Acquiring two new customers in business may feel great, but nothing beats retaining an existing customer. Despite this fact, customer retention has taken a back seat in marketing for a long time, with marketers focusing more on acquisition. However, in the current business world, customer expectations have changed, and the fluctuating economy has forced many businesses to focus more on retention than acquisition. To help you on your customer retention journey, we explore some practical and effective customer retention strategies.
Customer retention measures a brand’s ability to inspire customer loyalty by turning a one-time buyer into a repeat customer. A high customer retention rate indicates that most of your customers are choosing your products or services, which sustains the customer loyalty loop.
While client retention methods vary from one industry to another, the goal is to prevent them from defecting to a competitor. This can be achieved by keeping them loyal to your brand, product, or service and preventing them from churning or lapsing.
We have broken down several practical customer retention strategies for you to consider.
- Establish a Seamless Onboarding Experience
- Foster Customer Confidence
- Distribute a Newsletter to Customers
- Set up a Customer Feedback System
- Develop a Customer Rewards Program
Establish a Seamless Onboarding Experience
Once you have successfully acquired a new customer, the next stage is customer onboarding, which involves setting up your new customers before they start using your products or services. A seamless onboarding process is crucial to establishing a long-term relationship with your customers. When done correctly, it creates excitement and trust, fostering customer loyalty. However, a poorly executed onboarding process can result in lost sales and a negative first impression that may cause the customer to churn.
A smooth customer onboarding process consists of the following steps:
- Sign-up process – Ensure that the sign-up process is simple, making it easy for customers to access your services.
- Welcome email – Send a welcome email to greet the new customer and guide them through the process of using your product to receive value.
- Determine client involvement – Establish expectations for the desired level of customer involvement to prevent customers from feeling excluded. Some clients may prefer a hands-on approach, while others may prefer to be less involved.
- Product walkthrough – Take the new customer through the necessary steps to set up and complete tasks within your product.
To build a lasting relationship with your customers, it is essential to prioritize their needs and experience during the onboarding process.
Customer Confidence
Customer loyalty hinges on building trust, making it a vital element of customer retention. Every interaction and experience with your brand contributes to building trust over time.
By establishing trust with your customers, you can ensure they will choose your products or services without worrying about comparing prices elsewhere. However, it is just as easy to break trust through over-marketing, valueless communication, and irrelevant ads. Here are some tactics to build customer trust:
Provide customers with factual and unbiased information to help them make informed purchase decisions. Ensure there is a clear way for customers to reach your customer service or tech support, rather than relying on self-service. Enable customers to easily and immediately opt-out of email subscriptions.
Distribute a Newsletter to Customers
Email newsletters are an effective way to show your customers how much you value them while achieving customer retention. They help differentiate your business from competitors, demonstrate your company’s values and culture, and assist in developing a positive impression of your customer service creativity and performance. To ensure the effectiveness of your company newsletters, send them monthly or quarterly instead of bombarding your client’s inbox with daily emails. The newsletters should contain valuable developments in your business, such as sales, seasonal deals, and new offerings. Additionally, consider increasing your subscriber list by including newsletter-only specials or coupons.
Implementing customer feedback form
Implementing a customer feedback loop is a technique of replying to your customers when they leave feedback about your products and services. How you close the customer feedback loop determines whether the customers will want to do business with you again or not. Instead of rudimentary strategies, try different ways of closing the customer feedback loop, such as sending customized offers to those who love doing business with you, finding meaningful ways to close the loop depending on the feedback they leave, and requesting customer advocacy to help you acquire new clients.
Customer loyalty programs
Loyalty programs help keep customers by preventing them from going to your competitors and incentivizing spending more money with your business. To leverage customer loyalty programs to create an active customer base, personalize the customer journey, simplify the customer experience, and keep your customers engaged and delighted.
The benefits of customer retention include increased ROI, lower business costs, and helping your business stand out from the crowd. Existing clients account for 65% of a company’s revenue, and customer retention can increase profit rates by 25-95%. Focusing on customer retention helps make your customers feel a stronger connection to your business and keeps them from turning to your competitors while also increasing the likelihood of referrals.
