Acquiring a new customer is five times more expensive than maintaining an existing one. Moreover, from a statistical point of view, there is a tremendous 60-70% chance of selling to an existing customer. Therefore, it is worth allocating a greater part of the budget to activities to keep customers with a higher retention rate. How to encourage customers to come back and buy again? Here you will find some effective solutions.
Reward the best customers with loyalty programs
It is estimated that 20% of regular customers account for achieving sales targets. One way to maintain their interest is to create a loyalty program that allows customers to receive benefits depending on their loyalty level. The marketing automation tool allows for segmenting loyalty program members based on scoring and then sending dedicated marketing campaigns. The degree of customer engagement in the loyalty program can be determined on the basis of the data collected, such as the total amount of purchases, frequency of purchases, average value of orders, or number of transactions – the higher scoring the customer receives, the greater the benefits. Marketing automation makes it possible to segment program members, analyse customers’ lifecycles, examine their behaviours and needs, and send messages to the appropriate segment. These are just some of the opportunities that automation offers for loyalty programs.
Recover lapsed customers
There is a group of customers who once actively interacted with the brand, but after a while they stopped. Marketing automation offers the ability to track a purchase history, level of engagement or products bought by customers. It is a good idea to use all the available information to automatically create win-back campaigns to re-engage the audience. Marketing automation tools allow for automating the activities – on the basis of actions taken by customers, messages in the form of e-mail or notification will be sent to the relevant segment. It is worth offering an additional benefit to customers, e.g. a discount or free delivery. Customer retention can be more cost-effective than acquiring new leads.
Send cross-sell and up-sell campaigns
The most effective way to retain customers is to meet their needs. In order to do this, one should rely on available information, such as products viewed and bought, clicks on links sent, or other actions taken on the website. When knowing customer behaviour, it is possible to run marketing campaigns based on their interests, preferences, and expectations. It is extremely important to customise messages and offer the products they may need. With cross-selling and up-selling campaigns, there is a good chance of attracting customers with more products and, consequently, increasing sales. Cross-selling comes down to offering complementary products. If the customer is interested in buying a necklace, they are very likely to choose earrings in a similar style too. Up-selling, on the other hand, involves promoting more valuable or supplementary goods that the customer may find useful, e.g. in the case of shoes, these could be shoe insoles, laces, or care kits.
Collect and use customer feedback
Abandoned shopping carts can result from customer dissatisfaction with the service, complicated ordering process, or too expensive delivery. Customers are less likely to express their views on the service or purchasing process on their own initiative. So it’s a good idea to investigate their feedback by email or by sending push notifications – then they will feel that their opinion about products or brand is important, and any problems they encounter in the buying process can be quickly resolved. It would be great to publish testimonials from satisfied customers, because the power of recommendation can do more than advertising. With marketing automation, you can track audience engagement, number of transactions, or frequency of purchases – this is a good starting point for gathering positive feedback. Based on the available data, it is worth sending push notifications or loyalty thank you emails, and asking for testimonials.
