Everyone loves a shiny new lead. It’s easy to be tempted by new possibilities and unintentionally neglect the customers or prospects already on your database.
But the old saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Don’t let your pursuit of growth impact your existing customer base.
After all, you’ve already spent time and effort courting them. And they’ve responded by paying attention, signing up or even paying for your product or service. You want them to stay engaged and loyal to your brand – and continue to buy your solutions.
Increasing retention by just 5% can boost revenues by up to 95%. Why the huge figure? It’s much cheaper and easier to hold on to existing clients than it is to find new ones.
Retention matters!
How to Market for Retention
Customer relationship management is one the most effective ways to build retention numbers. You want to keep your customers engaged, interested, and feeling that they’re getting value from you.
One of the most common retention marketing approaches is an email campaign. Where many companies just focus on selling things to new customers, companies well versed in retention marketing send emails that encourage customers to keep returning.
Some examples include:
- Special VIP customer offers
- Discounts and deals
- Seasonal or event newsletters
- Offers based on past purchase behavior
- Strong referral programs
Of course, email isn’t the be all and end all. Remarketing efforts, ads, events, downloads, and physical mailers are all options for reaching existing customers. Be sure to segment your audience as needed so that the right material gets sent to the right people – make those interactions count!
Content marketing is also valuable: quality blogs, white papers and “thought leader” style social media content all provide a reason for customers to keep coming back. Continue to provide solid content that they can actually use, and you’ll watch those loyalty figures rise.
Providing excellent customer service is also crucial to retention – and acts as a marketing opportunity for your company and any new solutions a customer might not have yet experienced.
Dealing with Losing Customers
Unfortunately, some customers will churn. It’s part of doing business. But that doesn’t mean that you have to accept it without a fight!
If customers stop opening your emails or responding to your outreach efforts, use your email campaign mailer to send a “re-engagement” email to reconnect with them and confirm that they still want to be on your list. You can offer a change of email frequency or a special deal to help keep them on your list.
Don’t forget to take some time to review your analytics to see if the drop-off has coincided with any particular change in the content, format or approach of your emails.
Finally, consider why customers are leaving. Remember, 20% of your customers will generate about 80% of your revenue. 
If you’re losing your more peripheral customers, this is much less worrisome than if you’re losing your core ones.
Whatever the case, those churn numbers provide valuable insight into your business’ performance and will help you determine what the problem is and what to do about it. Perhaps you need to shift your offer or marketing efforts, or maybe you should simply double down on your core customer base.
But whatever you do, don’t neglect your existing customers in favor of potential ones – unless you like doing things the difficult, expensive way.
Need some help building a powerful retention marketing campaign? Give us a call!
See Also:
7 Marketing Challenges for Business Leaders in 2018 and How to Solve Them
