Did you know that 65 percent of a company’s business comes from existing customers? If you have a problem retaining your customers, then you’re losing out on a huge chunk of business. Customer loyalty isn’t just a buzzword, it’s arguably the most important aspect of your company.
Achieving customer loyalty (which results in retaining customers) doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a concept you have to work on and never stop improving. Here are six ways to retain your customers.
Use Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful tool because almost everyone has an email address. It’s also a great way to reach a large number of people at once.
If you want to retain more customers, encourage them to come back for more. Through email blasts, you can alert your customers to promotions, rewards programs, and product/service updates. You can even send your customers relevant and interesting information you think they might like, including links to your blog.
Email marketing, just like all marketing techniques, takes a lot of research and tailoring, but if you want to retain customers, you have to keep your customers informed and remind them you still exist.
Make the Most of Social Media
Social media is the perfect channel to keep your customers entertained and engaged. It’s an easy platform to drop important announcements on and for your customers to reach out to you (just make sure you respond).
Social media allows you to create a community around your product, brand, and followers. It’s a place where you can drop customer testimonials, product launches, blog posts, funny videos, inspirational quotes, and anything you want your followers to see. Social media also allows you to be an authority figure while keeping your business relevant.
Social media is a great way to build a following and reach a larger audience. You can also target more people with geofencing marketing. This marketing technique allows businesses to target people in specific locations and show relevant ads to maximize the return on ad spend. You have to gain the customers before you can retain them.
Don’t Over-Promise (Be Honest)
If you deliver, your customers will trust you. If you over-promise and don’t deliver, then they’ll begin to lose trust or look for their products elsewhere. Transparency might be a word thrown around in journalism a lot, but it should also make an appearance at your company.
Don’t trick your customers into buying a product—tell them why your product is right for them and how it can have a positive effect on their life. If you’re honest with your customers, you’ll gain their trust.
Prioritize Quality
People want to know they’re buying a quality product. If you can deliver a quality product, then that alone will lead to your customers purchasing from you again. If you have an inferior product, then your customers might purchase a higher-quality product from a different company, and leave a bad review of your product.
Take Their Ideas Into Consideration
While you don’t want your customers making all your business decisions, it’s a good strategy to let them in the workshop from time to time. Ask your customers what they would like to see or what you’re not giving them. When they give you feedback (positive and negative), take it into account so you can make your customers’ experience better in the future. Listen to your customers. Without them, you wouldn’t be in business.
Take Responsibility
Unfortunately, mistakes happen. The best tactic you can implement as a company is to take responsibility. If you try to redirect the problem, deny responsibility, or choose not to respond, then you could damage the relationships with your customers.
This, of course, starts in the customer service department. You can improve your customer service by properly training employees, being friendly, and asking for feedback. You can also implement a cloud based contact center to better assist your customers. A contact center allows you to reach your customers (and vice versa) via different channels (SMS, phone, email, etc.) and boost customer service productivity. There are many other options and benefits of this technology, but the main thing to keep in mind is that it’s mutually beneficial to your customers and employees.
Quality customer service goes hand in hand with retaining customers. We hope these customer loyalty strategies can help you gain and retain more customers.