Brands in all sectors are becoming increasingly obsessed with acquiring new customers and tend to slightly forget about the more important strategy, that is, acquiring their existing clients.

Acquiring you ask? Yes acquiring them again and again and again… it’s called your retention strategy and it’s making sure that every time you connect with them you are doing so on their terms.

We talk about the importance of being on every channel to acquire new customers, however when it comes to existing customers it’s even more important to be on all channels.

Below are 3 simple steps to embark on your retention strategy:

1 - Segment your customers:

It’s interesting how often we see businesses not giving their strategic customers the right attention to cater to their needs. Segmenting customers is the number one factor businesses should be implementing, and implementing this correctly.

So how do you correctly segment your customers? It all depends on the goal you want to achieve.

RANDEMs strategy below can be considered suitable for most businesses, regardless of their industry.  

1.1 Segment customers by tiers

This isn’t always about how much they spend with you. It could be based on how many times they exchange/return something or, how often they interact with you across all your channels. Tiering your customers allows you to divide your attention across your most important customers.

1.2 Segment customers based on Lifestyle/interest

Knowing your customers interests helps you to provide them with the right content. We see massive change in open rate and click-through-rate when the content sent to a specific segment is closely connected to their interests, we are talking about upwards of 50% open rate and 25 to 40% click-through-rate that is doubling the industry standard average (you can read more here)

1.3 Segment customers based on their buying behaviour

Not all customers want to buy on special and not all want to be unique and pay full ticket items. Knowing your customers purchase behaviour is quite important to implement the right strategy, to have a successful commercial relationship with your customers. If you get the above two correct then a percentage of your bargain hunters will at some point purchase from you at full price.

2 – Have the right tools to Service your customers:

Businesses are advised to have the right systems in place to help you understand your customers better. From when they walk through your bricks and mortar stores to when they visit you online, have the systems that’ll allow you to know their history with your business and how to better service them.

For example, if a customer comes online and is asking about a Mizuno golf bag, it’ll be very helpful to see their history with your business and that they had purchased a Mizuno golf set from you two months ago, this will help you recommend the right bag that would better fit their clubs and also gives you the opportunity to reward your customer by offering them a discount or upsell them a bundle at a lower price. Your creativity here is your only limit!

HubSpot recently launched their module called HubSpot Service Hub, which offers you the ability to pull up the customer’s profile while you’re chatting to them and with the right integration into your E-commerce system you’ll be able to see what they purchased from your site using the E-commerce connector. Although we have to admit that their chat service/system is far from being perfect, the good news though is that Livechat have built an integration with HubSpot.

3 – Check and request:

Check with your customers how you’re doing across your channels:

a – Are they liking your content?
b – Are they happy to hear from you that often via EDM?
c – Do they like your products and delivery?
d – Do video reviews of your service or product and ask people to leave comments or ask people to send you their feedback via a form?

Ask your customers who love your brand to:

a – Let the world know how much they love your brand and why
b – Ask them to leave their reviews publicly i.e. on google maps, on your site or 3^rd party review sites.

Why Ask? People trust a brand a lot more when they have been publicly reviewed.

 We would love to hear what you think, leave your comment below or e-mail us your thoughts!