5 Ways To Dramatically Increase Customer Retention

If you can dramatically increase customer retention, your business is going to go to the next level! However, that’s a whole lot easier said than done. It’s like saying, “if you score more points than your opponent in a basketball game, you’ll win.” It’s technically true, but it’s very hard to get any insight from that sentence.

A lot of businesses focus on gaining new business, which is a valid business strategy. However, oftentimes, merely reducing a business’s client attrition rate can impact revenue much more than gaining new business. By some estimates, retaining and growing a current customer is significantly easier than gaining net new clients. One study found a 60% chance of closing a deal with a current client versus a 5% chance with a new prospect!

The right customer retention and marketing strategy can pay huge dividends. Keeping top-notch clients may be increasingly difficult in the digital age, but evaluating how you’re working to retain your current customers is critical.

To help you keep and grow your customers, the marketing experts at JSL Marketing & Web Design put together their thoughts on how to keep and grow your best accounts. Read on to learn more!

Common Customer Retention Terms

• Customer Churn Rate: A calculation of how many customers are lost over a given time interval. Usually, this is measured by the quarter or physical year.
• Customer Lifetime Value: A measure of the lifetime value your business will reap if the client remains. Essentially, how much a given client will be worth over time for your business.
• Health Score: A measure of your relationship with a client’s health. There are multiple ways of measuring this and multiple scales. 1-10 and 1-5, with the largest number being ‘Great’ and the lowest being the greatest risk of a lost customer, are two common systems of measurement.
• Brand Ambassadors: Customers who are so thrilled with your solution that they promote your solution to their circles. Essentially, they’re so thrilled with your brand that they’re giving you free word-of-mouth and helping you reach new customers.

6 Ways To Increase Customer Retention

Customer Retention Strategy 1: Offer Dedicated Account Support:

This might be a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many businesses don’t assign dedicated sales or customer success to their biggest accounts and best customers. This approach might not work in every industry. It’ll be hard to offer a dedicated CSM to quick-service restaurant patrons, for instance. Still, even if you can’t offer a unique sales rep or CSM for every customer, be sure that you have a customer service department or rep to field customer questions. Quick and helpful resolution of client questions is an opportunity to earn the trust of your patrons. Failure to do so could lose you a customer.

Customer Retention Strategy 2: Constantly Remarket To Your Existing Customers:

Many businesses put the majority of their marketing efforts into gaining new customers. There’s nothing wrong with this approach! However, it’s not the only bucket of potential revenue out there! If a business is trying to market to past customers, they’re likely reaching out to customers who have purchased in the past but are not active clients. That’s a mistake, in our opinion!

Your existing customer base is, statistically, the most likely to purchase from you. However, few businesses actually see their existing customers as marketing targets. Any upsell or retention strategies for existing clients are usually left in the hands of Sales or the Client Success team, often without any input from marketing. That’s a huge miss!

To help prepare your Sales team for a quick and easy renewal cycle, prepare a great marketing campaign for your existing customers. Your revenue will climb as a result!

Customer Retention Strategy 3: Conduct Autopsies of Exiting Customers:

Typically, customer retention is left to Sales and the client services team. These teams usually do their best to answer clients promptly, offer strategic solutions, and create a simple process. There’s nothing wrong with focusing client-facing roles on these metrics, but this comes with a risk. What if your client services teams are focusing on solving the wrong problems?

That’s why we recommend asking departing clients WHY they’re leaving. These autopsies offer insight into potential weaknesses and areas of improvement that you otherwise wouldn’t have uncovered. Maybe your customer service team is overworked, and response times to questions are irksome for your clients. Maybe your product has a huge problem that no amount of creative selling and customer service can solve. Maybe one of your competitors has found and exploited a weakness of your value proposition and is siphoning existing customers away from you.

Regardless of what the problem is, try and schedule some sort of debriefing with as many exiting clients as possible. These conversations might not be fun, but they will teach you a lot about your clients and your business strategy.

Customer Retention Strategy 4: Create A Customer Loyalty Program:

Customer loyalty programs aren’t just to increase sales. They also increase client retention by keeping you as a client’s preferred partner. Why would a customer go across town for dinner when your rewards programs offer them half-priced bottles of wine? Reward programs also help by making frequenting your business a habit among your loyal customers.

Remember, the goal of this program isn’t to offer discounts for any customer. It’s to incentivize your top clients or loyal brand advocates to keep purchasing from you. Per that goal, make sure that you’re thinking through your program before launching.

• Make Sure Your Loyalty Program Offers What Your Customers Want
• Crunch The Numbers on What You Can Offer
• Ensure That Your Loyalty Program Is Reserved For Only Select Customers.
• Beta Test Your Loyalty Program With Select Customers To Determine Pros & Cons.

Customer Retention Strategy 5: Integrate Yourself With Your Existing Customers:

The term “integrate” can mean a lot of different things in different industries. For an e-commerce store, it can be through saving a customer’s information for streamlined checkout. A market research website can be automated reporting about market changes. Even merely sending promotional emails about new deals and discounts to your customer list via email marketing is a great way to connect with your clients.  Regardless of what it looks like, it’s important to find ways to make it as easy as possible for your clients to purchase and stay with you.

Increase Your Customer Retention With JSL Marketing & Web Design

We recommend, In addition to the process and operations tips listed out above, constantly remarketing and staying top of mind for your clients. There are a plethora of ways to do this!

• Email Marketing: Keep your brand top of mind with your existing customers through timed email marketing campaigns.
• Reputation Marketing: Reach out to existing customers and try to get as many positive Google reviews as possible!
• Print Collateral: If you have a new solution or product to promote, use properly branded and visually enticing printed content to educate your customer’s executive team!
• Custom Strategies: Every business is different. Talk to our experts to design a custom client retention marketing strategy custom-tailored to your needs.

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