While companies generally focus on the new customer engagement, reinforcing relations with existing clients is all the more crucial. It’s wrong to take repeat business for granted. Customers will often leave for good without telling you the reason. So, take the best possible care of them once they’ve joined the fold. Actually, it’s 6-7 times more profitable to win back a lost customer than to substitute them with a new one.
You’ve probably made a lot of investment in raising awareness to acquire clients, but at this point, how to keep customers coming back again and again? Sometimes, preventing them from leaving if something went wrong takes just a little effort. Starters need to understand the importance of customer feedback and learn to handle complaints. Figuring out how to keep customers coming back and implementing those tactics, they will soon see their CLTV and sales growing.
Imagine everyone walking through your doors is bowled over by your customer service. Meet the minimal expectations, and people might come back another day; but they are unlikely to rave about mediocre service to their personal network. In practice, turning one-time buyers into repeat ones is a low fruit. Take a look at some smart winback marketing approaches.
Five Ways to Keep Customers Coming Back
Customers have different expectations from one company to the next. To impress their clients, each company may need to adopt a unique approach. If someone has hired you once, that doesn’t mean they’ll recall you next time they require your services.
Both the retail and B2B sector compete for people’s attention among thousands of distractions. If you deliver services to other firms, and they keep silent for a while, use a reliable text message service for business to tell them how you would appreciate their next interaction. As for retailers or ecommerce, decide if you need winning customers back on a case-by-case basis. Not all buyers are equally good: if the lapsed customer was hard to work with, then that may not be a good idea. The best thing to do at this point is not to let them leave frustrated.
Find Out Precisely Where They Dropped
If you really want a certain customer back, find out the exact reason why they left. If they’re sad about price, that means a disconnect between your offer and its perceived value. No matter what the cause, try to ask at least two probing questions to learn what to improve. Maybe, they won’t return, but you’ll take this useful information to heart for bringing customers back. As an alternative, keep an eye on popular review platforms and social media ― explore common threads that caused a breakup.
Research shows the other reasons for leaving are poor treatment, and dissatisfaction with your product or service. It might be a long queue time, low delivery speed, or a disappearing menu item. Such analysis might expose something you can use to create a more valuable offer. Pursue to answer all clients’ emails within 24 hours. Treat the client with sincere understanding. It’s hard to say sorry, but say it as if you really mean it. Some companies even do “no question return”, or recommend their competitors ― this guarantees a positive impression.
Correct Your Offer
As soon as the trouble is identified, you may wonder how to get return customers? Adjust your product or service, and arrange a “we fixed it” SMS campaign. And don’t forget to convey to the audience what’s new, of course, after performing HLR phone lookup of your client base. By segmenting it, you can tailor each purchaser’s experience. Give people a reason to buy from you again.
If you ask what a desirable outcome looks like to your client, you’ll be surprised how reasonable people can be receiving an opportunity. A good practice is to answer the phone in person, so that a customer does not need to work their way through multiple options. Write down your existing offer and its current price, then collect more offer-price combinations. You can survey your market by means of conjoint analysis trade-off technique. When you clear up a situation, you will return customers.
Find Solutions to Keep in Touch
After the deal, allocate resources to build a warm relationship. Options can include contacting old customers on social networks, sending them a special motivation, and regular newsletters. But keep it not annoying and not intrusive. Stay on their radar with purposeful messages. If there’s their date of birth in your base, send them a greeting with an exclusive gift. Or enhance loyalty programs. As long as you’re smartly segmenting recipients at the BSG text messaging platform , you can personalize a bulk SMS campaign straight for inactive customers.
Social media has been a good driver of in-store traffic. They are also a fine way how to win back old clients. Launch occasional giveaways, contests, customer appreciation days to gain supporters organically. Repeat customers are the business’s life blood, and via social media, they can become your ambassadors online telling others about you. Get permission to send them industry news and educational materials on the topics they are interested in.
Amaze Customers
When you’re trying to figure out how to win and keep customers, consider doing something above and beyond their expectations to bring them delight and excitement. Reward them for using your services repeatedly with loyalty discounts or extras.
Determine your most recurrent shoppers and top spenders, and nurture them ― it takes time, but it’s worth it. One famous coffee company always comes up with different approaches to give their visitors rewards and an opportunity to redeem them. It uses incentives such as:
- promo codes;
- buy-one-get-one-free;
- “happy hours”;
- bonuses for coming in during a certain time;
- putting membership with regular discounts in place etc.
Take business in-person a step further by sending a heartfelt thankyou or a special prize for a referral. Be inventive with coupons and discounts; for instance, apply discounts only for certain brands, and upsell other things when customers have already entered your doors. To turn your store into a destination and to give people great experiences, it’s wise to host events like parties, fashion shows, or even wine and canvas nights.
Welcoming and Social Responsiveness
Put the right and qualified people on the front-line. Your product might be quite perfect, but if the employee interacting with your customers communicates in an unfriendly manner, people will be repulsed. Make sure your team includes professionals. Kind and personalized service has to become your standard.
Another option is to adopt corporate social responsibility and give back to the community. Participate in local charitable initiatives and sales supporting the nonprofits, donate a part of every sale to them, or host an activity for the district food bank. Such goodwill generates repeat deals, because shoppers are glad to know their money is truly making a difference in their home community.
Conclusion
Losing a customer is expensive ― about $300. While 70% of companies understand return customers importance and acknowledge that it costs lower to retain customers than to gain the new ones, only one third put efforts to actually win back customers they haven’t seen for a while.
Fortunately, with the help of bulk SMS messaging and other marketing tools, you can dispatch specific campaigns targeting the lapsed customers, encouraging them to buy from you one more time. Don’t acquire customers solely for increasing their amount. Concentrate on delivering on your promises and smooth experience.
