5 powerful customer retention tips

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Dec 8, 2017 / by
5 powerful customer retention tips

Depending on your niche, acquiring new customers is anywhere from five to twenty five times more expensive than retaining new ones. This is startling, because if you read any popular marketing blog, the amount of content pertaining to attracting new customers far outweighs the content on retaining existing customers.

As Gregory Ciotti says,

Retaining customers costs less than acquiring them, and both add to your company’s bottom line; revenue doesn’t care where it comes from, earned or saved.

Put simply, if you want to create a long-term business you need to think carefully about customer retention. If you can acquire customers but not keep them, you might make some short-term money, but you’ll never build a business that will still be around decades from now.

Offer killer customer service

71% of customers say they have ended their relationship with a business due to poor customer service. If you’re not making a concerted effort to offer awesome customer service, then you’ll end up leaking customers.

One of the best ways to improve your customer service is by installing live chat on your site. This provides an immediate channel of communication and allows customers to remove buying fears, ask questions and feel valued.

Also, try to use social media to respond to customer service enquiries. If you take too much time responding to questions or if you’re vague in your replies, customers only have to click on a button to hear back from your competitors.

Surprise giftSurprises go a long way

If you’re looking to keep hold of your customers, try blowing their expectations out of the water once in awhile. Consider emailing them on their birthday and offering them a personalised discount or a Birthday greeting. People love to feel appreciated and this kind of behaviour makes your business stand out from your competitors.

Find out what your customers really value

You’ve probably got some assumptions about what your customers like and dislike, but you’ll get a much clearer picture after a customer survey. Find out about their pain points, their desires and the aspects of your services that can be improved – then deliver on your promises. This isn’t complicated, but it’s amazing how many businesses are so focused on doing what they want that they forget about the people who’re paying to keep them in business: their customers.

Feature user generated content

In this video from Pampers, parents get to feel acknowledged by the brand for featuring their children playing. This is the kind of content strategy that keeps customers retained for life (or in the case of Pampers, for as long as it takes for their children to grow out of nappies). Think of ways to get your customers talking about you on social media, then share their content (this tactic works particularly well on visual channels like Instagram).

Deploy a loyalty program

The more you can incentivise your customers to keep using your service, the more they will keep coming back. As a good example of this, Dropbox provides more data storage for its users as an incentive to refer their friends. This strategy resulted in astronomic growth.

Connect with your customers to keep them coming back

Customer retention is all about connecting to your customers in a human-to-human way, finding out what they value and then delivering. Sure, this requires a lot of work, but if you’re committed to the long haul of running a successful business, building a relationship with your customers is paramount.

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