From using discounts to encourage reorders to cultivating a healthy comment section, here are 11 answers to the question, “Can you share some real-world examples that you’ve found success with for customer retention?”
DEEPER DIVE: Here’s how Metro Phoenix offers startups advantages over other tech hubs
- Offer a Reorder Discount
- Personalize Communication:
- Ask Loyal Customers for their Preferences
- Show Active, Consistent Results
- Set up a Loyalty Program
- Automate the Customer Journey
- Engage Over Social Media
- Use Chatbots for Instant Replies
- Give Away Free Samples
- Provide a Free Trial of a New Service
- Pay Attention to Your Comment Section
Offer a Reorder Discount
I own an online dental lab that makes custom dental products like retainers and night guards. Our customers take an impression of their teeth and then send it to us to have the dental guards manufactured.
After the first order, we keep the impression on file for one year for free. This way, the customer can get another product at a discount rate. If the customer reorders two times, we will scan their dental impression and create a 3D file that we have on file forever. We have found that saving the customer impression for the first year gives us a 30% customer retention, and after we have it scanned in, we have a 70% retention.
Our customers love the fact that they can easily reorder a retainer or night guard at a discount and know their impression will be kept on file for life.
Evan McCarthy, President and CEO, Sporting Smiles
Personalize Communication
As a seasoned business expert, I think personalized communication is an essential component of a customer retention strategy.
This strategy involves the customization of messaging to individual consumers, depending on the preferences and actions of those customers. For instance, consider Amazon’s “Recommended for You” function, which recommends new products based on a user’s past purchases and browsing behavior.
Gerrid Smith, Chief Marketing Officer, Joy Organics
Ask Loyal Customers for their Preferences
To keep customers in our biometric photo service, especially those who bought our most expensive packages, we asked for details of their preferences in terms of prints and sizes.
We personally contacted customers via phone and email to ask if they wanted a specific size or shape pre-ordered. In addition, we sent out reminders of future services and special offers provided by our company.
To reward loyalty, we provide discounts to frequent customers, discounted shipping rates for long-term package orders, and produced custom products for an additional fee.
To top it off, we organized monthly contests among active subscribers, which gave them a chance to win unique gifts as a token of appreciation. The result was a significant increase in both customer satisfaction and retention.
Natalia Brzezinska, Marketing and Outreach Manager, PhotoAiD
Show Active, Consistent Results
Our most important customer retention strategy involves providing consistent and easy access to evidence that our services are delivering their desired results.
We provide test prep tutoring services to students, and their parents want to see that the tutoring fee is being put to good use through improvements in test scores. We send weekly emails to students and parents highlighting score progress, as well as a glimpse into their tailored curriculum in the coming weeks.
This not only proves that we are delivering tangible results but also orients our clients to what’s coming next if they stay with us.
Adam Shlomi, Founder, SoFlo Tutors
Set up a Loyalty Program
Customers love a good reward or loyalty program. For example, our business offers a loyalty rewards program which we believe keeps customers coming back.
They accumulate points with each purchase, and they can apply those points to future purchases for money off. Month to month, we usually see that approximately 30% of all purchases are from repeat customers using our loyalty program.
Sumeer Kaur, CEO, Lashkaraa
Automate the Customer Journey
My team and I have automated almost the entire customer journey, making it easy to navigate and eliminate roadblocks as they appear.
Since we began the process of automation, we’ve corrected issues within the customer journey we were unaware of and connected more efficiently with customers who have not made a purchase in some time.
We approached our own automation journey as a solution but also as a fact-finding mission to discover and smooth out wrinkles in our processes. Since automating our customers’ journey, our client retention rate has increased by over 15%.
Amy Bos, COO, Mediumchat
Engage Over Social Media
As a seasoned entrepreneur and marketer, I can say with confidence that interacting with customers via social media is a fantastic method for retaining existing clients and expanding the company’s reach to new customers.
Famous fast-food restaurant Wendy’s is a great example of a brand that uses social media to engage with its customers in a clever and engaging way. Wendy’s actively interacts with its social media audience by promoting its goods and services and responding to queries and comments.
Andrew Priobrazhenskyi, CEO and Director, Discount Reactor
Use Chatbots for Instant Replies
As soon as we launched our new Shopify app, we noticed a major issue: 70% of customers were churning before they even spoke to our support team. Due to our app and our target audience, this high churn rate was not surprising. Here’s why:
- Our app requires all merchants to have their Meta Business Manager set up correctly.
- Our target audience is beginners, who are new to the e-commerce space.
The Meta Business Manager setup is not a straightforward process and is unfortunately required in order to launch ads via our app. In order to decrease our churn rate and make it easier for our customers to set up their Business Manager, we implemented the following changes:
- Created a simplified video tutorial that explains the Meta Business Manager setup.
- Added triggers to our chat that detected when a user had a faulty Business Manager setup and instantly sent them a message with instructions to fix it.
We also added a free Business Manager set up.
Maria Chan, Marketing and Communication Manager, EasyAds
Give Away Free Samples
Build rapport with your customers by including free samples with every order. For example, when a new or repeat customer receives free samples of new products, this increases their chances of purchasing other items and their overall positivity associated with your brand.
Susan Shaffer, President, Pneuma Nitric Oxide
Provide a Free Trial of a New Service
A great way that really works with connecting with previous customers and keeping them is by offering free trials on new services or giving them access to beta versions to get their feedback. This helps them not only share their opinion and feel trusted and appreciated but also be keener on trying out your new products and services in the future.
Denise Hemke, Chief Product Officer, Checkr
Pay Attention to Your Comment Section
Enabling comments on our blog articles helps us to foster a building community of writers. As a website providing tools for the writing process, it helps to offer our website’s users a chance to comment about what is important to them.
This feedback allows us to streamline our efforts and make choices that serve our community best. It also allows our customers to talk to each other and give supportive writing advice. We want writers to come to us as a one-stop shop, where they can find helpful tools, a supportive community, and the information they need at their fingertips. Our comment section helps make that possible.
Bridget Reed, Co-Founder and VP of Content, The Word Counter
