Did you know that repeat customers spend 20 percent more than first-time customers?
And, that businesses comprised of 40 percent repeat customers generated 50 percent more revenue than businesses with only 10 percent repeat customers?
The stats don’t lie: Clearly, retaining clients is something that’s very important.
But, it’s not necessarily something that’s easy to do.
Turning a first-time buyer into a loyal customer is actually something that takes a lot of planning and work. Rarely is it something that just happens by accident.
So, what do you need to do to retain more and more clients?
Check out this guide to learn how to retain clients for life.
1. Find Ways to Reward Your Customers
Most customers know how important their loyalty is to you. That’s why as a customer, it can be especially annoying when a company doesn’t do anything to recognize you for your loyalty.
Finding milestones in your relationships with your customers and finding ways to reward them that they won’t expect can go a long way.
For example, let’s say you’re the owner of a shoe company and a customer buys their fourth pair of shoes from you. That’s some serious loyalty right there!
To reward them, you could send them a free pair of socks with their next order along with a note that thanks them for their business.
It may not seem like much, but small gestures like that can go a long way in turning a one-time customer into a repeat customer.
2. Provide Excellent Support
Most people have rocky relationships with customer support. In fact, did you know that only 28 percent of customers will call customer service as their first attempt to solve a problem?
And, that 75 percent of customers have felt frustrated after speaking with a customer service representative, even if the call helped solve their problem?
Clearly, customer service is something that all companies could improve on.
So, what can you do to help alleviate the stress of customer support for your buyers?
First things first, give your customers fewer reasons to call or email you. Search for any issues with your product or service, and address those issues immediately.
Secondly, make sure your customers know they can get ahold of you at any time if they have a problem and that you’ll get to work immediately in order to address their problem.
Lastly, make sure reaching out to support is as painless of a process as possible. Make your support information very apparent on your website, and do everything you can to alleviate long hold times.
This may seem like a lot of work, but trust us, excellent customer support will keep your customers coming back again and again.
3. Offer Time-Sensitive Promotions
You know what really keeps a customer coming back for more?
Scarcity.
Why would a customer buy a $50 skincare box now, when they know they can come back any time of the day or night and get the same deal?
Time-sensitive promotions are the best way to ensure a customer buys your products now. If you don’t make your deals time-sensitive, a customer will plan to buy later, but will likely just forget about the deal altogether.
4. Be Honest and Transparent With Your Customers
As a business owner, you should always be striving to be as honest and transparent with your customers as possible.
This doesn’t just mean highlighting your successes, but also your failures.
And don’t worry, owning up to your failures won’t destroy your brand image. In fact, if done the right way, owning up to your failures can actually help boost your image.
One great example of this is Apple Music. Taylor Swift, one of the world’s biggest pop singers, wrote a letter to Apple calling them out for not paying artists for music that was played during free trial periods that customers received.
Apple could have ignored Taylor Swift’s letter altogether, but instead, they change their policy and owned up to their error.
Also, keep in mind that the information you reveal about your company doesn’t always need to stir up drama. Simple, straightforward information, like this Bloomberg research on Smart Circle, is important too.
5. Test Out a Variety of Email Strategies
One of the best ways to reach your customers these days is through email.
But, you need to make sure you are approaching the email game right.
The best way to figure out whether you’re hitting the mark or not is to test out a bunch of different email strategies.
You should be testing out different incentives, subject lines, lengths, graphics, and even fonts to see which ones your customers best respond to.
Doing this will help to increase customer engagement, which in turn will lead to higher customer retention rates.
6. Listen to Your Customers
Attempting to retain customers without knowing what they think about you is an extremely difficult process.
Attempting to retain customers once you have detailed, actionable feedback, on the other hand, is a much easier process.
Understanding your customers allows you to prioritize the parts of your business that fuel customer satisfaction and retention. And, it allows you to do this while all the while scaling down on tactics that are ineffective.
But, just exactly how are you supposed to get customer feedback?
It’s simple- ask for it.
Send out a variety of customer satisfaction surveys, ask for testimonials, and encourage customers to leave reviews online or in-person.
The more insight you have into what your customers want, the easier it will be to retain them.
Retaining Clients: Are You Ready to Get Started?
As you can see, there are a lot of things you can do to retain more clients.
Which of these strategies are you most excited to implement? Let us know in the comments below. Also, let us know if you have any questions about retaining clients.
And lastly, if you are looking to get the word out about your business, be sure to check out this guide to learn about the benefits of advertising in an online directory.