15 Effective Strategies to Help Retain Your Customers

Are you running a business that offers different products or services to customers? Well, one of your top priorities is to find new customers while retaining the existing ones. But most businesses fail to realize that the moment a customer makes the first payment, it opens the door to many other possibilities. Every smart business understands that the very first purchase a customer makes is just the beginning – the real deal lies with retaining the customer. So, how do you retain your existing and new customers?

Always Inspire your Customers with a mission

One of the smartest ways that brands inspire loyalty is by what they stand for and not through some sophisticated tactics and systems. Have you ever come across Simon Sinek's TED talk on the topic “Start with Why?” If you do, then you're most likely aware of how important it is to have a mission. Consider the strategy TOMS adopted.

They have managed to establish their business model on making the world a better place by adopting a “One for One” policy. So, whenever a customer buys a pair of shoes, the company also gives a pair of shoes to those in need. At the end of the day, they have successfully donated more than 60 million pairs of new shoes to the less privileged. One primary concern of virtually every consumer is the impact of our spending habits on our environment and not just on what we want to enjoy.

As humans, we are increasingly becoming interested in doing good but this is not also a justification for a business to build their marketing around an altruistic message just to achieve their goals. The takeaway here for you is to identify a specific thing that most customers care about, then go ahead and position your brand around it.

Embrace Excellent Customer Service Tools

The support team of most SMBs is likely going to consist of a few persons and if you're an SMB, then you should bear in mind that you may eventually expand the capacity of your support team when the customer base of your business increases. This is because you will be experiencing a spike in service demands.

An excellent case scenario is what Santa Cruz Bicycles did several years ago once they discovered that the initial customer support approach they adopted wasn't feasible. Of course, they were firmly committed to delivering outstanding customer service. But as more customers bought their bicycles, they increasingly found it difficult to meet the standard they set for themselves. To deal with the challenge, Santa Cruz Bicycles decided to use a unique strategy.

They didn't hire more reps to boost their support team; instead, they leveraged several customer service tools. They found out that they can record customer interactions and even create support tickets with CRM software. It's crucial that all support tickets are attended to promptly, so they provided their reps with a HubSpot task tool to help them achieve this goal.

The tool was used to mark open support cases and further ensure that the support team of the company stays organized with sufficient time to create an excellent customer experience. The goal of every business is to keep growing and that was also the case with Santa Cruz Bicycles as they continued to expand. So, they realized that it's crucial to further explore better tools for their support team that is suitable for their daily workflow.

This motivated them to centralize customer service operations with Service Hub so that all support inquiries are channeled to a shared inbox. So, this is an ideal platform where reps can collaborate on service tickets that are very challenging. It also increased their ability to prevent churn since their support team could easily streamline sensitive or urgent issues.

Take Advantage of Personalization

When it comes to leveraging personalization, one company that easily comes to mind is Tesco. With more than 2,000 stores across the UK, the supermarket giant indeed has a strong presence nationwide. But it's not often easy for such brands to appear as human and authentic. Most people would normally prefer to deal with other humans even though self-service scanners and online grocery shopping are very convenient.

Undoubtedly, every business needs excellent customer service and the Tesco team was aware of this need. So, they embraced Twitter to help them provide the human touch to their customers. Their decision to use Twitter was their way to show their customers that they care. The goal is to add personality to all their conversations with their customers.

If you're interested in using a similar approach, then you have to first understand the personas of your target audience. This will enable you to interact with them on the channel they prefer most. So, where is the attention of majority of your clients or customers? It could be on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or even Tok-Tok. The platform doesn't matter; what matters is where you meet them.

Once you identify the right channel, then go ahead and encourage them to communicate directly with you via the identified platform. It should become a part of your messaging and it's crucial to remind your customers during and after they have made a purchase. Don't forget to add personality to all the messages because people easily get turned off by a formal response. Your communication with customers should sound as natural as possible and leave them with no iota of doubt that they are communicating with a human being.

Make things Convenient for Customers

Did you know that by making it convenient for your customers to make a purchase, you retain more of them? Starbucks is one company that comes to mind when it comes to empowering customers with convenience. The customer acquisition department of the coffee giant has not ceased to be innovative with its marketing.

Originally, the founders of Starbucks were interested in improving how their shops smell and the kind of sound in them. In fact, they have leveraged this to deliver exciting customer experiences over the years. Well, we live in a fast-paced world and any business that wants to remain relevant must learn to get innovative. So, the coffee giant also decided to become very innovative in its customer retention strategy.

They created a “Mobile Order & Pay” feature within their app which allows customers to actually place an order for their coffee even before getting to the physical shop. This convenient feature is one that customers love so much and some have even added that it has saved them time since they don't need to wait for long before getting their coffee.

The point here is that you just have to make it extremely easy for your customers to access your products and services. What are some of the desires and behaviors of most of your customers? Identify them and come up with systems and tools that will empower them. It could be one of the traditional methods or simply the creation of an app. Just identify it and work on it.

