You might think you already have them, but it’s not true. Don’t be under the false impression that the customers you have will always remain your customers forever. Never take them for granted; they will leave you, and you won’t see it coming. And I say this with conviction. When they leave, they will take part of your revenue with them. Just like a product starts losing its charm in a couple of years (as proposed by the product lifecycle), even customers start lapsing after some time. It becomes critical to reach out the customers and strive to increase sales way before they reach stage 3 (the decline zone).
Gartner estimates that 80% of revenue in the future will be from just 20% of your existing customers. Yes, it is true that you need to increase your customer base, but just concentrating on acquiring new customers can turn out to be detriment for you. You might gain quite a few customers, but the ones that already existed might get churned; a situation more or less like filling water into a bucket with holes. It is not only about your customer base, but repeat customers that count. Here is where the Customer Lifetime Value comes in. It shows the total profit a firm can make over time by the contribution of an existing customer.
A 5% increase in customer retention can boost a company’s profitability by 25% – 90%.The fundamental factor in any business is to improve user experience. Keeping the users happy must be your main motive; you can gradually increase sales from them. Don’t give any opportunity for a user to feel unattended. Always render love and care to your customers from the initial stage itself. A laid back approach comes to no good; complaints can be solved but what about the ones that just take off?
Bessemer Venture Partners says an acceptable churn rate annually is in the range of 5% – 7% for a SaaS product. If you are experience more than that, you, my friend, are turning your website into a churn machine.
What should you be doing to to make customers remain loyal to you?
First and foremost know your customers. It might seem basic, but many companies do not know about their users. Research well about them, their browsing behaviour, their location, their timezone, their purchase history etc. You can get 10x growth by just getting organized!
Building a brand image is necessary to establish yourself in the market. 89% customers say that while deciding between two equal products, reputation is a tiebreaker. Prompt customer service, transaction communication and genuine good quality products will escalate your brand image and increase sales.
Let’s list down a few things you can do easily and yet increase sales
Be More Human
Interact with your customers. Let them know there is a human behind those machines and that you genuinely care about them. Don’t make your customers feel you are just doing business. Show them you are there for them if they are facing any issue with your product or service.
Personalized communication plays an important role to target the users effectively. The customers need to be given personal attention, by providing the right solution to increase sales. You need to know your customers well to provide them relevant information and updates. Once you know their interests it becomes easier to communicate normally. Send them newsletters, alerts and notify them if a new product under their interest is on sale. Everyone is fed up of the auto response email; you need to go one step ahead and communicate better.
Shower Your Customers With Love
“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” – John F. Kennedy
Loyalty needs to be rewarded; customers need to feel appreciated. Give them exclusive offers and discounts. Show them that you are grateful to them. This builds a bond which makes it difficult for the customers to abandon you. Treat them like a VIP, give them upgrades, constant reward points and make them feel special. It could be literally anything from giving them treats or gifting them a voucher or send them goodies with your brand logo or brand name embedded on them! By this you not only show your love, but also promote your brand which indirectly increase sales. Birthday and anniversaries of your customers can be saved and you could help them celebrate with special discounts or offers.
Customers are 5X times likely to choose your brand in the future due to loyalty programmes. The best way to build a bond with your customers is be catch them by surprise. You could probably give them a once in a lifetime experience, like British Airways did. A couple had to postpone their honeymoon as their baby was born sick, so British Airways went ahead and gave them a first class flight ticket and a presidential suite! The more you empathize with your customers, better the ideas you will be able to generate and the customers will love you for that!
Give Them More Than They Ask For
You have already sold your product, but that not a dead end. You can target the existing users by cross selling and upselling your product. By cross selling you sell something that would compliment the product that they already have. For example, once someone buys a flight ticket, they can be promoted to book a room in one of your hotels. Or imagine you were to buy a phone, you can give them an offer for a mobile cover or give a screen guard on a discount.
You could also upsell a product but giving them them a better option, an upgraded version of the product. O put it in a simpler sentence, it is selling the customer an expensive version of something they already have or about to buy. For example once you see that a customer is done with the beginner level of a French course, you could pitch him the advanced level of it.
Feedback and Customer Service
No feedback is bad feedback. So, don’t be afraid to approach your customers because feedback is an essential part in any business. A place where customers can vent out their emotions and a place where you can learn and develop yourself. Constructive feedback is amazing to work yourself up the ladder; a scope for improvement in where are lacking. Most of the times it so happens that you realize your drawbacks through feedback and that’s why feedback is necessary.
86% of consumers are ready to pay more for a good customer experience. Pro active efforts will reflect your keenness to solve the customer’s problems. When the users know that you take their feedback seriously, their will be critical in their approach. Always remember, your customer’s problems are your problems. Be prompt in addressing the issue and treat it as fast as you would treat your problem.
95% of consumers don’t hesitate to share bad experiences they had with a brand with other people! Always remember to accept your fault if there is one. No one likes people denying their mistakes. When you don’t, your customers who were there by your side for years, will disappear. It is not only acceptance, you also have to redeem yourself. Like a famous burger joint promised to give free burgers for a month to a customer because they found an insect in it.
Referrals
Once you have impressed the customers, the appreciation of you product will spread by word of mouth. While all your customers might be happy, a few would voluntarily promote you, others will have to be nudged. Referrals provide that necessary nudge and also a bait to increase sales from the existing customers.
Ask your customers to invite their friends to use your product/ service. Once the users buy something, you can reward your customer with attractive offers. This encourages your customers to introduce your brand to their friends and obtain benefits from it and indirectly increase sales. It is a win win situation where your customer gets discounts and you get your sale (one from your regular customer and from the new customer).
Communicate Better To Increase Sales
You might have an brilliant strategy and your campaign would be ready to be rolled out, but what is the point if you don’t disseminate it well? It might not reach the customers when it should in a timely manner, for all you know might not be able to target them according to their timezone. Now that’s a prospect you just lost. An efficient channel of communication is thus necessary to trigger the right action.
Web push notification is one the best channels, especially to communicate with your customers. It supports multi channel, making it possible to reach the customers no matter what device they are using (desktop, mobile and tab). It is timely and sends notifications according to customer’s local time. It helps to segment the users and to send notifications according to customer behaviour and location. Hence, notifications can be personalized and relevant updates can be sent to the user.
It amazing with user engagement and has a history of increasing sales within weeks. It connects the user to your brand from the first touch point by sending out a welcome notification which can be infused with a newbie discount.
It helps in retargeting customers and attract them back to your website. Cart abandonment can be reminded as users often forget they have saved something for later. You can easily cross sell and upsell your products by easily reaching out to your customers.
Sales promotions can be pushed out to the customer at the apt time so that the customers don’t miss it. Feedbacks can also be taken easily by ‘yes’ or ‘no’ button or you can simply redirect to the feedback page. Communicate better with your customers and increase sales by web push notifications.
These easy ways will increase sales, and you don’t have to spend money to acquire new customers!
