How do I Increase my Customer Retention Rate?
We can all agree winning new customers is new and exciting and is essential for building your business at the start, however, keeping existing customers coming back will consistently result in a greater ROI and is far cheaper than attracting new ones. Attracting new customers costs on average 5x-25x more than retaining existing customers, mainly due to sales and marketing costs being drastically higher than retention strategies and customer service costs.
By increasing your customer retention rate you are increasing the lifetime value of your customers and therefore boosting your revenue. Implementing customer retention strategies is vital in building a loyal customer base and keeping your business profitable in both the short-term and long-term.
In this guide you will learn strategies to keep your customers coming back again and again, building long and meaningful customer relationships and turning average customers into loyal ones.
What is customer retention rate
Customer retention is a metric that businesses use to measure customer loyalty over time. A business with a high customer retention rate loses fewer customers to its competitors or inactivity over a given period of time.
Here are some strategies you can use to increase your businesses customer retention rate and boost your revenue:
Strong Acquisition + Onboarding experience
One of the main reasons for churn is that new customers don’t understand the product or service properly. New customers need to be well informed about how to get the most out of your product, you should look to provide information about: how it works, what pains it solves and the key benefits that it offers.
Keeping customers in the loop and updated with information at the start of their journey with your business is essential, no new customer wants to be left in the dark after they have parted with their hard earned cash.
Customers are also likely to remember any poor customer service or incorrect information in their initial onboarding so make sure to provide new customers with a designated point of contact, fast and effective customer service and well timed follow up emails in order to make a good first impression.
Customer Communications Calendar
A customer communications calendar allows your business to plan and manage customer engagements for the upcoming months, by using one you can avoid spamming your customers with too many emails and prevent customers falling through the cracks and becoming inactive with too few communications.
Use this calendar to organise future email campaigns and reach out to customers who haven’t interacted with you in a while, creating more opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell different products to existing customers.
Company Newsletter
Utilising a company newsletter whether its weekly, monthly or quarterly is a cheap and simple way of retaining customers.
By consistently delivering valuable and relevant information to your customers, you are increasing your businesses legitimacy and building greater trust between brand and customer.
If customers know that they can rely on your company for well-written and informative information, then they are far less likely to be lost to a competitor or become inactive.
Personalisation
According to Everage, 99% of marketers say personalisation helps advance customer relationships.
Therefore, you should avoid using one-size-fits-all solutions for your customers, as in today’s world people are highly individualistic and often ignore communications that are generic in nature.
By using personalised emails and communications, offering relevant information to the specific problems or issues individuals may be facing, customers are more likely to continue business with your brand as they feel more valued and connected.
Share Positive Feedback and Testimonials
88% of customers trust online reviews as much as they trust a recommendation from a friend, therefore gathering positive feedback from your customers and showing it to others is an excellent way to increase customer retention.
A great way to gather this feedback and generate positive reviews and responses is by using a customer feedback loop. Customer feedback loops provide a system for collecting, analysing and distributing customer reviews and surveys. Asking customers to provide testimonials or to participate in small focus groups will provide your business with plenty of customer feedback to help you improve your product and to use as marketing content.
Wrap-up
The simplest and most effective way to increase your customer retention rate is to always take into account the customer when making decisions. Creating and implementing a customer focused marketing strategy will result in increased retention and higher lifetime value for your customers.
As people are constantly bombarded with ads, spam and junk mail, by establishing your business as one that provides consistent, relevant and valuable information customers will start to trust your brand and seek out advice and recommendations from your company.
If you’re looking for marketing professionals to help with your marketing strategy then leave it to us. Inboxx specialise in direct email marketing for B2B businesses.
Click here to find out how we can boost your leads and increase your revenue!
