A retention strategy that turns new customers into brand fans, is it needed? Are you still wondering? Then just think about this, customer retention brings significantly more sales than just а new ones. A new customer is a customer who first purchased at your store.
And yes, strategies for attracting new customers to your online store are very important and it’s just great that you have them. But just imagine how much your income can increase if you have a way to return every new customer. When setting your goal to retain a customer, you should understand that the way to this is to make a visitor a fan of the brand, as shown in the diagram below.
Your goal as a store owner is to create strategies that will help orient the visitor at every stage of the client’s journey. It doesn’t matter how it is implemented, through a first-class personalized Messenger strategy or social networks. The main thing is to ensure a positive result, which would push customers to the next stage. In this article, we will look at the best ways to achieve this and turn a simple visitor into a fan of the brand.
What is customer retention and why is it necessary?
Consider the definition of customer retention. “Customer retention refers to the ability of a company or product to retain its customers over some specified period. High customer retention means customers of the product or business tend to return to, continue to buy or in some other way not defect to another product or business.” From here we conclude that this is the ability to attract a visitor and transform him into a regular customer, making him a fan of your brand, which in turn means that he will prefer your product and will not buy similar products in other brands.
Another important fact about customer retention strategies is because the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60% – 70%, whereas the probability of selling to a brand new visitor is only 5% – 20% (Marketing Metrics: The Manager’s Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance). Consequently, the strategy of customer retention hare more cost-effective and has a higher ROI than acquisition strategies do.
How to calculate the percentage of customer retention? Everything is very simple. Choose a period, for example, a month, then we take the total number of customers per month, subtract the number of new customers of the same month. The resulting number is divided by the number of customers at the beginning of this month. It’s like a piece of cake!
When calculating your customer retention rate, keep in mind that the average rate is just below 20%. If your rate is significantly higher, then you must have good strategies in place to keep your customers coming back, so keep up the good work! If your number is around 20%, don’t fret because there are a few retention marketing strategies you can start doing to increase your customer retention rate.
But why is retention marketing important?
The thing is those existing customers are likely to spend 31% more than new website visitors. When you release a new product, your loyal customers are 50% more likely to purchase it than new customers are. Because of this, you’ll spend 5x less on customer retention than on finding new leads to make a purchase.
Although there are many significant advantages to customer retention, you should not forget about attracting new ones. The trick is to develop strategies for acquiring new customers, but at the same time find ways to retain each new customer. Thanks to this approach, you will have an increase in new customers, but there will also be a large number of existing customers who are ready to make not only the second-order but also the third and fourth orders. Finding and creating such strategies is the key to a successful online business. For example, Happy2Buy metric used to quantify of whether the customer is ready to buy your product and will stick with you forever, recommend you to his friends and colleagues or not.
And so, we have already examined what customer retention is, how to calculate the percentage of retained customers, and why it is important not only to acquire new customers but also to retain them. Now let’s look at ways to increase customer retention. There are actually a lot of them, but in this article, we will analyze five such methods.
1. Personalization of work with all channels
We start our conversation with customer data and their personalization. The main question is, do you have a data collection system? Namely, accurate information about the ways of communication with your customers, who your customers are, the goals with which they shop in your store, and their interests. All this information will help you personalize each sales channel and it doesn’t matter whether by email or messenger when you can accurately match customers with their interests or needs, this will give you better opportunities to sell your products.
In fact, 79% of consumers said they are only interested in engaging with offers that have been personalized based off their previous interactions and purchases with a brand. All this confirms the importance of the interaction of your customers with your store.
Facebook Messenger is a great way to personalize customer interactions, as you can contact a customer by his name, track messages based on website actions (for example, an abandoned cart and view rejection messages), and create feedback conversations. Which makes the discussion more interesting to the user. A personalized omnichannel experience is extremely important for e-commerce bends in order to become memorable and stand out among its competitors.
2. Provide a positive experience through top-notch service
From our point of view, one of the most important factors affecting retention and income. If you have not taken this into account before, then you should think about it right now. For example, 52% of consumers say they have made an additional purchase from a company after a positive customer service experience. Not the last place in this is customer support. It can make your brand more memorable for visitors and customers. If you show that they are always ready to help and go to meet them.
One of the best ways to improve customer service is to use chatbots. Why are chatbots so good? It’s quite simply very simple, the satisfaction of your customers with your service is increased thanks to the quick answers that provide chatbots. You can enable them locally so customers can ask these questions directly from your store. Regardless of whether you use Messenger, email, or another method to handle customer requests. One of the main conditions here is the feelings of customers. Therefore, it is very important to ensure that they are always in the first place, which will further strengthen the respect and trust in your brand and significantly increase the likelihood of their return in the future.
3. Apply feedback to improve your business
Fill out the purchase form, make sure the service was good. Users will be pleased to know that you are not indifferent to their opinion.
Sending a form to a review or just asking for it is scary enough. If they didn’t like the service? If the goods did not live up to expectations? But keep in mind that 77% of consumers favor brands if they seek out and apply customer feedback. You must understand and accept the fact that 100% of positive reviews will not be and this is normal. Treat all reviews to be either positive or negative, as an opportunity to improve your business. Work with reviews, analyze them to find problem areas or minor flaws – this will help to make improvements. All this helps to increase retention, as customers see that they are listening to their opinion that you are working to improve the service and the product itself.
4. The loyalty program or bonus program
A well-thought-out loyalty program or bonus program is a good basis for increasing customer retention. On the way from a visitor to a brand fan, such programs are an excellent move. Such programs help return customers by encouraging the buyer to take simple actions, such as repeat purchases, the following you on social media, engaging with your social media posts, writing product reviews, referring you to friends, and more. All this is aimed at giving an impetus to the customer to return to your store and to make new and new purchases.
Considering 54% of consumers say that they would likely make more purchases with a brand that offers a loyalty program. It’s a great tool to drive more leads and retain each customer for future purchases.
5. Go beyond your site, use social networks
Now is the time that many of your existing, as well as potential customers, live in social networks. A lot of people spend a lot of time flipping through the pages of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and others in search and discussing topics of interest to them. Knowing your brand and having a positive shopping experience, a client who encounters you on social networks will at least be interested in and visit your page, with a high probability will make a new purchase and leave his review.
It’s true that 53% of American customers will post positive comments about companies on their social media, and this is something you’ve likely seen in the “tagged” section on Instagram where customers will pose with products they’ve purchased and tag the brand they bought it from.
All this enhances the content created by the users themselves. More and more people will hear about your brand and your products, as fans of your brand share their purchases from your store and mark your page. Social networks are a good platform for interacting with your customers and building trust in you. Therefore, go beyond the boundaries of your site, use social networks, as a huge resource for attracting new customers, and retaining old ones.
Increasing revenue starts with increasing customer retention
Now knowing “What is retention?”. Don’t waste your time, start working on retaining your customers and turning each of them into a fan of your brand. They will write reviews, leave feedback, and share their purchases with their followers and family. Stop waiting for an increase in income! All you need for successful eCommerce is BRN.AI, smart tools that include Social affiliate system, Smart sales recovery, Sales Analytics and CRM. Moreover, the visual chatbot editor allows anyone easily to create their chatbots without programming skills. It’s simple to put your sales in automatic mode! Grow your business right now!
