We live in a time when people want something new every few seconds, making it difficult to retain customers and establish brand loyalty. With brands using clever advertisements to poach customers every few hours, customer retention becomes a major concern for both large and small businesses.
The good news is that once you've persuaded a customer to buy from you, you've accomplished the difficult task. What you need now is a strategy to keep them coming back to your store and shopping there.
What is customer retention?
Customer retention is a statistic that gauges customer loyalty and an organization's ability to retain customers over time. Consumer retention can represent or forecast customer happiness, repurchase behavior, customer involvement, and emotional links to a brand, in addition to determining the number of loyal customers.
Customers must be convinced not to defect to a rival, or they must be kept engaged with your brand, product, or service in order to avoid lapse and churn. Customer relationship management, customer loyalty programmes, loyalty incentives, and prizes are just a few of the customer retention methods and strategies that organisations employ to encourage consumers to return. Some firms even have Customer Success teams that work to match the company's aims with the customer's in order to create mutually beneficial relationships.
Why is customer retention important?
Because the cost of acquiring new customers is much higher than the cost of retaining existing customers, client retention is critical. Customers who have been with you for a long time are more likely to become brand ambassadors or engage in word-of-mouth marketing.
According to one survey, customers are just 25% inclined to buy from your business again following their first transaction. They were 45 percent more likely to make a third purchase after two transactions, and 54 percent more likely to make a fourth after three purchases.
It's also less expensive to keep clients than it is to acquire new ones. According to polls, 82 percent of businesses feel that retention is much less expensive than acquisition. According to the Harvard Business Review, acquiring a new client might cost anywhere from 5 to 25 times more than keeping an existing one.
How to build a customer retention strategy?
1. Close the loop on customer feedback.
When a customer gives you feedback or complains about your services, they are actually doing you a favor because most of the time customers tend to abandon products or services when an issue arises, and knowing how consumers feel is one of the most important aspects of client retention. You can improve your approach and better suit their demands if you understand consumer sentiment and what they like/dislike.
When obtaining feedback, there are several customer survey forms to choose from, but the most prominent brand-loyalty statistic is known as Net Promoter Score.
The NPS approach has the advantage of being relatively simple to apply, as it just asks one basic question: "How likely are you to suggest [your brand name] to a friend?" on a 0-10 scale. After delivering a score, the client can explain their rating in detail using their own words in an open-ended feedback question.
It's worth noting that not only is collecting feedback useful to your retention methods, but so is completing the loop with your consumers. Consider personalising a Thank You message on your survey and responding directly to consumer comments to demonstrate that you're paying attention and improving as a result of their input.
2. Leverage Personalization.
When it comes to personalization, people come first. Customers want to be treated as individuals, not just numbers, with individualized advice and service, as well as see the humanity behind your company.
A brand's ability to provide a unique, personalised journey for each customer is critical to its success. According to Salesforce, "79 percent of consumers are willing to share relevant information about themselves in exchange for contextualised interactions in which they are quickly recognised and understood."
Getting consumers to register an account is a terrific method to learn more about them and provide them with a tailored experience that will inspire them to buy from you. Using product suggestions based on client behaviour is another simple method to provide a feeling of customization. And we at Enalito are great at personalization and Email marketing.
3. Re - engage customers using marketing automation.
Today's marketing automation tools can automate whole marketing processes, making marketing teams' workflows easier. One of these steps is re-engaging clients.
A marketing automation solution that uses AI and machine learning (ML) can automatically recognise when customers have lapsed and re-engage them with personally relevant content, eliminating the need for your marketing team to track which customers have lapsed.
4. Reward promoters and loyal customers
If a consumer doesn't feel valued, it just takes one slip-up or a "better opportunity" with a competitor to convince them to go. It's crucial not to take your loyal consumers for granted. Reward them for staying with you.
When rates rise, you may reward loyalty by grandfathering in pricing or providing incentives and surprises to customers who place their tenth or twenty transactions. If you measure customer loyalty by how long they've been with you, you may try delivering additional presents at key periods like six months and a year. It's also possible to set up a loyalty programme.
5. Be an active member of your community
Customers are becoming more concerned about social issues, and you should be too. People want to know if your business donates to charity, if employees participate in community service projects, and with whom you interact and collaborate.
There are easier methods to show you care about the community without having an extensive Corporate Social Responsibility plan or donating to charity. You could, for example, write blogs about how to get into the sector or record a short podcast about it. The trick is to be innovative when it comes to your brand. Customers don't want to deal with a faceless corporation; they want their purchases to feel well-rounded, genuine, and like they're dealing with a real person.
6. Adopt gamification
Using game design to encourage clients is extremely powerful since it taps into people's competitive natures while also activating the brain's reward centre.
Points, badges, leaderboards, progress monitoring, and incentive levels are just a few of the game design components you may utilise to incorporate entertaining surprises into your client retention programme. Gamification may also be simply adapted to your company's objectives. From sales and reviews to social sharing and testing out new items, you can gamify almost any contact your customers have with your organisation.
7. Take advantage of Email marketing
If you are a business whose product has a shelf life, like a toothpaste business can mail their customers when they know that their consumers are ready to buy again, this will make the customer keep the company in their mind subconsciously, making them believe that the company does remember the customer.
We must have all felt as customers that a corporation only had good contact until the product was purchased, and then they forgot about us and focused on obtaining new customers. This is the most common blunder made by organisations; developing and maintaining relationships is an essential aspect of every business.
Improve Customer Retention with Enalito.
Still dicey? Remove all of your concerns by trying our demo and learning more about how Enalito may help your business. Keep up with us if you want to remain ahead of the e-com curve.Use Enalito’s AI-driven Email Marketing and Onsite Personalization tools to improve customer retention. Sign up for a free Enalito trial and we'll provide you with the information you need to boost your retention rate and increase your profits!
