11 Tips to Increase Client Retention

Loyal clients sustain your company’s long-term success through repeat purchases. It’s more expensive to get new clients than to keep clients, so existing clients deliver more profit per transaction. Satisfied, long-term clients can become small marketing centers for your business as they talk about your products and services and share your posts and offers. Even for larger, less-frequent purchases like cars and furniture, investing in client retention increases ROI and aids steady growth.

Selling to new clients costs between?five and 25 times more?than to an existing client. A 5% increase in client retention can increase revenue between 25% and 95%. Ongoing clients?purchase more often and spend more?than newer clients because they already know your product or service’s value.

Sell More to Current Clients and Grow Your Business

Most businesses work so hard at acquiring and converting new clients that they overlook strategies to transform them into loyal buyers and advocates for their products and services.

The result is a “churn and burn” effect with valuable new leads. Depending on the industry, the average company?loses 20% to 70% of their hard-won new customers in the first 100 days after the sale. In higher ticket industries such as automotive, the average dealer loses 33% of its clients to defection each year.

When was the last time you tested opportunities to re-engage clients? Low client retention is like filling a leaking bucket. It stays full as long as you keep adding, but you’ll hold more with less effort if you patch the holes.

Client retention is a balancing act. You give existing clients value and extract more sales and consumer loyalty. Your retention strategy will vary by industry, frequency of purchase, and the size of your business. Here are 11 tips for converting new clients into lasting fans.

1. Highlight Success Stories During the Sales Process

Case studies from current and past clients help buyers determine if your company and the product or service are the right fit for them. Testimonials and past success stories expose the company’s communication style and the kind of results you can achieve.

A consumer who knows if and how your product or service will solve their problem before they make a purchase is less likely to regret buying. Case studies and testimonials establish the foundation for realistic client expectations and set up buyers to be happier with their purchase experience.

2. Establish Clear Expectations Early and Often

An absence of communication breeds misunderstanding. Suppose you don’t set expectations and communicate them. In that case, clients may have their version of what is supposed to happen and then be disappointed when your company doesn’t follow their unspoken assumptions.

You spend every day working in your business, but your clients come from many different industries. What is standard and routine for your company may not be what clients have experienced before.

Knowing deadlines, the client’s progress toward their goal, what’s included in a purchase, your process, and your communication style go a long way to make sure client expectations are realistic and that they are happy with the experience.

3. Install an Onboarding Program

In business, as in personal relationships, we may be?sure?we communicated effectively while the other person remains blissfully ignorant of what we wanted them to know. Onboarding is a function of client success that teaches new clients how to use your product or service. The personalized attention and support of an onboarding program build on the developing client relationship. It’s an opportunity to reinforce the company’s values and how the purchase meets the client’s needs and helps achieve their goals.?

If a new client doesn’t bother to learn how to use your product or engage with your service, they may get frustrated and stop using it without ever knowing how it can improve their lives. Onboarding ensures clients know how to get the most from their purchases to complete their goals on time.

4. Regularly Communicate Results

When a client purchases your product or service, they have results they expect from the experience. If you leave them to understand the benefit you provide and track their progress toward their desired outcome, they will likely miss ways to deliver results.

People don't appreciate what you've done for them, or will do for them, unless you educate them to the facts.

What do your clients want from a purchase? A reliable system for tracking and reporting metrics that matter to the client empowers your company to celebrate successes and keep clients engaged with noticeable progress toward their goals.

5. Track Client Communications

Systematic client communication tracking allows your team to identify clients who haven’t interacted in a while and reach out to re-engage them. A communication calendar avoids losing clients through neglect and keeps your team consistently on track. Consistent follow-through manages client engagements and creates regular opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell.

A communication calendar tracks the last time a client reached out and can alert your team if there is no communication for a specified period of weeks or months. Targeted promotional offers and proactive client service renew the relationship.

6. Collect and Analyze Client Feedback

What do people think about your products and services? Clear feedback from your target audience paves the way to real business improvements. A client feedback loop is a process of obtaining client feedback and sharing that information with relevant teams.

Surveys, user testing, and focus groups are standard methods of gathering relevant client feedback. Once you have the input, your team can sort through it to focus on client behavior and user experience trends. Feedback trends that apply to products can be shared with engineering and development, and feedback trends in onboarding can go to client service to improve that process, and so on.

It’s important to test regularly because the market and client’s expectations can change. Collecting, analyzing, and distributing customer feedback helps keep your company relevant and competitive.

7. Reward Client Loyalty

A client loyalty program engages clients with your business. With each purchase, they are earning their way toward a goal. An effective plan rewards clients for their continued loyalty and motivates them to shop more.

If your loyalty program does NOT motivate clients to shop more... then it is INEFFECTIVE. Don't fall into the trap of having loyalty programs for the sake of having them. Continuously test different rewards, goals, etc until you find the right combination.

