November 3, 2022
Customer retention is an umbrella term for all the ways that someone who has made a purchase through your company can continue to purchase from you. This can occur in a variety of forms:
The statistics are pretty clear: it is much easier to make money by retaining past customers than by recruiting new ones. Destination CRM estimates that new customers cost 5 times more to recruit than efforts to retain existing customers. While all companies need recruitment of new customers in order to grow, you will find that your efforts at customer retention also create word-of-mouth advertising; the more happy customers you have, the more recommendations you will be sending out into the world.
Start-Up Companies and Customer Retention
Start-Up companies stand to benefit even more than established companies from customer retention efforts. When you aren't relying on a past reputation to carry you forward, you need loyal customers:
Companies who start selling without an excellent customer experience strategy are likely to get a few reviews that make others unsure about the company. Those first few reviews should be incredibly positive, and those same customers should be coming back to you again and again.
As soon as your company launches, or wherever you are in the customer retention process, you need to determine what metrics can adequately prove you are retaining customers.
This often means tracking re-activations of paid plans, or renewals subscription renewals, and as part of your CRM tracking system, noting key accounts where a repeat purchase signals that the client was satisfied with their initial purchase. No matter how you sell, you should find a way to distinguish every sale as a new customer versus an established customer.
Tracking the customer retention rate, however, is just the beginning. Here are eight strategies that will boost your customer retention rate while simultaneously improving your company.
Your customers’ experience can only improve if you understand what is most helpful to them. Send feedback surveys at strategic moments so that you can get the best possible return rate. Experiment with automating this survey a day after a purchase, a week after the purchase, or a month later, and look at the results; this information will provide you with valuable feedback.
While getting feedback is relatively easy, processing and responding to feedback is harder! For individuals who respond directly to your sales team, make sure that sales reps follow up! A quick and pleasant response can be all the incentive a customer needs to click "buy now", whereas an email lost in your customer service pipeline may be enough to send your customer looking for alternatives.
Make sure that all generalised or anonymous feedback, including public-facing review content, is reviewed and compiled by a member of sales or marketing. From this information, identify the few changes to the customer experience that could move the needle towards the positive for most people:
Present these changes to stakeholders in the company who have the power to fix them. Once this has been accomplished, make sure to document why this was done and publicise it among your marketing and sales team. Keep this iterative process going: when feedback is received, respond and make a change!
Customer Relationship Management software allows you to track the journey of any given customer from lead to customer, and beyond. An easy "win" for your team is to create a program of re-engagement emails; when a customer has become inactive, or hasn't purchased or subscribed for a period of time, create a trigger that sends an automated but personalised email to them to invite them to come back. These emails can take a variety of forms:
These automatic emails do the easy work, but when a customer does re-engage, a sales rep must respond quickly with relevant, helpful advice. This partnership between marketing automation and personalised responses really helps your company to effectively show your customers that they are more than just numbers, but are of real value to you.
Creating discounts, benefits, or deals that are only available to repeat customers is an excellent way to promote your business while rewarding people for ordering from you again. Loyalty programmes can begin with an enticing offer but often include non-discount information as well: sending an e-newsletter about your new products and services, for instance, can be one of the "perks" of the loyalty programme while actually keeping your company in the front of your customers' minds.
When possible, loyalty programmes can also involve some form of social sharing or affiliate linking, where your customers can actually advocate for your brand in exchange for a discount or credit toward your product. This is some of the least expensive, most sure-fire marketing you can use if you have the volume of loyal customers to pull it off!
This customer retention strategy goes to the root of customer service: your employees. Whoever works for your company is subtly conveying how they feel about the company through their levels of enthusiasm and excitement during customer service calls. Even sales representatives, who want to make a sale, can unknowingly sabotage that sale if they aren't excited about your mission. So when you create employee satisfaction initiatives, you are also promoting the retention of customers!
Low turnover among your staff can actually lead to a deeper well of expertise, which customers notice when they seek answers. Your employees are closest to your customers, their clients, and if they are excited about working for you, they will innovate to respond to customers needs. Talk to your employees and do whatever you can to make work a wonderful place for them; it will pay off with customer retention.
If you have a product or service that requires some onboarding or training to make it useful to customers, invest time and resources in creating excellent onboarding case studies and learning tools. Such tools are some of the best customer retention devices you have at your disposal.
If customers find it frustrating or difficult to understand the value of a subscription to a software product, they will not renew that subscription. Your useful FAQ and training library will pay massive dividends in customer loyalty, especially if you cultivate the best onboarding experience among your competitors.
As you create online tools to help people understand your product, you can also build out excellent, relevant social media presence and blog content. This content serves as great inbound lead generation, but it also helps to establish and cement your reputation as a trustworthy company. By having a substantial web presence, you make it clear that you are well-established and interested in transparency with your customers.
Creating web content that you can then promote on social media also keeps your current customers interested and engaged; recycle and reuse content by creating e-newsletters that are tailored to your customers' specific interests, drawing them back to your site for new potential sales.
All of these strategies can be implemented, they must be consistently applied, to see the maximum return from your customer retention efforts. As you assign particular strategies to different members of your team, also work on a high-level customer satisfaction road map, considering the whole buyer journey:
Some repeat customers, for instance, may be happy with a coupon here or there initially, but who will only truly engage if you launch a loyalty programme? A road map allows you to get an overall view of your efforts and results, and target any spot where you might be losing customer loyalty.
We are in the business of developing and implementing high-performing growth marketing plans and frameworks. Our Growth Marketing Framework is at the heart of our company. Let us show you how ambitious brands accelerate their growth. Contact us for a free consultation today.
Catalyse your fintech’s growth.
Building a fintech is hard—we make the growth part easy. Let’s connect.
