The number of new customers matters, no doubt.
However, it would be best if you also keep your existing customers!
We know that companies spend effort, money, and time to gain customers. Business life is competitive and challenging in a world where everyone tries to attract your target audience.
Once you acquire new customers, you have a chance to build a strong relationship with them.
But how?
What is Customer Retention?
Customer retention is the effort you make to encourage your customers to continue making purchases from you. This time your audience is already your customer.
So they know about you pretty well. And you try not to lose them, which is its most significant difference from customer acquisition.
Even though it is 7 times less expensive to retain customers than gain new ones, most companies don’t pay enough attention to it. This is why those trying to increase customer retention take a solid step towards long-term success.
How to Increase Customer Retention
There are numerous ways to see positive changes in your customer retention rate.
Here are the 8 ways we think will help you increase retention for your business today:
1 – Onboard Effectively
Only when your users know how to use your product, they can become efficient users.
In the user onboarding process, you teach your users what your product does and how it does it, you display your value proposition.
Making the necessary changes to improve the quality of your onboarding is crucial if you are looking to increase retention. Users who are onboarded effectively become fans of the product that never want to quit your business.
UserGuiding offers no-code user onboarding software that you can create interactive product tours, in-app messages, checklists to improve the UX of your product and increase your retention rates. Click here to start your free trial today!
2 – Offer a Great UX
Understanding the customers’ expectations is one of the most important points to keep your customers. You always have to over-deliver on your promise in the most effective way possible.
Customers appreciate fast services and practical purchasing experiences. You should offer a streamlined user experience to navigate your customers on your website easily.
You can try to apply practical methods such as single sign-in, mobile optimization, improved search, and personalization features.
Also, when you improve something related to your customer experience, you can share in through public channels to catch the attention of potential customers.
But if you ask me, one of the easiest ways to learn more about customer expectations is through feedback; you can always send out a survey (in-app or through social channels) for them to be honest with you regarding your product.
Here are some UX mistakes you must avoid if you are looking to improve retention via your UX design.
3 – Calculate Customer Lifetime Value, then Increase It
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is one of the key performance indicators that show you the worth of your customers over a while. It is directly related to your business’s retention.
If you are serious about increasing your retention, you will need some metrics to define short and long-term goals. Calculating CLV is a good start.
You don’t know how CLV is calculated? Here’s our article on the calculation of customer lifetime value and some tips to increase it.
Working on increasing the CLV of your business will positively affect your retention. Everything that increases retention will improve Customer Lifetime Value, and vice-versa.
4 – Follow-up After Purchase
To keep your customer base with you, you should engage with them after they purchase your product and you should show that you value their ideas about your product or service.
During their onboarding process and later on, you can send them a series of emails that offer value. Here’s a user onboarding email sequence for example. Through this channel or via your product, you can also conduct a survey to measure the satisfaction of your users.
This strategy is not only useful for keeping your customers and engaging with them, but also for getting constructive feedback about new products to improve the service experience.
You can see the patterns in responses through analytics tools and focus on the areas that need improvement.
As you improve, you must constantly announce your improvements personally to customers through an email or text.
5 – Interact through Social Media
There were 3.2 billion social media users in 2019 and the number is continually increasing.
All the social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, are hosting your customers. Make use of the power of these networks through active social media accounts of your business.
Encourage your users to follow your social media accounts and offer them daily content that is valuable. As they see the name of your company every day, a bond of trust between your brand and your users will be established.
6 – Be There for Your Customers When They Need
71% of consumers have ended their relationship with a company due to poor customer service.
The same research shows that 14% of the people who leave companies are leaving because they are dissatisfied with products and services.
On the other hand, 68% of them leave because of the treatment they receive.
If you hope to reduce churn and have loyal customers, let them reach you whenever they want.
Being accessible through various channels, such as social media, live chat, phone call, e-mail, is a great way to create happy customers. Be there, be kind.
People are not expecting to wait long or try hard to get information. 75% of customers believe it takes too long to reach a live agent, according to the research.
Selling your product and waiting for them to come back is not the best way to increase retention.
Be among the very few companies who are always there to solve their customers’ problems.
7 – Give Back
It’s not a bad idea to give a couple of discount codes to your retaining users from time to time.
You can offer them special discounts for their birthdays, for example, or give them an extra for staying with your business for a long time.
There are many ways to reward your loyal customers. You can also categorize your customers considering how profitable they are for your company.
If they bring a good amount of revenue, do not hesitate to offer them something special.
8 – Provide Valuable Content
Other than everything you can do business and product-wise, there is one more thing that has nothing to do with both that increases retention through establishing a bond with the users.
Offering valuable content.
Your product doesn’t have to be the only channel your users see the logo and the name of your brand. Starting a blog that contains original and quality content on the interests of your audience is a great way to do so.
For example, UserGuiding is a user onboarding software that offers a wide variety of onboarding elements to its subscribers, who range from founders to product managers, from UX designers to customer success managers.
So, we write articles for our Blog and we share content on our social media about User Onboarding, UX design, Product Management, and Growth in order to educate and keep in contact with our audience.
Frequently Asked Questions
👤 In a business, whose job is it to measure and increase retention?
In most businesses, sales, product and/or account managers are associated with customer retention.
❓ Why is customer retention important?
Because you can’t be a high-revenue successful business without retaining every customer that walks in the door.
📝 Is it more profitable to acquire new customers or retain existing ones?
With your existing customers, you don’t spend an extra amount of acquisition cost, so retaining existing customers is more profitable than acquiring new customers.
