So, that new website that you have tweaked and adjusted to help convert more visitors into customers is doing its job, you have gathered plenty of new customers, you have solved their pain points with your services and they have left you a nice review to go with it to place on your amazing website. Right onto the next one!

Hang on, wait a second! just think of all that hard work, time, and money that it has taken you to acquire that new customer. 

The problem with a lot of big companies is that it’s only the new customers that get that amazing offer you’ve seen on TV or social media yesterday, not you, the loyal customer that has stuck with them through good and bad experiences. Don’t be like these businesses that underappreciate the customers that have cost them a lot of money to acquire.

Why spend all that time optimizing your blog post for keywords that you have spent some more time researching. Or carefully crafting your social media content to find the right eyes and peak the right amount of interest and desire to click that link.

Why spend hundreds or thousands of pounds on Facebook and Google ads, so that you can appear at the top of that first page, to get more visitors to your website to buy your product, or book an appointment with your business, if you don’t appreciate that customer and nurture them into a promotor and life long fan of your business?

The point is, it costs way more money to find new customers than it does to keep the ones you have happy and promote you to everyone and their dog!

In this post, we will go over 5 things you can do to keep your current customers happy and coming back for more!  

EMAIL NURTURING (FOLLOWUPS)

Yes, I said email nurturing. 

Email nurturing might have been one of the ways you won your clients in the first place by giving them something for free in exchange for their info to market to them. But it’s also a perfect way to stay in touch with them after they have used or purchased your products or services.

For car sales, this could be giving helpful tips on the car they have purchased. “Did you know’s” on little features they might not have realized was in their car. Competition for a free wash and valet if they go and like or share a post on the dealerships social pages. Or give a review and post it on their socials tagging the dealership.

There are lots of ways in which email nurturing can be of benefit for after-sales/service care. Keeping the customers you have feeling valued and happy like this is much easier and cheaper than looking for the next one to come along. Platforms like Mailchimp and mailer lite are good options for this and have free plans to help you get going.

REWARD LOYALTY

This is a simple gesture of thanks and doesn’t have to cost much, the value that your customer will get from you just giving them something for free, no strings attached, is greater than what it cost you in doing it.

This could be as simple as a “buy 9 coffees and get the 10th free!” loyalty card. Give a discount voucher or code at Christmas time, or on the birthday from when you first worked together or they purchased something from you. Or if you know when their birthday is, send it to them in a card.

You could even send out a free gift after a customer or client has been with you for a specified length of time, hitting a milestone with how many times they have used your services.

When Pixel Yeti went through a rebrand a few years ago, we sent out to our clients a branded T-shirt, a notebook and some stickers to help promote our rebrand and a letter expressing our thanks and letting them know about the rebrand and why we were making these changes.

This was a fairly cost-effective way of rewarding loyalty and getting our new look out there and across to our current clients. 

We teamed up with Sickermule for our custom die-cut stickers, which looked awesome! Our T-shirts are also printed by them and while we were at it, we got some custom poly mailers printed with our new branding all over them to send it all out in. Another good thing about Stickermule is the ability to be able to buy sample packs of their products with your design on them so you can test out how it will look and see the quality that you will be getting before placing a bigger order.

CREATE A COMMUNITY

Helping and nurturing your customers after they have brought from you or have used your services is key to keeping them coming back and promoting you. Think about creating a community, a group of like-minded people that all have a common interest, you and your services!

You can go about this by setting up a good old fashioned social event. Or, if a certain virus is making this kinda thing difficult, setting up a community page online with something like Facebook groups is a good alternative.

Facebook groups are members-only pages where you can grow a community around your brand or services, a place where your clients can come together and discuss and learn more about your services. 

This kind of closed social engagement is good for social listening, finding out what your customers think about your services or products. This could also be a good place to engage one on one with your customers and listen to any feedback, concerns or ideas they might have, helping you to improve your services better and, in turn, making more happy customers in the process!

RESPOND TO FEEDBACK AND REVIEWS

Talking of social listening, responding to the feedback and reviews you see or receive online is another good point to interact with. Whether the feedback is good or bad, it will make your customers feel like you care and appreciate their thoughts and opinions on their experiences.

If it’s poor feedback, offer a discount on their next purchase. If it’s a good review, be sure to jump in there and thank them for the kind words. Showing that you care even in the smallest of ways, will go a long way in making customers feel valued and massively increases the likelihood of them returning to you, or referring your services to friends and family.

Stuck trying to figure out how to go about gathering reviews and feedback? There are a couple of ways you can go about this, one is building the forms into your website and sending a link out to customers. Another way is to use something like Typeform, which have a free plan that allows you to build beautiful forms to capture anything from reviews to questionnaires and integrates with many third-party software and plugins.

MAKE THINGS EASY

It sounds simple but is sometimes easily overlooked as businesses get engrossed in processes and technical talk that customers find themselves unknowingly nodding to like the Churchill dog out of politeness, not wanting to sound stupid that they haven’t a clue what you’re going on about!

Take a Look at your website, is it easy for a customer or potential customer to find what they are looking for? Would a chatbot on your website help your visitors ask that simple question, without them having to pick up the phone, or fill out a support ticket and wait for a response? 

68% of consumers like chatbots because they provide quick answers. 33% of consumers would like to use chatbots for reservations. There are many ways that you can benefit from using chat functionality in your business to help nurture relationships by making things a bit easier for people to find answers to the questions they are looking for.

However, sometimes chatbots can be a frustration to some people depending on your customers general demographic. But to a younger demographic, it’s the prefered way of interacting with a brand or business to get the answers to the questions they need quickly.

If you want to up your customer retention and would like to implement some of these ideas in your business, we can help you!

Simply get in touch with us, let us know your pain points and we will be more than happy to help get you moving in the right direction!