Leverage Gamification and the Referral System

The business we shall look at is MeUndies, which has been portrayed as the world's most comfortable pair of underwear. But how has the company managed to establish significant customer retention? They leveraged two elements and we have already talked about the first one which has to do with mission or “reason why.”

The team behind MeUndies was fed up with how challenging it was to get a comfortable and quality pair of underwear. What they decided to do was to create a transparent process and strong culture by dedicating one full page to their factory – which is beautiful and breathtaking. Apart from this strategy which also leads to excellent retention, one aspect that we need to look at is their remarkable referral program.

Right from the point where a customer makes a purchase, they are instantly encouraged to refer a friend. What's even more interesting is the quality of reward customers get as they are given $20 whenever they refer a friend in addition to a 20 percent reduction when they also make their first purchase. Perhaps what's most interesting is the gamification element that indicates the extent a friend has reached through the buying experience, which includes a “nudge” button.

This feature enables you to send your friend a reminder to go ahead with a purchase since you can see when your friend has added a product to the card but is yet to complete the checkout. What MeUndies has achieved is to get their existing customers to help them cut down on the level of cart abandonment and further provide social proof in the process.

Referral systems will always be an excellent tool for customer retention if executed properly. You just need to look at the strong incentives and gamification to bring your customers on board. Always remember, it's not just enough to encourage your customers to be strong advocates for your brand in your referral system, you also need to empower them to do it.

Evoke Positive Feelings with Customer Experiences

Another smart strategy that big brands have leveraged over the years to create positive sentiments with their customers is the use of experiential marketing. Coca-Cola is one brand that has done remarkably well with this strategy. During the 2012 Summer Olympics, the company came out with a 70-day campaign around the games and their “Coca-Cola Beat Generator” app was part of this campaign. It was an experience that combined sports, the Coca-Cola brand and music.

During their roadshow around the Olympics, they showcased the campaign with samples and sounds from the games. They also made it possible for users to share the MP3 recording on social media and guess the outcome of the campaign? The web version of the app recorded 16,500 visits while they had about 1.78 million impressions on Facebook. The beverage giant has managed to leverage the positive hype around the sports event by creating awesome customer experiences that exceeded the point of sale.

The point here is that you should identify various ways to create positive feelings outside of your services, products and value propositions. Find ways to create positive feelings from entirely new experiences.

Speak Directly to Your Customers

Most of the cases we have discussed so far are B2C examples, but we also need to consider the B2B world. In this case, we shall be looking at an Australian company called R&G Technologies. The IT support company has been able to create strong and long-term relationships with their customers. To achieve their goal of establishing good relationships, they provide rapid response times as well as stringent service-level agreements (SLAs).

Most of their employees have imbibed this new strategy since the firm has linked these KPIs to the amount of money they can earn and this explains why they often get back to their clients quickly. But that's not the greatest lesson here. The striking thing about their strategy is the customer satisfaction surveys which is an effective feedback system.

With the customer satisfaction survey, they are offering all their clients the chance to disclose some of the things they are doing perfectly well as well as those they have failed to get right. The major benefit of this method is that the company can easily identify their unhappy clients before they get discouraged and frustrated. The focus of the firm is on asking their clients the right questions that will give them an idea of what to focus on. They make excellent business decisions that increase customer retention rate courtesy of the information they get from the surveys.

One more benefit of the survey strategy is that it opens up avenues to discover the challenges their audiences are facing. When you apply this strategy to your business, it will not just help you in their retention strategy but will also influence your overall marketing positively. Regardless of the kind of business you do, you must never underrate the effectiveness of one-to-one conversations with your customers.

Remarkably Distinguish your Business from Your Competitors

If you truly desire to make your customers see your brand as the obvious option over your competition, then you should take Apple's strategy seriously. Have you ever observed how the company distinguished its Mac from PC via its ad campaign? It's remarkable, isn't it?

In the course of the campaign, the cool collected Mac was represented by Justin Long while John Hodgman was starred as the inept PC. They would argue humorously about the things that made the Mac a preferred choice over PC in an entertaining manner. This campaign caused so much dispute as it actually divided the market and eventually distinguished Apple from its competitors.

The Mac vs. PC campaign helped to portray the kind of customers who should be using Apple products. When you remain committed to what makes you the brand that you are, you portray integrity and this helps to attract customers who may end up being the strongest brand advocates for your business. Is there a cause to fight for (or against)? Is your brand more user-friendly than that of your competitors? Identify ways to put some fire behind your story and establish a rally effect. If you genuinely desire to get the best results from this strategy, then you shouldn't be scared of being a bit bold when marketing your business.

Leverage Social Proof

Over the years, customers have come to trust the opinions of friends, family as well as other consumers more than that of branded ads and content. So, what you need may not really be your advertising. One of the ways to get ads from other people is through social proof and one firm that leverages the power of customer stories and testimonials is Codeacademy.

They leverage stories directly from their customers who describe how their services have helped them. The Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a strong marketing and retention strategy. This is because over 60 percent of customers trust the reviews they see online as proof that other brands and individuals are using the product. People are motivated to buy when they know others are also purchasing the same product.

