Customer retention is something that all businesses need to think about, and to choose strategies that work for them and their team, as well as their target audience. Not considering how you can better the experience of your customer, makes it tough for them to want to come back and spend their money and time on your brand.
Business leaders share their best advice on how you can implement great and powerful retention strategies that actually work!
Send online discounts
Something you need to consider when it comes to customer retention is what you can provide your customer for not only their extended loyalty, but also for their first purchase or dealings with your company. Brandon Aversano the founder of The Alloy Market says, “Discounts are a really helpful way to show your appreciation to your customer whether it’s a discount for making a first purchase, or random online sales that bring them back to your site.
“Discounts should always be given as an incentive when a customer shops with you online for the first time. Even a 10% discount can make it a good reason to buy from you, and also goes to show how much you value their business. Sending these discounts via email or SMS messaging are great ways to make them aware of other sales you might be having. By being a loyal customer, you will have access to discounts much earlier than other people, which increases the feeling of exclusivity which is a really helpful retention strategy.
Implement a rewards system and make it valuable
Michael Charalambous the director of Invezz suggests that, “Rewards systems help to keep your customers coming back because there is a good chance they will be able to redeem points to receive a sizable discount. To make a rewards system successful, you should make the discount worth signing up for, and shouldn’t take your customer’s too long to be able to increase their points quickly. If not, you risk them finding the rewards system too complicated or not worth making purchases to get the points.
You should also always ensure the rewards discounts can be applied with other discounts you are offering, as this makes it even more likely that your customers will use the rewards system. When you make shopping easier for your customer, they will keep coming back.”
Consider what makes a successful onboarding experience
“Onboarding of new customers is an essential first step to a customer retention strategy. If the beginning phases of bringing onboard new customers isn’t a success, then the chances of them returning to your business are low.”
Josh Bluman the co-founder of JJ Suspenders continues to say, “The best way to make sure your customer onboarding is relevant and useful is to ensure the whole purchasing process is smooth. This means an easy checkout process, having both a guest checkout option and an option to sign up and become a member, providing detailed information about products and services, and detailed shipping and tracking information. All of this combined makes the whole process smooth, and makes someone’s first time experience with your brand a good one.”
Follow-up on feedback/Expand on your customer service operations
As an extra tip, you should also be considering customer feedback and how to best handle it. Whether this feedback is from an email or survey you sent them, or it is from a review or comment on your site or social media. You need to respond and follow-up with customers to ensure they know their feedback is being received and changes are being made (if necessary). Following-up shows you’re serious about customer satisfaction, which helps to increase customer loyalty.
You should also be looking into ways to improve your customer service, and to make sure you are giving customers enough options to reach you. Messaging via social media platforms, having a chat bot on your online store, and also providing phone and email support are all ways that you can ensure you are being more inclusive when it comes to customer support. Consumers like options, and they prefer when they can contact you easily and know that they will receive a response quickly.
Please see the infographic below for more help understanding your customers and giving them exactly what they want.
