The Key To Customer Retention

 

McKinsey says that 70% of the buying experiences are determined by how the customer feels they are being treated. If you have a good customer retention strategy in place, this number can shoot up to provide a substantial amount of revenues in the form of repeat business. Also, it has been proven that pitching for a new account costs far more than taking steps to nurture an existing client account.

Here are some tips to enhance digital customer retention to a new level altogether

• Capture audience data

You will roll retention improvement plans only when you have the necessary information to analyze in the first place. The good news with the digital medium is that it offers a lot of potential footprints/crumbs that can help you collect a wealth of information about your customers.

By getting to know your customers better, you can tailor deeply personalized marketing campaigns. You can also create buyer personas and group customers under a similar persona. Once this is in place, you can push targeted ads to appeal specifically to them and increases the chances of conversion.

• Be S.M.A.R.T.

Defining your goals is the 2nd step in improving digital customer retention. You can set your retention goals around the S.M.A.R.T principle (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely). You achieve a better clarity when you have volume, intensity, and time associated with the goals. For example – Upsell 17% of existing customers to make a repeat purchase within 3 months through the company website.

• Use content marketing to improve digital customer retention

A common tendency of digital customers is to go with products or service they may have heard from someone or came across on the Internet. The only way to drive sales from this KPI is to ramp up your content marketing campaigns. This form of inbound marketing help convert strangers to engaged sales prospects, and then to loyal customers, with the help of smart content marketing. With quality content marketing you can easily reach out to a bigger audience online. You will also enjoy a top of mind recall value.

• Marketing automation

Some concrete measures to use marketing automation to improve customer retention include –

–       Response automation

With real time response to customer queries in chats or phone calls, they know they are being taken seriously

–       Rewards automation

Repeat customers who achieve specific milestones can be sent rewards or incentive automatically.  This not only boosts customer satisfaction but also keeps them loyal to your brand.

–       Social media

With automated posts put up regularly on social media, you can increase your customer engagement, improve retention, and create a personable visage of your brand

• Pick up the phone

The importance of a personal conversation can never be undermined in marketing. With a phone call you can get to know customer pain points when they use your product or services. You can also show that you care for them with this one-on-one interaction.

By 2020, customer experience is poised to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. With these handy tips, you can easily amplify your customer retention strategy with great outcomes.