Creating customer retention strategies that work are an important part of “doing business”. If those strategies work, then your business would not face challenging difficulties in the long run.

That’s why, in this article, you will understand the “retention meaning”, how to increase customer retention, and find out which strategies work the best!

So, let’s dive into action right away, and in the end, you be the judge whether they are worthy of putting into practice!

What Is Customer Retention?

Since you are here, maybe you already know the meaning of this, and that’s great though! But, in order to have a better perspective of everything, defining the retention meaning is indeed crucial.

The simplest definition we’ve found is the following: “Customer retention is the collection of activities a business uses to increase the number of repeat customers and to increase the profitability of each existing customer.”

Now, the second part. Definitions need examples, right? An excellent example of customer retention would be a discount given to your long-term customers.

Or, a bonus gift for customers who purchased for the first time from your brand.

Retention Strategies

Given the fact that you’re already familiar with the retention definition, now, the next step is to learn the strategies that lead to improvement.

#5 Create and Send Personalized Newsletters

Nowadays, more and more companies tend to implement e-mail newsletters as a way to keep customers informed about everything.

One of the biggest reasons why you should implement this strategy is due to its cost-efficiency, and its high efficiency in developing leads and driving sales. Additionally, newsletters will help your business gain credibility, authority, and a sense that you do care about your customers.

Keep in mind that there are 4 billion daily email users, and the number will grow up to 4.6 billion by 2025. However, keep in mind that newsletters should be designed more than well-quality images, and they should not be aggressively salesy.

The whole point is to provide value and why should customers stick with you in the foreseeable future.

#4 Implement Customer Feedback System

Customer feedback matters more than what you can imagine. Understanding the needs of your customers, their behavior, and what they dislike can help your business tremendously.

What you can do is to set up a feedback system on your website so that they can rate your product. Or, even go one more step and ask your customers what would they want to change regarding your offers. How do they rate their experience with your brand? Or, how did they find out about your brand? Which channels?

Do not hesitate to get innovative and create sub-categories regarding your brand, your product, or something else. Once you get the data, you can implement them in your current customer retention strategy.

Last but not the least, by asking your customers to share their feedback you will greatly your brand as a whole. To be more precise, customers want to feel valued, and you show them exactly this.

#3 Create a “Perfect” Product

Creating the perfect product may sound over-ambitious at first, but, it doesn’t have to be. Why? Because creating the perfect product takes time, requires a lot of patience and expertise.

Let’s suppose that you sell virtually the same product as your competitor. However, your competitors seem to sell more than you. Strange, right? Well, not really.

Removing any type of bottlenecks, distribution problems, and recognizing the “pain” points of your customers is what a perfect product means. If you put enough focus on a few of these points, be more than sure that you will have a competitive advantage.

#2 Offer the Ideal Customer Service

Customer service is one of the biggest factors that contribute to the overall customer experience. If you set an efficient customer service to handle your customers` inquiries in the right way, you’re already a step ahead of your competitors.

What most businesses fail to recognize is that they create teams filled with, sometimes, unskilled agents who don’t have the necessary skillset. What happens, later on, is that they do not meet the customer expectations. Or, in the worst case, they are unresponsive.

Living in the 21st century means that people want everything done within seconds. Nobody has the time to wait for your response. If your brand doesn’t respond in a timely manner, then your competitor will do.

That’s why we recommend you ensure that your agents have the necessary customer service skills, while at the same time,  do not hesitate to implement all the needed customer experience management tools available.

For your information, nowadays,  customer service isn’t held only by phone, but instead, this can be done through live support, e-mail, social media, etc.

#1 Build a Robust Customer Retention Program

This “robust” customer retention program should combine all of your necessary efforts to build, maintain and attract (new) customers. However, since the meaning is pretty vast, we will try to provide you with the most important areas that you should note.

Namely, one of your first strategies should be to target highly relevant customers with your (discounted) products. At the same time, make them as personalized as possible.

In addition, try to utilize marketing automation tools with whom you can re-engage customers or maintain relationships with the current ones. Or, even contact those customers who have gone cold after a prolonged period of time.

Keep in mind that the latter group may likely be gone if you haven’t measured the customer lifetime value. Here, you can learn more about the so-called “CLF.

You can also enrich your strategy by finding ways how to create a “loyal base of customers” around your product/service. This leads to trust and trust leads to strong business relationships.

Lastly, keep things interesting and never get tired of experimenting and following the latest trends. All of these things combine can help you create a strong customer retention strategy that promises a mix of revenue and loyal customers.

Conclusion

To summarize everything, there isn’t such thing as “one-size-fits-all” strategy, since every brand varies from each other. But, the most important aspect where all businesses are the same is that they need customers more than ever.

If you think that this article helped you in creating a customer retention strategy, then we invite you to follow us in the future as well!