Marketing is foundational to any successful business or brand, regardless of the industry you represent. With marketing, spreading the word about a particular product, service, or idea becomes increasingly more accessible, especially in highly competitive and saturated markets.
What is Retention Marketing?
Retention marketing is a practice in marketing that focuses on retaining existing customers or subscribers. Rather than focusing on attracting new prospective customers, retention marketing hones in on customers who have made a purchase in the past or are current customers. Did you know that Amazon has an astonishing 88-95% retention rate? While Amazon may be an anomaly, it is still possible to significantly increase your own retention rate with the right marketing retention strategy.
What are the Goals of Retention Marketing?
Retention marketing is designed to appeal to an existing customer of a business rather than targeting those who may be unaware of a company’s existence. Retention marketing focuses on the needs and overall level of satisfaction an existing customer may already be experiencing. Some of the most notable goals of retention marketing include:
- Personalize the marketing experience: Using retention strategies when marketing your company can help provide a personalized shopping experience for existing customers. When customers feel their experience is tailored specifically for them, they easily trust brands and purchase from them directly.
- Keep existing customers happy: Customer satisfaction is essential for a business to remain successful. To keep existing customers happen, launching marketing strategies with retention in mind can go a long way.
- Improve customer service: By providing highly personalized marketing and specific campaigns for existing customers, you are likely to have a better reputation when it comes to customer support. In addition to referring friends and family to your business, customers who are satisfied with your level of service are more likely to recommend you to others.
- Increase sales: The ultimate goal of any successful marketing campaign is to increase and generate sales. With retention marketing strategies, work to increase the volume of sales you generate from existing customers rather than only being limited to acquisition marketing strategies.
Increasing your marketing retention rate is possible with various strategies that will help you connect and resonate with your target audience.
Retention Marketing Strategies You Need to Know
Retention in marketing is one of the most popular strategies used by small businesses and Fortune 500 companies today. Familiarizing yourself with popular retention strategies in marketing is essential to maximize your reach and online appeal to those who are already aware of your brand’s existence.
Once you start developing your marketing strategy, you can begin implementing retention strategies that are more likely to appeal to existing customers or clients.
Define Your Goals
Before using retention marketing strategies in your everyday campaigns, you must define your goals. Measuring your ROI will first depend on how much value you estimate each customer brings to your business and their overall CLV, or customer lifetime value. Create a document to measure the average sales you generate from each customer. Added in the document, highlight the average number of times a customer returns to your business in any given time period. You can also estimate a CLV or customer lifetime value based on these figures.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is still king, whether you are seeking new customers or trying to retain existing customers and clients. Fresh, unique, informative, and exciting content is a way to drive traffic to your website and one of the best ways to establish your business and brand as an authoritative source.
Developing informative content can help spread the word about your business, boost your online visibility, and increase your website’s SEO or search engine optimization. You can also promote your content via social media marketing and email campaigns and launch an official blog. When creating content, allow guests to comment, engage, and interact with your posts. Responding to comments on your blog or social media pages is also a way to build a positive reputation and personal connection with existing customers.
Launch a Newsletter
Promoting new content via an email newsletter is another way to reach existing customers and subscribers. Creating a newsletter is possible with your web host or preferred newsletter platform. Promoting your newsletter can be done on your official website, blog, and even with the use of social media. Using a newsletter for retention marketing is a way to appeal to existing subscribers while also incentivizing others to subscribe to your newsletter.
The appeal of the exclusivity of a newsletter is one of the best ways to garner new subscribers. To motivate users to subscribe to your newsletter, offer exclusive promotions and discounts available anywhere else. Existing subscribers and customers may also find your valuable newsletter if you include coupon codes and deals unavailable on your website or any social media page.
Personalized Engagement
With the rapid development of AI or artificial technologies, new features, plugins, and solutions are available for websites today to help provide personalized engagement. Personalized engagement can help customers feel more comfortable asking for help or direction on your website, especially if they are shopping for a product or service. Retaining existing customers is much easier with the use of AI chatbots and virtual shopping assistants that can remember previous purchases and items that may still be available in their existing shopping carts.
Implement Unique Customer Loyalty Programs
Loyalty and rewards programs are becoming increasingly commonplace among many businesses and business types today. From offering discounts to entirely free meals from fast food establishments, there is no shortage of consumer loyalty programs available all across the globe.
One option to consider when implementing a new marketing retention strategy is launching your customer loyalty program. A brand loyalty program is one of the best ways to spread the word about a business while offering something in return for the loyalty of your dedicated customers. Encourage customers to spend more money on your business by offering exclusive discounts, freebies, and even cashback, depending on the type of promotion you can manage fiscally. Using a customer loyalty program also piques the interest of those who may need to be aware of your company’s existence.
Using retention marketing strategies can significantly increase repeat business and return customers for any type of business. With the suitable retention in marketing strategy in place, maximize your reach and optimize your ability to keep existing customers and clients coming back for more.
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