Creating customer loyalty is one of the best things you can do for your business. A report from Harvard Business School states, an increase in customer retention rates of just 5 percent will result in a profit increase of 25 to 95 percent.
This is an important detail to consider as you develop customer experience strategies. Finding ways to keep customers coming back is as important as finding new customers—and it costs less, too. Here are five effective small business tips to increase retention rates.
Stay in Touch with Your Customers
Digital marketing represents a huge chunk of the market now, and the popularity of smartphones means that people are more likely to get their information from a mobile device. Collecting customer information lets you continue to nurture the customer relationship long after the first sale. The most common way to connect with customers these days is through email, but text messages sent directly to a person’s phone have proven to be much more effective. Maintaining regular contact with customers through email and direct mail is one of the best ways to keep your business at the forefront of their minds.
Encourage Larger First Sale Purchases
Generating customer loyalty means targeting your customers at all stages of the sales process. According to market research, the chance of a customer coming back relates directly to the amount of money he or she spends on the first purchase. Dane Atkinson, SumAll’s CEO, backs this up by saying that people who spend big on an initial transaction are almost “twice as likely to return as those who spend the least.”