Every business goes for a war every single day to fight the competition and acquire customers. It takes a huge piece of the company’s efforts to get sales. Often, pumping in a lot of cash to gain users for the product and services. It’s no mystery.
Finance is the lifeblood of any business and to get financially stronger a business must acquire customers on a regular basis. However, if there is a leakage in the customer experience process at any time with his journey with the company, the customer will drop off. Even if your sales teams make more sales to get more and more customers, it will not be any good if the lifetime value of the customer is not added to the company’s revenue.
You will find many companies that are great at acquiring customers but the churn is simply very high. This simply means that your marketing strategy to onboard the customer is good but your customer hand-holding through the journey is not that great. There are various ways to check and see if you should be really working on your retention marketing strategies.
First, your customer base is not stable and not increasing- If you are finding that your business is acquiring the same number of customers every day or even if you see an increase in sales, it is not considered a good sign when you total up your customers and find that your total number of customers are still the same as last month or the month before.
This simply means that your customers are dropping. Now, there could be hundreds of reasons for customers not sticking to your product or service for a longer duration. But in this article, we are only going to talk about some of the common retention marketing strategies and improved customer support that actually work .
Discount on annual/large purchases- Retention becomes easy when the consumer feels invested. For example, if you are selling a product in multiple quantities, your marketing strategy should include discounts when buying in bulk. Like, a toothpaste, if you are selling a 100 gm tube at $1 then you should provide 300 gm at $2. This will encourage the consumer to buy a higher value product and make the consumer use it for a long time. If the consumer is using the product for a long time then probably has already developed a taste and brand value for it. Therefore, there are high chances of him returning to the same brand.
Similarly, if you are in a subscription business, if your customer has already paid a monthly fee for a service, then you must pitch for an annual sale by offering various discounts or some reward. If you are successful in mastering this technique, you will find that the customer will start sticking to you for a long time. It’s not because they have purchased an annual plan but also knowing that he got a better deal and even if the customer wants to cancel the service, he will take his time to think about it.
It is human behavior not to bother about things that already seem set or done. That is the advantage that you have to take.
Talk to your customers regularly- Purchase the best virtual phone number for yourself and your retention team and have them call the customer to understand the issues, struggles or gather appreciations for good. Though, it is an old fashion technique but still works. After all, we are humans and we feel better when someone comes to us and talk about our problems and helps to find solutions.
Retention is a tough task. It is very important to talk to customers on a regular basis. Moreover, if possible, give them a dedicated virtual phone number to call upon in case they need any help. A study shows that it reduces your chances to lose a customer by 10% if you talk to them regularly.
Customers don’t leave the product or service. It’s the other way around. Hence, it becomes extremely important that you have your customer service teams talk to your customers at regular intervals and let them know that you are available when they need you.
Nonetheless, you will at least have an opportunity to find out what went wrong and offer some discounts in some form to keep the customer going with you for a long time.
These two strategies still work. These are both pre and post-sales scenarios that will help your business to acquire not only more customers but also retain them for a long time. It is absolutely correct to say that the customer is a king. However, it is also correct that businesses are the ones who make them kings. Follow these strategies and you will find a drastic improvement in your customer retention ratio.