It’s the start of a new year, and a new decade, but retaining customers is still a hot topic for businesses and their marketing strategies. Any time is a great time to take a look at your business and start to plan its growth, but New Year is a natural point to review and reflect, so why not make some New Year’s promises to keep your business growing?
Offer your loyal customers some benefits
Offering customers benefits for their continued loyalty is a practice as old as time. It’s completely up to you how you decide to do this but benefits such as loyalty discounts and promotional offers can go a long way.
If your business model allows, why not try setting up some type of ‘membership club’ that customers can opt in to in order to receive special benefits and/or content. The exclusivity of this club can even start to attract new members and if the benefits of joining are worth it, it can quickly become a new revenue stream.
Survey customers early and often
Why not put some measures in place to check up on customer satisfaction? Post-sale surveys are a great way to see just how the customer rates your service. Don’t be too worried about negative reviews though, take these as a learning experience and use them to polish up parts of your operation that might be lacking.
Delaying a survey can also be a great way to get responses. Often when you purchase something from a website, your instant reaction to a post-purchase survey is usually trying to find the quickest way to the ‘X’ button! Try sending out a satisfaction survey email a couple of days later and monitor the results.
If you are delivering a product to a customer, keeping them engaged by offering them the ability to review the item or to even answer some questions that other customers have had. Amazon have had great success with this method.
Pull back old customers
In a similar vein to the surveys, paying attention to customers that may have drifted away can be very important. Finding out why and where they have gone can lead to clues on how to stop this happening in the future.
Occasionally running promotion drives to win back old customers as well as gaining new ones is a great way to keep that client base growing! Try giving them an offer they can’t refuse every once in a while and encourage them to stay this time.
Give your website a quick checkup
This can either be done by yourself or dedicated service, but taking a look at your website and how it functions can help iron out any frustrations your customers might experience.
Making sure that all the information on your website is neat and easy to find will not only help your customers find what they need, but they will be more likely to stay as a result. You could even try getting customer feedback on your website while you’re at it.
What New Year strategies are you putting in place to retain customers? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
