Many merchants think that retention marketing is all about offering discounts and promotions.
Wrong!
Businesses can attract customers back by offering deals and promotions. But they must also consider other important factors when building loyalty.
Retention marketing encompasses a range of strategies aimed at building long-term customer relationships. These include personalized communication, proactive customer support, and continuous product improvement.
It’s about creating value for customers beyond discounts and incentives.
This article looks at what retention marketing means, helpful tips, and examples to help you create a strong strategy for a solid customer retention strategy.
Table of Contents
What is retention marketing?
Importance of retention marketing
How to measure customer retention
Best marketing channels to increase customer retention
6 expert strategies for retention marketing
Customer retention case studies and examples
Wrap up
What is retention marketing?
Retention marketing refers to companies keeping their existing customers happy and engaged. The aim is to inspire customers to buy things often. This helps to reduce the cost of customer acquisition and is an effective way to increase revenue.
Customer retention examples include:
- Exclusive offers for loyal and consistent customers
- Reward programs for spending more
- Regular newsletters with informative content and custom offers
- Warm welcome emails to streamline the onboarding process
Importance of retention marketing
Here’s why retention marketing should be a key part of your marketing strategy:
- Building long-term relationships:
Data-driven retention marketing helps brands build long-term relationships with customers. When customers are sure they will get the best deals from your store, they’ll have no reason to look elsewhere. This will make them loyal to your store and help you generate more sales from your existing clients. - Being more cost-effective than acquiring new customers:
Advertising to your current customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones, making it a more cost-effective approach. Your clients already know your products and what you stand for. As such, it doesn’t take much to convince them to buy from your brand again. But with new customers, you must first earn their trust before they will buy from your brand. - Customers who come back again need less information about the product:
When customers who have already tried your products or services want to buy again, they don’t need as much information. They already have experience with you. New customers are experiencing you for the first time. - Increasing customer lifetime value:
By using strategies to keep customers coming back, you will increase the value of each customer over time. - Leveraging word-of-mouth and referrals:
Loyal customers help brands in two ways: they buy more products and tell their network about your brand. To determine how often customers make purchases, you can divide the total number of orders by the number of customers during a certain time.
How to measure customer retention
You can measure the success of your retention marketing strategies by tracking various metrics, such as:
Repeat Customer Rate (RCR)
RCR shows how many of your customers make more than one purchase. A higher RCR means your retention marketing strategy is doing well.
To figure out how often customers buy things, you can count how many times they placed an order in a specific time. Then, you can see how many different customers made purchases during that same time.
- Repeat customers:
If you examine a particular timeframe, such as a few months or an entire year, you can identify the customers who have made a significant number of purchases. - Unique customers:
This is the count of customers who visited and made purchases during a certain time. It includes both customers who bought multiple times and those who made a one-time purchase.
RCR = # of repeat customers / # of unique customers
Purchase Frequency
The purchase frequency metric tells you how often customers come back to your store.
To figure out how often customers make purchases, you can count the total number of orders placed within a certain period. Then, divide that number by the total number of customers who bought during that same time.
Purchase Frequency = # of unique customers/orders placed
Average Order Value (AOV)
The average order value (AOV) refers to how much a customer spends in your store per transaction.
To calculate AOV, divide your total revenue earned by the number of orders placed. The AOV is what merchants try to focus on and improve. This is because it’s the more direct route to increasing revenue.
AOV = $ amount of revenue earned / # of orders
Customer Value
To figure out how important each customer is, think about two things: how often they buy from you and how much money they spend.
Multiply these numbers to see how well your marketing is working.
Customer Value = Purchase Frequency X Average Order Value
Best marketing channels to increase customer retention
How can you reach your existing customers and ensure they’re well taken care of? Here are the best channels you should try to boost customer retention:
Email marketing
Email is a helpful way for brands to keep customers coming back. Data-driven customer retention through email marketing helps companies keep customers interested and connected to the brand.
You can send different messages to different groups of people based on where they are in their shopping experience, which increases the likelihood of them returning to your store.
SMS marketing
Sending text messages to the customer’s mobile phone allows you to create personalized experiences for your customers through every stage of their engagement with your brand.
And unlike emails, text messages grab user attention. Once the messages are delivered, most people open them right away. A SimpleTexting survey found that 80.5% of users check their SMS notifications within five minutes of receiving a text.
Push notifications
Web push notifications are useful tools for keeping customers engaged and interested in your business. They enable you to send customized offers to your customers.
