Never let your customers go again with retention marketing

Retention marketing – building long-term relationships with your company’s existing customers – should be a regular part of every online marketing strategy. Funnily enough, this is not the case for all companies. However, neglecting retention marketing has major consequences: the customers you have won with a lot of effort, you will lose again in no time. In this blog we explain why retention marketing is so important and how to use it for your business.

Purpose and necessity of customer loyalty 

One of the main goals of online marketing is to get more traffic to your site. You reach consumers with a marketing message, entice them to read more about it and eventually get them to convert. If you succeed in doing so, you are doing well as an online marketer. Generating conversions is vital in online marketing. 

Unfortunately, many overlook the fact that retaining customers is just as important as getting them in the first place. After all, you don’t want customers to make a one-time purchase from you and then make their next purchase from your competitor, right? Research shows that on average, companies lose about 20% of their existing customer base to the competition every year because they don’t invest in building a long-term relationship.

Prevent missed opportunities and focus on retaining existing customers. These are susceptible to your cross- and upselling offers because they already know the products or services you provide. They are also less price sensitive than new consumers, because they already know that your company delivers quality. 

In addition, you have valuable information about this group, which you can effectively use to seduce them into extra conversions. If they have bought a printer from you before, you know exactly which cartridges they need on a regular basis. If they bought running shoes, there is a reasonable chance that they are also interested in running clothing. So existing customers are potentially very valuable for several reasons. You don’t want to let those people walk away, do you?

Retention marketing is the key

So how do you make sure you keep existing customers loyal to you? This is where retention marketing comes in. The goal of retention marketing is to build a long-term relationship between a company and its customers. This leads to a high customer-lift-time-value: the total value a customer provides to a company during their relationship. 

Building a good and long-term relationship with a customer provides a lot more value for a company than a one-time conversion from that customer. Successful retention marketing increases the likelihood that consumers will convert again with you rather than with the competition and leads to a higher number of conversions per customer. In addition, marketing campaigns aimed at existing customers are a lot cheaper than marketing messages aimed at new customers. 

How do you tackle retention marketing? 

The advantages of using retention marketing should be clear by now. But how do you use this effectively for your company? There are several tactics for this, which can also be combined. 

Set up loyalty campaigns

The first possibility is to set up loyalty campaigns. Think of loyalty points that customers receive with every purchase, which can then be exchanged for free products or outings. Discounts for existing customers also promote loyalty. 

Make use of remarketing

The second form of retention marketing is remarketing. You use remarketing to reach people who have shown interest in a product or service, but have not yet converted. This tactic also works to bring your company back to the attention of customers who have already converted. 

You can then show them products or services that fit well with what they have previously purchased from your company. In this way you show the consumer that you understand them and think with them, which is a very important factor in building a lasting and valuable relationship with the customer. 

In short, retention marketing is indispensable for reaching and retaining (converting) customers. Interested in using retention marketing for your company? Get in touch with us!