How To Retain New Customers In 7 Steps:
let’s talk about 7 ways you can retain your customers and really grow the lifetime value of your customers. Selling products and services to a new customer are challenging of course but the real challenge is
- how can you continue to sell into that customer and keep them for a long time..?
- how can you get them to come back and purchase from you again and again..?
- how can you get them to refer more customers to you right that’s really the customer experience ..?
Website design and development stage are crucial as it plays an effective role in customer retention.
So let’s talk about customer retention and how doing that can really increase the customer lifetime value, lifetime value just basically means how much revenue does a single customer generate over their lifetime.
if you’re just selling it to them one time if they send no referrals and never buy from you again that’s not as exciting right..? as somebody that’s gonna continually purchases from you into the future to do that you need to really retain your customers and grow your customer’s long term.
Tip number one is to set up and use a CRM if you’re not currently using a CRM you definitely should look into it CRM means customer relationship management and so that in and of itself essentially means investing in the relationships of your customers to grow them into long term happy customers and retain those customers right well if you really do it right, CRM could also stand for customer revenue multiplier.
if you really use it to its fullest extent and so you can do a lot of stuff in a CRM, you can keep notes about them personally and you can keep reminders in there to reach back out to them at key points in the process where it might make sense for them to buy from you again.
You can put email automation in place so that it automatically is communicating to your customers for you via email maybe on holidays for promotions depending on your type of business and industry you have these key trigger points through the lifetime of the customer right where it makes sense to maybe buy from you again or to upgrade or to buy additional products and services and those sorts of things so if you use a CRM properly you can automate a lot of that and really increase the lifetime value of your customers
Tip two is to leverage email and I just touched on it in tip 1 but to elaborate a little more think about an automated campaign that makes sense for your customers right when are you gonna want to send them email sometimes, it could just be a thank you for being a great customer sometimes it could just be a say hey Happy New Year you know think of those sorts of things, send them birthday emails show them some love through email think of this in advance what is an automated journey that makes sense for your customers what times of the year should you email them and what should you email them sometimes it’s just tips adding value giving them educational content right you’re not asking for a sale you’re just providing value right the more value you provide the more the customer has a good feeling about you and wants to spend more money with you long-term
Tip three should be an obvious one you would think but it provides great customer service is just so huge you know so many small businesses focus on the acquisition of customers they throw them over the fence and then they don’t spend a lot of time on customer service it’s really really important to focus on that because if you provide great customer service people are gonna stay with you longer and they’re gonna refer their friends it’s really beneficial to your business so have a culture that invests in customer service and taking care of the customer it’s invaluable to your long-term success
Tip number four is to offer incentive programs or win back programs for your customers give them a reason to come back right have an incentive program put in place when you lose a customer provide an incentive for them to stay or maybe you did lose a customer or a provide incentive for them to come back or maybe you have a business that sells to customers and a one-time basis you don’t really have a recurring type of customers have incentives for them to come purchase from you again right additional products and services may be the initial product has a lifetime you know expectancy have a reminder to reach back out at that point in time to get another sale from them incentive programs are a really great way to provide good retention of your existing customers but also to get your customers lifetime value to increase over time
Tip number five is to have a loss leader what a loss leader means is it’s basically something that you’re willing to lose a little bit of money on for the potential of a game and so an example of that is maybe a year after somebody is your customer you send them a gift card just say hey thank you here’s a five dollar gift card to Starbucks now that’s a loss leader because that cost you five dollars right but the thing is is the value that brings to them just the good that they feel from you that’s generated from that well probably either a get them to come back to you at some point in the future which you’re probably gonna make a lot more in five bucks or refer-a-friend which is also going to generate a lot more revenue than five bucks so it’s a risk that you’re taking which is why they call it a loss leader but oftentimes it’s like a line in the water that actually catches a fish and you end up seeing a really strong return
Tip six is to ask for feedback and then to actually listen right the thing here is your existing customers are the best folks to ask for feedback because they’ve experienced your whole process they’ve experienced your product and your service probably worked with your team so they’re gonna have a lot of great feedback that they can provide to you that’s gonna help you get better but the thing is you have to ask for it and then you have to actually listen to it right and make adjustments to improve if you ask for feedback but you don’t actually do anything with it it’s not gonna help you improve your business and improve client retention the
Tip seven last tip it’s to stay on a first-name basis with your customers especially your VIP customers right want to have a relationship with them right actually get to know them instead of looking at your customers is just a huge bucket of people actually see their individual names and faces right this is gonna get you excited about actually helping add impact and value into them and their lives right get to know them and by doing so you’re gonna learn a lot of things and you’re gonna have that fuel that drives you to want to really grow relationships with other customers which all that ends up doing is improving your overall customer experience and if you have an unbelievable customer experience people we’re gonna stay longer they’re gonna refer their friends and you’re gonna see an increase in customer lifetime value so that’s it there’s seven tips I’m sure there’s about a billion more.
