Best Client Retention Strategies – How To Prevent Customer Churn

Customer churn can be a severe threat to your business and cash flow. In fact, this problem adversely affects every company to a greater or lesser extent, whether it’s B2B, B2C, eCommerce, or another kind of business. Thankfully, there are many client retention strategies and solutions available to help you deal with the customer churn issue. And in this article, we will show you some of the most effective strategies.

A short introduction first. The customer churn index is a percentage value calculated monthly or annually. You obtain the result by dividing the number of customers who departed your company in a given month/year by their initial number.

Obviously, the higher your customer churn index is, the more customers (and money) you lose. Companies struggle to keep their customer churn indexes as low as possible because this way, they grow. In general, there are two major client retention strategies that help you prevent customer churn:

• Acquiring more customers every month
• Building good relations with existing customers

Naturally, you will get the best results when you combine them.

Client Retention Strategies: Acquire more customers each month

It’s a job for your marketing and sales departments. And the fact is, today, every company that wants to grow has to have an extensive marketing and sales strategy. There are dozens of marketing tactics and techniques that will help you broaden the customer base. Which ones should you choose? That depends on the type of business you run and the industry you operate in.

When it comes to online promotion, performance marketing is one of the most effective tools.

Performance marketing

It’s a technique that’s based on paying just for the result. There are many settlement models available in performance marketing campaigns, and the most popular ones are:

• CPS (Cost Per Sale): You pay for every sale (e.g., an order placed in your store)
• CPC (Cost Per Click): You pay every time users clicks your ad
• CPM (Cost Per Mille): You pay for every thousand impressions (views) of your ad
• CPA (Cost Per Action): You pay every time each user takes another specific action (e.g., sign-ups for the newsletter)

As you can see, performance marketing is all about driving measurable results. It’s the quickest, most straightforward, and most effective way to get more customers each month, especially when you run a B2C company.

Currently, there are two most significant performance marketing channels available: Google Ads and Facebook Ads. These two tools, when combined, allow you to reach almost 100% of the internet users! You should use Google Ads when you are targeting people who look for a specific product or service on Google. On the other hand, if you are interested in targeting people who match specific characteristics or conditions, Facebook Ads are your best bet. This tool offers over 1,000+ targeting options, allowing you to specify to who do you want to see your ad. And with fantastic precision, too!

Other stories

Naturally, there are other ways to acquire more customers. It’s impossible to squeeze all of them into one text, but let us just mention the most popular ones. If you run a B2C company, you could think about:

• Affiliate marketing
• Working with recognizable bloggers and influencers
• Outdoor campaigns
• Other forms of social media activity

If you run a B2B company, consider:

• Fairs and special events (the COVID-19 pandemic will eventually end!)
• Direct sales, for instance, via LinkedIn
• Marketplaces and participation in business organizations

Your client retention strategies should comprise every channel and every form of marketing and communication that proved to be useful or has the potential to be effective. Try each one of them, and focus on these that bring you the best results in the long run.

Although the omnichannel approach says that you should be in many places at the same time, generally, it’s better to have one-two forms of marketing that are immensely effective than five-six of unknown efficiency or potential.

Client Retention Strategies: Build good relations with existing customers

In fact, that’s by far the cheapest way to curb customer churn. Some experts say that selling to an existing customer is up to 7 times cheaper than acquiring a new one[1]. In many instances, that’s true! You already have this customer. All you have to do now is encourage them to buy more products. Easier said than done? Perhaps, but there are at least three effective strategies you can utilize:

Constantly improve customer service

Did you know that every year, Gladly.com[2] publishes the Customer Expectations report? It’s a valuable source of information on how to improve customer service.

In the 2020 issue, we can read, for instance, that:

• 79% of surveyed customers say personalized service is more important than personalized marketing
• 36% of consumers feel like a unique individual when engaging with customer service
• 84% go out of their way to spend more money with a brand that provides great experiences

What does it tell you? You have to ensure a personalized experience in your company and think of ways to impress your customers. It’s a great way to keep them in your active customer base.

Offer something more!

