How CRM increases customer loyalty

There are a lot of stats circulating about the exact figure, but most experts agree that the effort of keeping a customer is substantially less than the effort of acquiring a new one.?

This alone is a good reason to prioritise customer relationships and look at ways of nurturing them through your customer experience, marketing and customer loyalty programmes. Many businesses report that loyal customers tend to spend more, and be less sensitive on price when they shop with a brand they have loyalty towards. And when there’s high customer satisfaction, you can expect a lighter load on your support and customer service teams too.

And did you know existing customers are 50% more likely to try a new product of yours as well as spend 31% more than new customers?

?Having loyal customers benefit a company in several ways, namely:

Increased Share-of-Wallet. Share-of-wallet refers to the amount of money a customer spends on a certain brand compared to how much they spend on the brand’s competitors. Customers convert and spend more time and money with the brands to which they're loyal.?

Better Word-of-Mouth Referrals. As mentioned, customers convert and spend more time and money with the brands to which they're loyal. These customers also tell their friends and colleagues about those brands, too which drives referral traffic and word-of-mouth marketing.

Increased Trust. Customer loyalty also fosters a strong sense of trust between your brand and customers. When customers choose to frequently return to your company, the value they're getting out of the relationship outweighs the potential benefits they'd get from one of your competitors. The prospect of mobilising and activating your loyal customers to recruit new ones, should excite marketers, salespeople, and customer success managers alike. But what are some of the ways one can improve customer loyalty specifically? Well, you can build customer loyalty by excelling at the things that drive it. Here are a few key drivers of customer loyalty.

Great customer service. They may love your product or service, but if your customers don’t feel valued and respected they’re unlikely to form a positive emotional connection to your brand. As well as friendly and pleasant service when they make a purchase, a key factor in good service is how you receive feedback and what you do with it. Customers who feel listened to and looked after when something goes wrong, or if they need support after a purchase, are likely to have positive emotions towards you in the future, and to tell others good things instead of bad – whether that’s via social media or face to face. Increase customer communication and customer satisfaction should follow.

Communicate effectively with your customers. Building and maintaining customers’ trust requires continuous communication. When a customer knows that your business is transparent and honest, they trust they’ll have a positive experience in their interactions.?Good communication means your customers should know what is going on with your business. If there is a new product, a major change, company update, shortage, change in hours, or anything that a customer should be aware of so they aren’t surprised, it should be clearly communicated. This is part of good customer service and is essential in making customers want to continue doing business with you.

A deep understanding of the customer journey. Each purchase is part of a larger picture – the customer journey. This includes your marketing and customer-focused advertising, your retail experience (whether online or offline), reviews about your products and those of your competitors, and what happens after a sale is made. Together, all these touch points have an influence on customer loyalty. By considering the journey as a whole you can target your efforts strategically to boost that loyalty factor. That might mean improving response times, ironing out pain points on your website or booking engine, or simply managing customer expectations by clearly communicating the way you work.

Long-term strategy, not short-term reaction. Why do customers leave companies they’ve been loyal to? Overwhelmingly it’s because they don’t feel the company cares about them. In the short-term, it’s relatively easy to please most types of customers with introductory discounts and loyalty perks. But what about customers who’ve been loyal for longer? Too often, businesses take these kinds of customers for granted, assuming that their attachment to the brand is strong enough to be self-sustaining. In fact, all customers need to feel cared about in order to stay loyal. With a long-term customer retention strategy, you can proactively improve the experience for every segment within your customer base, and make them all feel suitably valued.

Employee experience. What does employee experience have to do with customers? More than you might think – it can actually be a strong driver of loyalty. Customers warm towards brands who treat their people well. But more importantly, engaged employees who are part of a company culture that values them are much more likely to extend the same positive treatment towards customers. Giving staff autonomy, respect, a good work-life balance and pay that they feel is fair for the work they do will all feed into your customer loyalty outcomes.

Be as generous as your customers. From the outside looking in, customer loyalty programs can appear to be nothing more than a scheme to get customers to spend even more money. That's why truly generous loyalty programs stand out among the rest. If your loyalty program requires customers to spend a lot of money only to be rewarded with meagre discounts and samples, you're doing it wrong. Instead, walk the walk and show customers how much you value them by offering perks that are so good, it would be foolish not to become a member.

Show your gratitude. Your customers are routinely bombarded by businesses — your competitors included. Your competitors likely offer a loyalty program, too. Express your gratitude through handwritten notes or direct, one-to-one messages. Include thank you notes in your product deliveries or purchase confirmation emails, or send special cards around the holidays.

Improve your customer loyalty program. Customer loyalty programmes are an essential cornerstone of any customer loyalty-building endeavour. It’s one of the best ways to build customer loyalty, especially if the brand keeps adding perks that make it impossible to walk away. Companies provide customer loyalty programs to their most frequent customers to encourage loyalty and long-term business by offering free merchandise, rewards, coupons, or even advance-released products. Continue improving upon yours by offering more perks and rewards as time goes on.

Continuously evolve your business over time. The market and the desires of your audience and customers are going to continuously change over time. Doing research and staying up-to-date in your industry reassures customers that you will always be innovative and offer the best options for meeting their needs. This doesn’t just apply to new technologies, though. Evolving should include the branding, culture, marketing, and your product itself. Being aware of how to continuously improve your business ensures you’re always getting better. Loyalty to your business and your products comes with customers knowing they’re always getting the best.

CRM management software can help you increase organisation across all related systems, including customer loyalty incentives. CRMs organise customer data, including names, phone numbers, billing information, addresses, purchase histories, and any amount of other relevant information that may be pertinent to their continued business with your company.

Having all of this information readily available and well-organised is important to building rapport and developing customised pitches for your clients. When you know your customer’s information, it’s easier to connect with them where they are and to develop services or catered packages and campaigns that will appeal to them on a more personal level.

?CRMs help you find available customer data, and then pairs it with specialised marketing automation to gain a broader customer base and to improve overall loyalty.

It does this by curating all information accrued and used based on your individual customers’ interests. That way, you have the most successful marketing and communication campaigns possible. This serves a dual purpose as it also gives you easy ways to help keep your brand on top of your customers’ minds rather than your competitors.

CRMs are becoming more and more vital for business today, and if you want to successfully engender more customer loyalty, investing in a solid CRM is a must. This is exactly what Creatio does!

Creatio offers robust solutions with comprehensive capabilities to automate retail loyalty programs of any complexity and run marketing campaigns aimed at building long-term relations with its customers.?

Creatio manages various types of loyalty / reward campaigns: spend programs, point programs, discount programs, coupons, tiered, gift programs, etc. It manages all the aspects important for successful loyalty program operation like processing rules, cards, bonuses, and fraud control.

Creatio also manages reward mechanics that create these processing rules (accruals and withdrawals) for different types of reward campaigns as well as capabilities to apply reward rules to specific products and customer segments. It allows you to run multiple programs simultaneously and collaboration programs for different brands.

Setting up loyalty programs go a long way in increasing overall customer loyalty as they provide smaller milestone rewards for customers that lets them track smaller victories with your business that will, in turn, encourage them to invest larger amounts in bigger dealings. They keep customers engaged with your company even when they’re not actively transacting with you. It keeps your business fresh in their mind and gives them goals to work toward that will retain their business in the long run.