A new blog post is published every day on customer retention and loyalty. There are a lot of great resources out there that offer a wealth of information for anybody interested in this topic says Saivian.
What’s the deal with customer retention anyway? Why is it so important?
Before you start exploring the 18 resources, let’s have a look at customer retention itself.
There are 2 main reasons why it is so critical for businesses today:
1. Retention costs less than acquisition
No matter how much money your company spends on acquiring new customers. You will always spend more to keep them coming back. Even if they continue buying from you without any additional effort on your part. Generating revenue from one single customer might take months or even years. The longer it takes for a returning client to generate enough profit to cover the cost of acquisition. The bigger your company’s financial loss will be due to the money spent on creating lead generation campaigns.
2. Retention increases customer lifetime value
The average business loses around 40% of new customers within the first 3 months after signing up. This means that there is a significant drop in revenue and profit. Saivian says the more loyal your customers are, the higher your company’s net income will be and this trend continues with every additional year of retention.
Another interesting fact is that you don’t necessarily need to retain 100% of your clients in order to increase their value over time. If you lose just 5% of them each year, the maximum average lifetime for most businesses increases from 2-3 years to 8-10 years.
This is exactly what we’ll focus on today: 18 specific points that can help you retain your current customers and increase customer lifetime value without too much effort on your part says Saivian.
Here we go:
1. Create a customer retention strategy by identifying and contacting inactive customers (Groove)
2. Check whether or not you’re delivering value to your customers based on how long they’ve been using your product ( PriceIntelligently )
3. Ask why customers are leaving in the first place and come up with simple solutions to fix it ( Woopra )
4. Use product usage data to identify the most common reasons for churn and proactively reach out to these clients before they leave ( Appcues )
5. Implement a referral program so that satisfied customers can help attract new ones by sharing their experience with others ( Dropbox, ReferralCandy)
6. Listen carefully when your clients interact with your support team and leave them feeling valued by doing whatever it takes to solve their problems (Help Scout, Groove )
7. Offer useful content that truly adds value in return for staying subscribed to your newsletter or blog updates (Justin Brooke, The Growth Show)
8. Offer a free trial so that customers can see firsthand how well your product works and what benefits they get from using it (Zendesk)
9. Create different levels of pricing plans so that clients don’t feel forced to either upgrade or downgrade when their needs change throughout the year ( PriceIntelligently )
10. Provide self-service access to valuable information whenever possible instead of wasting time on routine inquiries which might end up costing more money than saving it ( HelpScout )
11. Monitor customer service requests coming from social media and analyze how you can improve response times to avoid losing clients due to poor communication (Zendesk, Sprout Social)
12. Develop an onboarding process that will solve the most common problems new customers face when they first start using your product so that they become active users as soon as possible (Appcues)
13. Offer a money-back guarantee so that potential customers don’t have too much risk in trying out your product and have an easier time convincing others to do the same ( Baremetrics, GrowthRock )
14. Create a sense of urgency by limiting the amount of time special offers and discounts are available for (Groove, ConvertKit)
15. Offer free trials with no credit card required which will eliminate the main barrier that prevents potential users from signing up ( GetSiteControl )
16. Include social proof on your pricing page to convince visitors of the greatness behind every plan you offer so that they see your product as something of high value ( PriceIntelligently )
17. Reward clients for their loyalty by offering those discounts or exclusive content only available to previous buyers (AdEspresso, Groove)
18. add features to your product that are specifically designed to help keep customers happy and prevent them from switching over to competing products (Basecamp)
Conclusion:
Customer retention is what will keep your business growing and I believe that if you do it right. You can actually create an unfair advantage that helps you grow faster than your competitors explains Saivian.
We’ve learned that there are different stages of customer retention starting with anonymous users. Followed by casual customers up to loyal ones who will stick with us for many years.