Efective loyalty programs encourage newer clients to behave like a company’s most loyal enthusiasts, but only if implemented as part of a loyalty-management strategy. An effective program finds ways to provide value for clients in proportion to the value their loyalty creates for the company. Members must be consistently informed about the rewards of loyalty and motivated to earn them. A long-lasting client relationship that sustains for years is built through careful strategy.

8. Use Reciprocity to Increase Engagement

Reciprocity is a universally accepted social rule in psychology. Acts of kindness and generosity create a feeling of obligation in the recipient who instinctively wants to repay the kindness. Naturally, in business, these acts to inspire reciprocity should be targeted and well planned.

Examples of using the reciprocity principle in business include:

• Give away a loss-leader
• Make clients feel special
• Provide first-class client service
• Contribute to popular causes with each purchase
• Provide free resources that support your product or service (car maintenance with a car purchase or recipes with a kitchen appliance)
• How-to videos showing clients creative ways to use your product or service
• Provide more easy-access or virtual experiences

9. Use Company Newsletters and Emails to Add Value

A company newsletter or regular emails that add value to your client’s experience are simple and cost-effective ways to increase client retention. Newsletters remind clients of your company every time they open their inbox.

Email marketing is widely used because it is effective. On average,?companies make $42 for every dollar they spend on email marketing. Email marketing is vital for companies that rely on purchase frequency since they are cost-effective to stay in front of clients.

Newsletters and regular emails continue to build a relationship with your clients before and after their initial purchase.

Welcome emails, in particular, have a high open-rate near 50%.

Each message must add value to your customer’s experience, so they continue to welcome and open them.

Emails are a great place to include client reviews to either validate the buyer’s purchase or increase their desire to buy. In all post-sale marketing communications, help clients remember why they bought from your brand in the first place. Each email is an opportunity to build up your company’s brand credibility.

10. Make Asking Questions and Resolving Problems Easy

If your client is confused or frustrated and cannot get through to your company, you’ve lost an opportunity to resolve a complaint and win a loyal clien. You may have the best client service department in the industry, but if clients cannot get answers when they need them, and quickly, you will lose repeat business.

Every client service interaction represents your company. A live chat feature or even a chatbot for simple queries helps your business be present for clients exactly when they need you.

11. Tempt Clients Back With High Perceived Offers

Discounting is a risk and should not be overdone, but for clients who have been silent for a while, a compelling offer can nudge them back into activity.

If you think about the discount as an investment in repeat business, it can be an efficient marketing expense. Offers can be a dollar or a percentage, such as $20 off a product or savings of 20% on any purchase.

However, you must remember...

When you continuously offer discounts and coupons that your clients ignored when they left you… odds are good they will continue to ignore future discounts and coupons.

When this happens you must?offer people something of higher perceived value.

Before you try to win back clients with an onslaught of new marketing programs, you?may?want to revisit the insights you learned from the client feedback you learned in tip 6.

• What?do?your clients want or need most in the product or?service?you?offer? Make sure you continuously ask them.
• Why did they leave? If it's a problem with your product or service, make it right first before trying to win them back.

Examples of win-back strategies that provide free services and resources that support your product or service - for example:

• Car Dealers - can promote Service Events offering free 35-point inspections
• Kitchen Appliance Companies - can give free how to videos on recipes
• Attorneys - can offer free consultations to make sure clients don't overlook necessary legal steps, or expose themselves to a legal hazard
• Heating and air conditioning companies - can offer free tune-ups to people who haven't used them in a year or more
• Restaraunts - invite former customers back as your guest for lunch any day of the week.

Here are some other examples:

• Make clients feel special with one-time VIP preferential services or pricing
• Notify your clients of special opportunities ahead of sharing with the general public
• Offer first access to a limited number or exclusive availability
• Joint ventures, events, offers with companies who you share similar client profiles

Keep Clients, Improve Margins and Grow Faster

If you know the cost of acquiring each new client to your business, you know how expensive it is to churn and burn new leads. Powerful client retention strategies protect and grow your initial marketing investment.

Don't be shy. Let me know your opinions by liking, commenting and sharing this article.

Thank you!

Scott Joseph is a business growth expert with 31 years of sales, marketing and leadership experience. He serves as the CEO of?J&L Marketing which is considered one of the leading digital advertising and direct marketing agencies serving some of the world's most successful and aspirational brands such as; Shell Oil, BMW, Mopar, Stellantis, Fastline, Melindas and more. At 35, he purchased the first of three Honda dealerships and has increased their valuations over?500%! He's the founder and host of the move crush count podcast, delivering content that helps businesses grow. Each episode top business leaders graciously share their secrets to build industry leading cultures, grow their businesses and brands exponentially. In addition to running multiple businesses, he creates and facilitates mastermind groups and events such as Business Bourbon & Cigars where attendees demonstrate a COMMITMENT, CONFIDENTIALITY, and WILLINGNESS to both give and receive advice and ideas. These exclusive communities help you think bigger and stretch beyond your boundaries.