By Alistair Norman

5 Top Tips for Improving Customer Retention

Keep more customers with our top retention tips!

Customer retention has not really been a focus of marketing programmes in the past, which tend to focus on new customer acquisition.

But all that is set to change as businesses realise the power of upselling and cross-selling to customers that already know and trust you.

The typical business loses 10% of it’s customers a year, but by cutting that by just 5% can see your profits increase by 25-125%!

Follow our tips to improve customer retention and improve your profitability by an incredible amount.

Develop a warning system for when customers display signals of being unhappy.

Signs to look for include:

Increased customer service calls
No longer answering account manager calls
Stopped actively using your product or service

Make sure you also have strategies and content in place to try and stop them leaving. Check out these B2B customer retention strategies for some ideas.

Learn how to apply the 7Ps of marketing to customer retention strategies.

People
Product
Place
Price
Promotion
Processes
Positioning

It’s important to get it right as, according to Gartner, 80% of your future profits will come from 20% of your current customers.

Deliver the best customer experience you can.

It may sound like stating the obvious but research shows that:

Almost 70% of customers leave because of poor customer service
91% of unhappy customers will never do business with you again
Each one of your customers has a circle of influence of around 250 people or potential customers who hear bad things about you

Identify and reward loyal customers who engage with your company online.

This can include:

Always replying to the comments they make about you on social media platforms
Sending them personalised ‘thank you’ emails
Creating personalised discounts and incentives to make them feel valued

Get more ideas from this blog about creating brand advocates and in this one about keeping online communities engaged.

Run relevant promotions

These don’t always have to be giveaways or discounts but they do always go a long way in making customers feel valued. Other ideas to encourage and reward repeat business include:

Loyalty schemes
Discounts specifically tailored to customers showing signs of leaving
Promotional gifts, birthday cards and Christmas cards

Get more info on implementing these in Marketing Strategies to Increase Customer Loyalty

So, to cash in on the benefits of keeping existing customers remember to:

Have systems and strategies in place for dealing with customers that look like they’re going to leave you
Apply the 7Ps of marketing to customer retention strategies
Deliver the best customer experience you can
Identify and reward loyal customers to create brand advocates
Run promotions to make customers feel valued

The Author

Alistair Norman | Marketing Director

Alistair is responsible for the strategy, design and implementation of our Inbound and Content Marketing, with a focus on developing B2B and B2C markets.