mail to your customers. This allows us to create even a deeper connection with our customers. How do you feel when you get a simple letter from a company you only deal with online?

Why not create a reward program for being a loyal customer? One not necessarily motivated by how much money we get from the customer, but by how long they're customers. By showing customer loyalty you're building a relationship with every single one of your customers without having to do much more then write an email and click a few buttons.

Apart from building relationships, what's another great way to use the Marketing Tool for?

Customer Surveys!

We all live by what I call the “reciprocity rule”. This is where when we do something for somebody, we feel more compelled to give back and return the favor. This has been used to influence people for as long as humans have been around.

Most customers wont take surveys, and even then it can be hard to get anything useful out of them. If you're offering a free iPhone to your customers in exchange for taking the survey, how many of them are going to just click around to get through it as fast as possible and therefore mess up your data?

With every email you send to your customer, you can take that time to ask for their feedback, but only do so after you've given them something of value.

But how can I give value when I just offer hosting?

We all typically think of discounts and promotions. Ever get those customers that get mad when they find a sale or a coupon on an item that they paid full price for?

When it comes to existing customers we could offer discounts on domains, SSL certificates or even go a step further and reach out to our vendors. See if they can offer our customer base a discount off their service and offer it as part of their participation. In essence, the more we make our customers feel special, the better they’re going to like us.

Maybe spend a few hours putting an e-book together on how your customers can do SEO for their own sites? Maybe create a screencast on how to optimize the configuration of WordPress? Or just offer customers a simple $2 account credit for taking a survey.

Surveys give us another way to look at our company from the customer's perspective. How did they signup, where did they signup, but more importantly - Why did they signup? Understanding this allows us to mold our brands in a way that will appeal to our customers we find our brand appealing to the most. This ultimately helps us dominate our market base and grow at a more effective rate.

I leave you here with an example of an email I created for my customers a while back. Over the next few months, our positive reviews increased, and the number of angry customers decreased, despite our uptime remaining consistent.

The world of hosting is one of the most densely competitive industries in the online world today. It is extremely important to differentiate from everybody else. With a realization that most customers don't want to move, if we can improve those positive experiences we can grow our companies more effectively and have a customer base filled with lovers, not haters.


About the AuthorCody McLain was the Founder of AptHost and PacificHost. After starting both companies from his basement, he went on to grow them into ventures generating close to $1m in annual revenue with customers in over 100 countries around the world. Today Cody consults Fortune 500 companies and has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur and other Major Publications. Visit www.BuildaHost.com to learn more from Cody on the ins and outs of building a successful hosting company.