Many business owners often think the key to getting more sales and increasing profit is attracting as many new customers as possible. Data from Semrush shows that 44% of businesses focus more on customer acquisition, while only 18% pay attention to customer retention. However, acquiring new customers isn’t enough to boost your company’s profit. If you keep trying to reach new customers, you’ll need to spend more money on marketing and promotion, with no assurance that your target audience will buy from you.
On the other hand, if you focus more on retaining your existing customers, they\ll continuously buy from your business and promote your brand through word–of–mouth referrals. Another source also claims that if you can increase 5% in customer retention, you can produce more than a 25% increase in profit as your returning customers will likely buy more from you over time.
Plus, if your returning customers would do the marketing on your behalf (e.g., word-of-mouth marketing), you also get to acquire new customers. Ultimately, improving your business’ customer retention can help you build better customer relationships, maximise revenue and be the foundation of customer acquisition.
Now that you know that customer retention is more effective in increasing your profit, see below for some strategies to retain your customers and build stronger relationships with them.
Create a Strong and Cohesive Onboarding Experience
The moment your customer does their first purchase, you must take this opportunity to leave the most notable first impression ever. To do this, you can create a strong and cohesive onboarding plan. Your customer’s onboarding process can massively impact their future buying decision, whether they’ll use your product or service for the long-term or not. When done well, your customers will keep returning and buying more from your brand.
One way to improve your onboarding plan is to make the sign-up process as quick and efficient as possible. For example, suppose you have a handyman business. When new customers ask for estimates, you can use a handyman estimate template to create clear and professional-looking estimates. With an estimate template, you can impress your clients with your highly organised and detailed estimates, reduce the risk of errors, win more jobs and ensure they keep coming back.
Always Provide Personalised Customer Service and Experience
Providing your customers with one-size-fits-all solutions is only a sure fire way to drive them away shortly. Data from Forbes shows that 71% of consumers are frustrated when their shopping experience feels impersonal.
So, to ensure your existing customers get the exact solution they look for from your business, provide them with personalised customer service and experience. According to Epsilon’s research, 80% of customers are likelier to stick to a company offering personalised services and experiences.
So, keep your product offerings personalised and relevant to each customer. Ask them about the unique problems they’re facing and offer them a product/service that can genuinely help solve their issue.
If you’re in the handyman business, you can use business management software from companies like Jobber. With this tool, you can easily organise your customers’ details in one place, keep track of their unique needs and automatically offer personalised estimates, invoices or appointment details. They’ll be motivated to continue doing business with you due to your attentiveness to their specific needs.
Collect and Acknowledge Customer Feedback
The best people you can ask to help improve your product or service are no other than your current customers. As they’re the ones who spend time and money using your product, you can gain firsthand information about how beneficial your product is to them and what more you can do to improve it in the future.
So, find ways to collect feedback from your customers. For example, you can send an automated follow-up email after your customer has shopped online from your website or has completed a transaction with you. Or you can open your social media accounts for feedback by toggling on the review options.
Regardless of how you choose to survey your customers, always remember to respond to their reviews. If it’s positive, acknowledge them for taking their time and effort to review your business and remind them that your company’s available for future services. If it’s negative, be understanding and sympathetic to their frustrations and let them know that you’re open to discussing resolutions. Remember, how you respond to negative reviews can make or break your chance to rebuild relationships with your customers and retain them.
Establish a Customer Loyalty Program
A customer loyalty program is a strategy many businesses use to encourage their customers to make frequent purchases. As reported by Accenture, more than 90% of companies are implementing customer loyalty programs to boost customer loyalty. In a loyalty program, a customer is rewarded with a free product or service after reaching a certain number of purchases. This tactic can improve customer retention, build a better relationship with your existing customers and boost your revenue.
Reach out to Inactive Customers
Perhaps you’ve done some internal research and found out that some of your customers haven’t logged in a while. Instead of bombarding them with newsletters, create a personalised follow-up message, reminding them that they haven’t used your product in a while. A personalised email will make them feel valued and noticed and potentially encourage them to buy again. You may also use this opportunity to upsell your latest and upgraded product version and tell them how this new feature can improve their user experience.
Conclusion
Now that you have this list full of customer retention strategies, it’s time to decide which one’s best for your business. Remember that not all methods can work for all businesses. But as long as your main priority is meeting and exceeding your customer’s needs and expectations, you can ensure that your customers will be more than happy to repetitively purchase from you at every opportunity they get.
