Every time a customer leaves your business, you lose money—twice. First, you have to pay to replace your lost buyer by converting another lead. Secondly, you miss out on all the future sales the customers would have made with your company. This is why it’s vital to create and deploy retention marketing initiatives.
When you have retention marketing strategies in place, you’re more likely to hold onto customers. That’s vital for your future. The longer you keep customers around, the more they’re apt to purchase. Plus, they can give you more insights into their needs and wants. You can then use those insights to inform and optimize your top-of-funnel marketing approaches.
Don’t underestimate the possibility of your long-term customers turning into brand ambassadors, either. In that way, they can help bring more potential buyers to you, further reducing your lead acquisition expenses.
What are some of the best retention marketing tactics that you can use right away? Try these methods to make sure customers never want to say goodbye.
1. Personalize all your customer touch points.
A full 71% of consumers want personalization when dealing with companies. This is a huge opportunity for you. By individualizing all your customer-brand touch points, you can increase the odds of customers coming back.
This doesn’t mean you have to type customized emails or handwrite notes to send after every purchase, though.
The market is filled with plenty of marketing-based automated software programs that allow you to construct template-heavy content. The content can be tweaked to seem more personal, such as addressing the customer by name. However, you don’t have to do all the personalizing manually.
AI-based systems can be useful to drive other kinds of personalization, too. Let’s say you sell through an e-commerce platform. An AI tech solution could make recommendations to shoppers based on what they previously bought. This provides a degree of personalization but doesn’t take up any of your team members’ time.
2. Request feedback from buyers.
After every interaction with your business, think about sending customers surveys via text or email.
Why? Two reasons. One, you’ll learn a lot about the experiences your customers are having. Two, you’ll keep the back-and-forth communication going.
Not every customer will offer up feedback and that’s okay. Surveys still keep your company top of mind, even among customers who don’t take the time to fill them out. They show buyers that you’re interested in knowing how you can serve them more effectively.
For the best retention results, acknowledge all responses you receive. You may want to consider rewarding customers for filling out questionnaires, especially lengthier ones. Rewards could be anything from branded swag to exclusive coupons.
3. Go the extra mile with your support.
Even world-class companies make mistakes. How you recover from an error makes all the difference to customers. Indeed, you could get a poor service recovery “bounce” as long as you react to concerns quickly. People are amazingly willing to give businesses a second chance when they feel their issues are taken seriously.
You can’t personally be there every time your support or sales team fields a negative call, email, or DM. Nevertheless, you can put measures into place to ensure that most customer concerns are resolved immediately.
For instance, consider allowing your service representatives to spend up to a certain amount to “make things right.” That way, the representatives can do their magic without making dissatisfied customers wait.
4. Shower customers with valuable information.
To buyers, you’re the expert in your industry. Why keep all your information to yourself? Sharing valuable content with your customers can build loyalty and improve your brand credibility.
Many companies worry about giving their buyers too much insider information. That’s understandable but unfounded. The more you educate your most loyal customers, the more they’ll appreciate you.
Say you’re a roofer and you share a video explaining how to evaluate the age of an older shingle. You’re not risking any business by making sure customers are more informed homeowners.
A great way to push out interesting articles, videos, white papers, and reports is through an opt-in email list. When someone becomes a B2B client or makes a B2C purchase, ask for permission to send email marketing collateral. You can then send out exclusive tips, details, and more to those most eager to hear from your company.
5. Treat your employees well.
It’s difficult to keep customers if they’re not being treated well by your employees. That’s why you have to make employees’ experiences stellar. They’re the voice of your company—even those who aren’t necessarily customer-facing.
Think of it this way. Imagine a restaurant. The restaurant has terrific food and a beautiful dining room. You used to love eating there. Then, the workers started acting indifferent. Suddenly, your date nights weren’t so bright.
Would you stop going to your favorite restaurant because the employees were toxic? Probably.
The same could happen to your business if your team members aren’t engaged. You could have a great product or service, but if your competitors’ workers are more pleasant, you could lose business. End of story.
Treat your employees the way you want them to treat your customers.
You’ve invested plenty of resources to attract the clients and customers who help make your company successful. Therefore, don’t allow them to slip through your fingers. Focus your attention on improving your retention marketing techniques to hold onto your fans.
The post 5 Ways to Step Up Your Retention Marketing appeared first on KillerStartups.
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October 4, 2022 at 06:21AM by Maya Johnson, Khareem Sudlow