Push notifications have a high delivery rate, making them a suitable channel for retaining customers.
PPC/retargeting ads
Retargeting ad campaigns are an excellent channel for targeting your high-intent customers.
To understand the value of each customer, you should think about two things: how often they buy from you and how much they spend. Multiply these two numbers together to see how effective your marketing strategies are.
Social media communication
Posting updates to social media channels is an effective and free way to talk with current customers as well as people new to your business. You can share customer reviews, discounts, product launches, and behind-the-scenes content to keep the content fresh and engaging.
Omnisend offers a great marketing experience using email, SMS, and push notifications, as well as social media retargeting. You can organize customers based on their previous purchases and interactions with your brand. When you send them personalized messages that align with their preferences, they will appreciate it more, make more purchases, and come back more frequently.
6 expert strategies for retention marketing
Here are the best strategies you can use to keep your existing clients and grow your sales:
1. Personalized communication and engagement
Behavioral segmentation make it easy to analyze how your customers buy. You can find your regular customers and call them loyal or VIP customers.
Once you identify your loyal customers, you can send them special messages and offers that are customized to their preferences. When you personalize things based on what they like, the heightened relevance means people are more likely to make repeat purchases from your store.
2. Use post-purchase messaging
This method is helpful for both people who are buying for the first time and those who have made many purchases.
It includes promoting products that you might like and giving discounts to customers who come back. It also applies when delivering important messages such as confirmation emails. You can use post-purchase messages to help improve RCR.
3. Make use of gamification
Gamification enhances the enjoyment and involvement of interacting with emails and websites. Omnisend offers the spinning Wheel of Fortune, where your site visitors spin the wheel to try and win an incentive of your choice.
The main difference between sharing a discount code and gamification is that gamified experiences involve an element of chance or luck. As a result, each customer may receive a different code or offer, which adds a sense of unpredictability.
4. Loyalty programs
Loyalty programs are one of the best ways to keep a customer invested because you’re rewarding them for shopping with you.
You can make the program appealing by offering relevant offers, making it easy to use, and adding different levels of VIP status. You can also offer unique bonuses and products to your loyal customers.
5. Consider customer accounts
Unlike your competitors, you have the advantage of interacting with customers inside their accounts.
This gives you the opportunity to make your customer service stand out and provide better support.
You can also tie it together with loyalty programs and earning points for using an account.
6. Analyze customer data
Study customer data to identify the key metrics related to your current users. Important data include customer lifetime value, repeat purchases, and referrals.
The information will assist you in creating appealing offers to keep such users as customers.
7. Omnichannel customer support
Understanding how to contact a merchant can make or break a customer relationship. By providing omnichannel customer support, you can establish your store as available to assist customers on their preferred channels, setting yourself apart.
This sets you apart and allows you to provide better customer service. Improving your customer service can impact customer return frequency. It’s worth telling others about it too!
Customer retention case studies and examples
Need inspiration for your customer retention strategies? Here are a few customer retention examples you can look into.
Amazon Prime: Fostering customer loyalty through membership perks
Amazon Prime is Amazon’s subscription service with awesome perks like expedited shipping, special deals, and streaming services.
Being a Prime member comes with a lot of convenient and valuable perks, which make people want to continue using it. It’s a great way to enjoy all that Amazon offers and get the most out of your membership.
Starbucks Rewards: Incentivizes repeat purchases with a point-based reward program
Starbucks uses Starbucks Rewards to encourage customers to keep coming back. Members earn stars for each purchase, which they can redeem for free food, drinks, and personalized offers.
The program also gives customers personalized recommendations based on their preferences and behavior.
Spotify: Tailored music recommendations
Spotify uses an advanced algorithm to provide users with personalized music recommendations. The Discover Weekly and Release Radar feature on Spotify make playlists for you. They choose songs based on what you like, how you listen, and what’s popular.
Wrap up
As you can see, retention marketing is beneficial for a business. Businesses can bring customers back by offering deals and promotions. But, there are other crucial factors to consider when building loyalty.
Creating well-thought-out customer retention plans and knowing where to start is essential. The benefits far exceed the costs by a significant margin.
After all, you’ve worked hard to attract your customers—why would you risk losing them?
Using the right tools can make retaining your customers much easier. That’s where Omnisend can step in to help and make your approach more accessible and more effective.
Source from Omnisend
Disclaimer: The information set forth above is provided by Omnisend independently of Alibaba.com. Alibaba.com makes no representation and warranties as to the quality and reliability of the seller and products.