Today, you have a whole range of additional activities you can use to encourage your customers to buy more. Maybe a few examples:

• Vouchers
• Discounts
• Loyalty programs
• Freebies

All of these options are non-aggressive and efficient. Freebies are exceptionally effective. Putting a gift along with a voucher in each parcel you send can be a fantastic way to increase the number of orders each month. The loyalty programs work similarly. You can think of creating one for your regular customers. Offer them something special. Maybe access to pre-sale offers or special discounts? It’s all up to you.

Always concentrate on your regular customers. That’s the most valuable asset in every company. Pay extra attention to them, and continuously give them more reasons to stay with you. But, simultaneously, don’t forget about one-time customers. If they left their email address and a marketing consent, remind yourself two-three times each year. Many companies conduct such “reminding campaigns” before Christmas.

Master content marketing

Today, building relations is not only about sales. People want to buy from companies they trust. And one of the excellent ways to build trust is by sharing your knowledge and experience. That’s why the blog section is present on almost every corporate website.

Publish educational and practical content. Use your blog and social media channels. When people see that you have something valuable and engaging to say–they will be more interested in purchasing goods/services from you.

For instance, if you run an e-commerce company, show how your products can be safely used, maintained, serviced, or cleaned. Take some pictures/videos behind the scenes and show what your work looks like. Your customers will feel closer to you. And from there, it is only one small step to growing your sales!

To sum up this part:

The client retention strategy’s essence lies in taking good care of your current customers and acquiring new ones each month. 

However, we can’t end this article here! There’s one more crucial element of client retention strategies. The modern marketing and sales world operates primarily on data. And this is where Addepto comes into play!

Data-driven client retention strategies

If you want to maximize customer retention, you need a data-driven strategy. This especially applies to the sales/marketing activity but to customer retention as well. Today, every decent marketing tool also has a fully-developed analytics feature that helps you see and measure the results.

Consider Google Ads and its Analytics Intelligence module. It’s a machine learning feature that takes marketing data analytics to the next level. As Google brags, this ML algorithm outstandingly improves the results Google Ads produces. Analytics Intelligence functionality includes the insights module that analyzes Google Ads data and surfaces insights on major changes or opportunities. Analytics Intelligence also offers user and conversion modeling.

What about current customer?

This is where our Customer Retention Analysis comes in handy. Depending on the number of customers you serve each month, analyzing all available data can be a challenging and time-consuming task. Thankfully, not with artificial intelligence.

Our AI-fueled algorithms allow you to look for patterns in your customers’ behavior and indicate customers that are likely to churn in the near future. How is that possible? Our AI applications take into consideration all available data and analyze the historical behavior of each person/company.

But our Customer Retention Analysis is so much more! It helps you understand how your business decisions and adjustments influence your clients. In other words, with our tool, you can spot and understand trends in products or services that result in customer satisfaction (or dissatisfaction).

We frequently begin building client retention strategies with analysis based on cohorts (they help analyze how many clients leave the company and over what period) and demographic indicators. Such analysis enables companies to obtain insights into what influences specific customer decisions. Moreover, we conduct behavior analysis that enables us to understand why customers decide to depart your company.

What results can you expect?

Implementing artificial intelligence into your client retention strategies can significantly increase the number of customers that remain in your customer base each month. Through the years, we managed to deliver some amazing results to our clients who work on their client retention strategies with us:

• Our customized machine learning model helps to prevent churn with an accuracy of up to 90%!
• We offer a legible and transparent data visualization tool that makes all the results easy to comprehend
• We reduce the time needed to analyze individual customer activity
• We increase the efficiency and performance of the customer service departments
• Our solution allows you to take quick and accurate corrective actions

Would you like to find out more about our AI consulting services? Go here and find out more. And if you have any questions–we are at your disposal!

References

[1] Toma Kulbytė. 7 Unique ways to increase customer retention (and increase profits!). Mar 2, 2021. URL: https://www.superoffice.com/blog/customer-retention-tips-with-crm-software/. Accessed Nov 4, 2020.
[2] URL: https://go.gladly.com/customer-expectations-report-2020. Accessed Nov 4, 2020.