5 Customer Retention Tactics To Try

Acquiring customers is an essential part of running a business. However, if you don’t retain some of the customers you acquire, you may find it hard to succeed over the long-term. When customers come back for repeat purchases, you’ll have a greater ROI and experience significant cost savings. 

Unfortunately, keeping customers isn’t always as simple as offering a great product or service. It takes a dedicated strategy and a penchant for relationship building to ensure customers remain engaged with your business and satisfied with the overall experience you provide.

That being said, there are plenty of methods you can use to build customer retention and keep satisfied customers coming back. Check out the different techniques your marketing team can experiment with to create a customer retention strategy that is just right for your business and your customer base.

5 Effective Customer Retention Tactics to Try

The best tactics for retaining customers allow you to establish lasting relationships and build brand loyalty. As a result, you’ll find that by working to retain customers, you’re also creating brand ambassadors and prompting the initial chain reaction of word-of-mouth marketing.

In other words, customer retention takes work, but the results are well worth the effort. Here are some tips to help you get started.

1. Begin by calculating your customer retention rate.

It’s always a good idea to know where you’re starting from so you can measure your progress. The formula for customer retention can show you how well you’re currently building relationships and encouraging customers to return for repeat purchases.

Here’s how to do the calculation:

• Subtract the number of customers acquired during a set period of time from the total number of customers at the end of that period
• Divide the result by the number of customers you had at the start of the period 
• Multiply by 100

The final number will be the percentage of customers you retained during that period. For example, if the formula gives you the number 75, you’ve retained 75% of customers. 

2. Focus on making a good first impression.

Customers will base their future actions on their initial impressions of your business, making it crucial to leave a lasting and positive first impression. This starts with a frictionless purchase journey, but shouldn’t end there. 

Follow-up each new customer visit with a thank-you email that directs customers to helpful information about the product they’ve purchased and begins the process of building a relationship. 

3.Engage in ongoing communication with customers.

There are plenty of ways to keep up communication with customers after that first welcome email. Some popular options include email marketing, a monthly newsletter, and frequent social media posts. 

You can also utilize a communication calendar to track and plan interactions on the level of the individual customer. Visualizing your interactions over time will enable you to set up opportunities to cross-sell, launch promotions, provide relevant information, and eliminate roadblocks such as expired subscriptions. 

4. Launch a simple loyalty program. 

It’s obvious that the point of loyalty programs is to retain customers, but many businesses overlook this strategy when they’re struggling with customer retention. The truth is that these programs can have a major impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty. By rewarding customers for choosing your business, you’re giving them every reason to continue shopping with you.

The great thing about loyalty programs is they don’t need to be complicated, nor do the rewards need to be expensive. What’s important is that you provide something of value to those who choose to sign up.

5. Gather and analyze customer feedback.

The best way to improve your business in a way that affects customer behavior is to know how your customers currently feel about the experience you offer. Therefore, having a process for acquiring and processing customer feedback is essential for retaining customers. 

There are many ways to go about gathering customer feedback, and the one that’s best for your business will depend on your industry and how you communicate with customers. One popular and effective method used across nearly every industry is the Net Promoter Score® survey. This survey is quick and easy for customers to complete and provides actionable results that are simple for businesses to understand.

If you need help with building customer relationships, gathering feedback, and ultimately retaining more of the customers you acquire, consider getting started with a customer engagement platform such as Listen360. Our experienced team at Listen360 can help you collect important data from your customers and make smart decisions that keep them coming back.