2016-09-24 | 3530 Print PDF
Today I will like to cut across one of my favorite topic, which is customer retention. Now its quite easy to always do online ads or execute comprehensive inbound marketing strategies with ever increasing inquiries and customer list. But like they say, its much more wiser to retain an old customer than try to impress a new one. Its very cost effective to maintain your existing customers than trying to always acquire more.
Customer retention refers to the activities and actions companies and organizations take to reduce the number of customer defections. customer retention programs goal is to help companies retain as many customers as possible, often through customer loyalty and brand loyalty initiatives...as defined by ngdata.com
This has always strike me, when I execute nice online marketing campaigns for my clients and still they say they didn't get much ROI from it, a further forensic analysis reveals that as they got leads generated (potential customers) to them via a opt-in form (in their case a quote form) they didn't arranged the emails and allowed it all go to waste.
No segmentation and no follow up, seriously why will you literally spend hard earn money on the internet and not try to get a return on investment deal with it? I had given them the options to hire me for this, but they option out as they have their in-house customer service that apparently does not understand how to handle online prospects.
Do you know that 1% customer retention improvement can increase your sales by 5% profit improvement per customer?, well don't take my word for it. Let's dig deeper with this 3 customer retention strategies that I have been currently using and to be honest with you they really do the work like magic.
Increasing your customer retention rate can have a big impact on a business’ bottom line. Harvard Business Review researched the value of customer retention and found that by raising retention rates by 5%, the average business will increase profits by 25% to 95%.
I am going to assume you already have an opt-in form that you must have created along side your squeeze page for your campaign..I must say this and am being truthful never ever try to make your normal website as your landing page when you do any form of online advert eg banner or ppc adverts.
Its best to actually get a capture page for the campaign and target your audience with precise and brief information wanting them enough to move to your landing page, if you require them to signup for your site you can always do a follow up via email marketing.
Simply follow up these proven top 3 customer retention strategies and see an increase in your customer loyalty with your service or product.
1.) CUSTOMER GROUP & COMMUNICATION
My first technique will be to try as much as possible to communicate with your customers as soon as they get to your squeeze page, the rule to this is to simply try as much as possible to converse with them as they get on your page...(you will notice a lot of sites have chat box on them or feed back tabs) everything is to try to make the conversion process for a prospective lead into a paying customer by providing live support.
In my case I will say on your opt-in form make sure you can connect with them as soon as they submit your form. The best way to do this is to ask for your web visitors to submit their respective whatsapp phone numbers or social accounts you can quickly add them up or send a request.
Create a group on any of this mediums, let your conversation be more up close, like you want to be their friend, your approach do matters a lot as some customers are quite inquisitive. So create a group and add them in it, make sure you must have initially connect with them and try to chat them up, they must have completed the second stage of your form submission or not, your ordeal is to make sure everything is done accordingly.
2.) CUSTOMER RE-ENGAGE PROCESS
You also need to now stay ontop of the game, by posting relevant messages or topics into the group. Make sure they adhere to rules you must have made out for them initially prior adding them to the group.
If you are always repeating the same topic and not diversifying, the group you had control over will soon deteriorate in value and interest to your clients. That is, there will be no essence for the need to be in the group, so you need to always be pro active in the group with topics and also provide customer support to them and educative information surrounding your product or service.
Try to do some special guest invite, some question and answer time, image contest, video speech recording, some group task activities, etc there are lots of creative ideas you can spring out of your master mind always triggered to ginger the group spirit.
3.) CUSTOMER LOYALTY PROGRAMS
This is the best trick of all times, why do I say so? because I used the same tactics on my group members that decided to leave the group prior joining the group and you know what...as soon as I offer them something unique and exclusive they quickly responded back with the response of adding them back.
You can offer discounts often on your service or products depending on bundle package or jumbo sales promo offer backed with incentives to help them with their decision processing. Most times when a customer assimilates that they have more benefits than what they are actually paying for (cost of acquiring the item) they will always easily convert.
If you follow this simple basic principles depending on your business you will see a lot of growth...I practiced this for some couple of months and it was amazing as my traffic grew as they became the evangelist for my website and services to others around them.
A lot of Google search on my website name and also relevant product names were eminent, and direct traffic too with low bounce rate are benefits of this customer retention techniuqe adopted by me.
I believe if you use them in accordance to your kind of service or product you will find growth and changes in your business execution as a whole. This is more point to showcase that customer retention is far much better than customer acquisition as the latter can get you new customers (ironic).
If you have mastered some other customer retention technique or customer loyalty programs device that works (proven), please do share this concept in the comment box below.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai: Search will profoundly change in 2025
3 Most Important Business Growth Strategies
Top 20 Work From Home Job Skills
SEO Tips and Strategies For Small Businesses
Google is making a major change to Local Service Ads
Why is Google Ads So Expensive a Case Study
Meta Careers Remote Work From Home Jobs Scam
Strategies For Integrating Organic and Paid Web Site Traffic
How to use Google Analytics GA4 Reporting
Digital Marketing Agency Red Flags List