(ThyBlackMan.com) Gaining new customers is crucial to growing your business, but it can be financially demanding, time-consuming, and difficult. If you don’t have a healthy retention rate, it can actually cost more to acquire new customers than you will collect in revenue over their lifetime. Just think about it; you don’t need to invest a ton of money into gaining new audiences just to lose them a few months later.
Retaining and keeping your existing customers happy is the most cost-efficient way to grow your business, and even small changes in retention can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.
But how do you build a customer retention system that keeps people engaged, content, and willing to subscribe?
Keep reading to discover which of the marketing strategies have the biggest positive impact on your brand or client retention rates.
What is a customer retention strategy?
A customer retention strategy is made up of specific tactics to boost customer satisfaction and keep customers buying from that brand in the long term. Customer retention tactics help you build a loyal customer base and increase long-term profitability.
And since you’ve already put in a lot of effort to gain their attention, it only makes sense to encourage them to become repeat customers. With more than 68% of sales coming from an existing customer base, you can see why applying a customer strategy is important.
Customer retention strategies are meant to achieve those goals and can be as creative and innovative as you desire. What matters most is that they significantly impact both customers’ profitability and future business prospects.
1. Customer Loyalty Programs are Still a Thing
Loyal customers should be rewarded properly for beginning long-term supporters of your brand. Creating a loyalty program for them will incentivize repeat customers to come back for more.
Loyalty programs help brands establish a relationship that impacts their purchase decisions. In other words, your brand becomes their top-of-mind choice for a specific product or service you offer.
To start engaging customers with your rewards program, it should be personalized to your audience and brand. Recent findings hint that 79% of customers only consider brands that show they care about them, and you can do this by giving your reward programs a unique face, a unique name and offering a stellar loyalty experience.
- Gamification of Loyalty Programs
Gamification is one of those magic words that most likely you’ve budged into during brainstorming sessions, but applying its principles can help keep the audience out and about. For instance, gamified quizzes are a great way to keep customers engaged and coming to your website for more.
Tests, quizzes, and surveys help you learn a lot about a customer’s product preferences, lifestyle, and preferred brands. Tinder-like quizzes are a thing now, and it seems that people love the old “swipe” element. It works well for gathering data on product preference: you display an image to the user, and they swipe left or right, depending on whether they like it or not. It’s fast and entertaining, so you can gather more insight about your customer in a short amount of time.
2. Provide Memorable First Purchase Experience
First impression matters, even that’s in the online medium. There’s no second chance, so make sure you always try to surpass your customers’ expectations.
Here are some ways to make a customer’s purchase unique:
- Welcome email: When someone first register, send a personalized email welcoming them as a new member. Mention their name and why doing business with you will be special.
- Special offers: This popular eCommerce trend does not disappoint. Special offer reinforces customer trust in your brand through positive feelings. People feel great about a service offering a discount or a little something extra with the first purchase. If they’re happy, they’re more likely to come back and buy again.
- Personalize: Avoid sounding overly formal in emails. People endure a lot of it in their day-to-day office lives. Keep email personalized and also avoid using “Do Not Reply” emails. Email is a key tool for communicating with customers.
How often have you chosen one brand over another because of the great first purchase experience?
3. Provide Stellar Customer Service
Customer service is the backbone of any eCommerce business. One survey shows that over 89% of customers have stopped buying from online shops after they’ve experienced poor customer service.
Terrible customer service not only hinders people from making another transaction but also encourages them to write negative feedback about your platforms on socials like Facebook or Twitter, which can be detrimental to your brand’s reputation. If customer service isn’t your brand’s strongest suit, you might want to consider outsourcing marketing virtual assistant professionals with loads of “people experience” in the back.
Communication, in general, will take a lot of time. The larger your business grows, the more chats, phone calls and emails come in each day. The quicker the response time and the more genuine the answer, the more satisfied your customers are going to be. A customer service virtual assistant from reputable agencies like Viralent can be a key role in maintaining communication and keeping your customer base happy while freeing up time in your day-to-day focus on scaling your business.
Below are the various ways to provide your existing customer base with amazing customer service:
- Track customer interactions
Tracking your customer interaction can help you reduce time wastage for both your marketing teams and customers. It also helps customer service professionals resolve issues more easily.
- Be active on socials and listen to your customers
Over 46% of online customers expect brands to provide customer service on social media websites. Social media reduces the gap between the seller and the customer.
- Address timely responses
Whether it’s a Facebook small talk, an email or chat conversation, people expect faster responses. Be wary of the time you take to win over existing customers and make them trust you even more.
Staff Writer; Peter James