4 Customer Retention Tips for Securing Lost Sales

When most people think of growing a business, they think about increasing sales through new customer acquisitions. Generating new leads and customers is a surefire way to increase your profits, but it’s far from the only way.

Another excellent way to gradually grow your business is by improving your customer retention rate. The problem many marketers face is they focus more on getting new customers instead of keeping existing users engaged with their brand.

Returning customers are 60-70% more likely to engage with your business and buy something from your online store. Compare these numbers to a 5-20% chance of securing a sale with a new customer, and it becomes clear why customer retention is so crucial for businesses.

Today, our goal is to explain several helpful tips you can use to get people to come back to your website for repeat orders and engagement opportunities.

Let’s begin!

Master the Onboarding Process

We often hear that first impressions are everything. It doesn’t matter if you have an eCommerce storefront with physical products or a SaaS business; your onboarding process will play a significant role in customer retention.

Essentially, onboarding can be summarized as how you get new customers acquainted with your brand.

Businesses should always create multiple pathways for users to enter the onboarding process. For instance, you could ask for an email subscription while proudly putting your value proposition on display.

Similarly, push notifications are an effective way to get users to commit to your brand. In the United States, this type of alert has an average subscription rate of 15.95%!

Once you get users to subscribe through one of your channels, send out a welcome email or notification with a link that shows users what to expect next. Customers are more likely to engage with brands that set expectations and deliver on their promises through effective onboarding.

Focus on Personalization

Customers expect companies to deliver highly-relevant content and offers through email, social media, and on-site. If you send out the same promotional message to all of your customers, you’re not going to get a high response rate.

Segmenting your customers can help you make personalized offers across all marketing platforms. On average, segmenting email leads results in 14.31% more conversions, and that’s only the beginning.

When implemented properly, on-site personalization can help you connect with customers based on their interests and pain points, which means more sales, engagement, and return customers. You can choose how to personalize your offers, but we decided to use the content customers read on our blog and their order history to suggest promotions and new content.

You can also give customers the option to personalize their experience when they sign up for your email list. When you create a contact form, include several optional questions about the type of content they would like to receive. For example, the owner of a sporting goods store might ask subscribers what kind of sports they play. If a customer says they play football, the business owner can send special promotions on football gear and relevant content.

There’s no question that personalizing content leads to an improved retention rate. Consumers are more likely to stick with businesses that understand their needs.

Build Community Forums

Are you a member of a website forum or social media group? If so, you check to see what people are saying fairly often, right? You’re not alone. Most consumers are part of a website forum, and more are part of the countless groups across social media.

If you want to improve your retention rate, you should consider using one or both of these community forums. You can create a separate part of your website where people can talk about various niche-specific topics.

You’ll get the benefit of retaining customers and building a community of helpful and engaging people. Before long, your target audience will associate your brand name with a helpful community and visit your website to learn more about your products, services, and the industry as a whole.

Social media groups give you the freedom and flexibility to spread brand awareness, improve retention, and grow an online community. Over 3.8 billion people use social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which is expected to grow.

When creating one of these groups, it’s essential to keep your audience’s needs in mind. You want to build a community where people can freely talk about their thoughts, ask questions, and learn from other members. There’s a good chance your customers will spend plenty of time in these communities. As a result, they are continually getting exposed to your brand and more likely to become a repeat customer.

Implement a Subscription Model

Subscription models are an excellent way to improve your retention rate. A whopping 76% of business owners report that subscriptions helped them improve customer retention.

You’re likely familiar with these business models from eCommerce storefronts and software companies alike.

Amazon, for example, offers a subscription service on most of its products. If a customer wants to put their order on repeat, they can do that too. If a customer invests in one of these plans, they are already committing to becoming a repeat customer.

You have to deliver a stellar customer experience and excellent product, and there’s a possibility that these users will continue to subscribe for future purchases.

Software companies and streaming services like Netflix allow consumers to pay for their product in advance for a cheaper rate. So, a consumer can buy an annual subscription and see a significant discount on their order. The idea here is to provide unmatched value to your users, which could encourage another annual subscription when their plan expires.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to improve your retention rate. The key to growing your business is to make sure customers return to your brand for future purchases. Use the tips outlined today, and have a much better chance of convincing customers to stick with your brand long after their first purchase.