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This blog post focuses on the category “Customer Retention Strategies”, as the fourth in a series of 4 blogs about the best marketing tactics to Acquire, Nurture, Grow, and Retain your customers.
Retaining existing high-value customers is key. If you are focusing most of your marketing efforts on acquiring new customers, you are missing the trick. It costs 16 times more to build a long-term relationship with a new customer, compared to keeping existing. As a result, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.
The goal is to turn one- or two-time purchasers into loyal fans who will act as advocates for your brand. The magic bullet here is the customer experience; a positive experience is guaranteed to boost retention. Unsurprisingly, 87% of the customers with great purchase experiences will likely buy from the same company again.
Easy-to-Implement Customer Retention Strategies:
#1 UNSUBSCRIBE PAGE
Allow customers to decrease the contact frequency or adjust their interests when they click the Unsubscribebutton. In most cases, when customers click “unsubscribe” they simply indicate that the messages may no longer be relevant, or the contact frequency is higher than they expected. So, if you provide an option to adjust their preferences, they are more likely to stay subscribed and engage more with your communications.
Why implement this tactic?
Retain newsletter subscribers
Re-engage churning customers
Gain better insights into the reasons why people choose to unsubscribe
#2 LOCALIZE CONTENT
If you are a global company, localizing your marketing is a great way to make customers feel heard and appreciated. Content that is locally targeted has 6x more engagement than posts that were designed for the global market. Send content to each recipient in their native or preferred language, but also reflect the types of offers and products that are more relevant to their location (e.g. local store stock availability).
Expert tip: As content localization increases campaign production times, ensure you have a solution that helps streamline local content production. You may also want to test the performance uplift to assess whether the additional localization costs provide a healthy ROI.
Why implement this tactic?
Enhance customer experience
Increase customer LTV
Optimize content marketing
#3 EMAIL RE-ENGAGEMENT
Marketing Sherpa reports that, on average, marketers lose 25% of their email list each year (simply to attrition). Therefore, re-engagement emails play a vital role in the email lifecycle. Simply said, send messages to a customer that abandoned a goal completion process. This can be applied to any case where the action by the customer has indicated a significant intent to complete a goal and the goal is of significant value to both the brand and the customer.
Why implement this tactic?
Retain valuable customers
Reduce call-center enquiries by preempting customer questions with proactive communications
#4 EMAIL DELIVERABILITY
While your email content might be great, no one will ever see it if it doesn’t land in the recipient’s inbox. You have spent a significant amount of time and money growing your existing customer database, so don’t let it go to waste with poor deliverability rates. Poor deliverability will prevent you from reaching your high-value customers, which will result in customers gradually disengaging with your brand entirely. The solution: increase email inbox placement rates by increasing your email deliverability (here’s how).
Why implement this tactic?
Prevent existing customer churn
Increase customer engagement
#5 EXIT INTENT
Display an overlay or pop-up when a prospective customer is about to leave the page without completing the desired goal. These can be triggered either when the customer is moving the mouse to close the tab or, with the right platform, when the AI predicts a high likelihood that the session will be abandoned. Expert tip: Rather than just asking for their email address, explain the value of providing the email address in the context of what the customer was trying to achieve.
Why implement this tactic?
Decrease session churn
Decrease paid media retargeting
Increase data capturing
#6 SEARCH IN EMAIL
A search bar adds an interactive element to an email and allows subscribers to search your website from their inbox! Include a search bar in your regular newsletter communications especially if your typical customer journey starts with customers searching for possible options. This is highly effective for travel, car rental, and product comparison businesses.
Why implement this tactic?
Increase click-through rates
Increase goal completion rates
#7 CALENDER INVITES
Digital calendars make everyone’s life easier. Bring that experience to your own brand by including calendar invites for any time-sensitive notifications that require customer action. While it may not be appropriate to do this for seasonal sale notifications, customers will appreciate a calendar reminder for when their order or engineer is scheduled to arrive.
Why implement this tactic?
Enhance customer experience
Improve operational efficiency by avoiding failed deliveries
Increase goal completion rates
#8 AUTORESPONDER EMAIL
Allow your customers to reply to your newsletters. Replying to an email the customer just received is by far the most natural and convenient way of interacting with a brand, however most brands opt for directing responses to “noreply@”. This forces customers to look for the contact details on the “Contact Us” page, creating an unnecessary roundabout way of reaching you. Instead, directly route customer replies to a customer service email or trigger an automated response to the customer.
Why implement this tactic?
Decrease calls to customer service
Increase customer loyalty
Enhance customer experience
#9 BASKET TOP-UP
Incentivize your customers that are about to check out to increase their order with a timely and personalized offer. For example, calculate how much more they need to spend to qualify for free shipping and suggest recommended products that are just above the price point to qualify them for the offer. This will help increase average order values and potentially boost profits within certain product categories. And customers will be very happy they received free shipping!
Why implement this tactic?
Increase average basket value
Increase conversion rates
BONUS TACTIC #10: ONLINE COURSE
Watch closely how your customers interact with your product or service and then identify the weaknesses or obstacles in the customer journey. Where are customers dropping off and churning? Is it because they don’t know how to properly use what they bought? Setting up a “customer university” will ensure that they know how to make the most out of your product and increases their chance of success. An online course can include instructions, how-to videos, quizzes etc. Here are some of the best online course platforms you can use to build out your own training course.
Why implement this tactic?
Get customers familiar with your offering
Reduce customer churn
Build a strong customer-brand relationship
This article was first published by MAPP. Permission to use has been granted by the publisher.