So, an excellent strategy for attracting new customers and even encourage your existing clients to remain with your brand (or even upgrade their product) is by using customer testimonials and information. Clearly showcase the stories of your loyal customers on your social media networks or website. Sharing their successes can even help you grow your business.

Boost Customer Experience with Subscriptions

When a commodity-based organization like Amazon came out with Prime, they successfully implemented a subscription service into their business model. Initially, the purpose of the subscription was to ensure faster delivery for their customers. Although it resulted in so much controversy, it wasn't long before it also became popular with most shoppers on the Amazon platform.

The company had already taken things further by adding various benefits like granting users access to the popular Amazon's Instant Video platform. Although this strategy appeared to be a costly one, it is an excellent tactic being deployed by the retail firm. Records show that each year, Amazon records about $1.2 billion in revenue loss but they can easily make up for this with increase in purchases.

One question that comes to mind is how subscriptions can lead to increased customer retention and achievements of a company's growth goals. It's not compulsory to charge a fee for your subscription model before gaining customer loyalty. One of the smart ways to leverage this strategy without spending so much money is to offer other benefits such as exclusive content and events.

Are you already considering this strategy? If yes, then you have to offer products or services that people need and you can identify this via customer development and also through the discovery of the challenges and desires of your audiences.

Enlighten Your Customers 

You shouldn't stop making efforts to close a deal even when your customer has already purchased from your business. The competition we face in business is continually increasing as customers are now faced with more options than ever before. So, you may eventually lose your customer when they discover a competitor who is willing to sell something similar to your product with a little price difference.

Why don't you emulate HubSpot Academy by educating your customers or potential customers who visit your website? For instance, the company offers customers and visitors quality education materials on free marketing, customer service training videos, sales and certifications that people can learn from and develop their skills.

Some of these education materials are strictly for HubSpot partners and customers. So, what engages the HubSpot community and make them more interested in staying up-to-date with their educational offerings are the exclusive and unique offerings they provide.

Provide Support on the Ideal Platforms

Have you ever wondered where your customers spend their days while making use of your products and how they desire to get customer support whenever they need it? This is an excellent way to know and understand your customers. Slack is one ideal platform that serves as a perfect communication tool in the workplace. However, the technology also suffers occasional outages just like other technologies and this affects its users.

When such outages happen, the users often begin to ask their colleagues and friends whether they are also experiencing the same challenges with their slack. Sometimes, they even make jokes that the reason why their slack is no longer working is that they have been fired and their slack deactivated. But Slack is actually aware that most of its users are also active on Twitter and are always prepared to assist them when such issues arise.

So, Slack frequently keeps its users updated when there are cases of outages or when having other challenges. It's easy to prevent your customers from feeling like they have been abandoned by spending time in their shoes to identify how they seek help or information while facing some issues with a product or service. When you do this, you will appear as a reliable brand even when things aren't working out well.

Make use of Surprise and Delight

Pets will always be an indispensable part of our lives. Smart pet e-commerce firms like Chewy are aware that their customers are lovers of pets and they can purchase their pet supplies and food from several sources such as eBay, Amazon, etc. for almost the same prices.

The strategy Chewy adopted was to delight their customers by leveraging the principle of surprise reciprocity. So, their customers get spur-of-the-moment gifts as well as cards for their pets. These gifts and surprises are not necessarily expensive or big, but to their customers, they are simply unforgettable as it is a display of care for their lovely pets. Chewy actually offers their customers gifts such as free samples of a new product or a hand-written letter of appreciation.

Be Quick to Apologize when you make Mistakes

We all make mistakes in our private lives as well as in business – no matter how much we try to avoid them. Have you seen anyone who doesn't make mistakes? However, mistakes vary as some may be a terrible error such as a billing error, data breach or outage of services. You could even make mistakes that may cause you to lose your customers especially when you don't manage the situation properly. So, if we all make mistakes at some point in our lives, why are you afraid to admit your mistakes and apologize? 

Did you know that 96 percent of respondents of a HubSpot Research revealed that they would still purchase from a firm they often purchased from in the event that the company made an error provided they apologized and resolved the issue? This implies that what you need is a good plan for the unavoidable mistakes you may make and how you can honestly apologize, resolve the issue promptly, and proceed to retain your loyal customers.

Learn to Appreciate your Customers

You shouldn't make all your communications to be about marketing one product or service. Your email campaigns or customer purchase notifications shouldn't be the only time you communicate with your customers. You can build a lovable and memorable brand by learning to say thank you to your loyal customers. One of the popular companies that is good at providing outstanding customer service is the e-commerce site Zappos.

The company often sends their customers gifts and also appreciate them just to show their customers they truly care about them. The company has an office-wide count of the number of gifts as well as surprises their customers have received the previous month. This is to ensure that the entire team is focused on expressing genuine appreciation for customers. Although the act of saying thank you to your customer is a simple customer retention strategy, it is an excellent way to effectively separate beloved brands from faceless websites.