What is customer retention marketing?

Customer retention is important for businesses, especially for us in B2B sales. Retaining customers costs businesses up to five times less than getting new ones. In the B2B space where the cost of contracts is significantly bigger than B2C, the impact of retaining customers is even more pronounced.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that customer acquisition isn’t important. Remember that highly satisfied customers are more likely to become promoters and endorse your product to others.

A report from the New York Times has found that 65% of new business comes from referrals. In the B2B world, companies allot the bulk of their marketing resources to lead generation and customer acquisition.

Here are some techniques to improve your customer retention efforts.

Points & rewards

Like discounts, rewards are straightforward. This works for companies that have a high level of stickiness to their customers–meaning they have considerable control of their niche and their current retention emphasis is turning customers into evangelists. Rewards are usually company-branded merchandise, flight to company conferences, free services or add-ons, and so on.

Exclusive access

B2B companies could also leverage giving customers exclusive access to new products, special services, promos and benefits. This particular tactic is effective for enterprise B2B for customers who value exclusivity.

Consider Medicision as an example. They’re a provider of population health management solutions and uses exclusive client-only webinars to drive customer loyalty and retention. They are a big player in the healthcare field and have According to Content Marketing Institute, webinars are second only to in-person events in B2B marketing tactics, according to their 2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks and Trends.

Customer tiers

A low-cost way to provide delight to your customers, this tactic focuses on recognition that, depending on your customer, could be something they really value. Business is business and not all customers are created equal. Segment your customers post-sale according to contract size and value to the company.

Designing the qualifying criteria is important–what kinds of spending qualify for which benefits. This will also help your company roll out rewards without having to give to all clients. Rewards and benefits could be “unlockable” on every tier depending on spending.