The pop group ‘Take That’ sang about wanting you ‘back for good’, which should be an anthem for business owners who’ve lost customers. Let’s be honest customer retention is the most important investment any business can make. That’s because the cost of acquiring new customers is six to seven times higher than that of maintaining an existing customer. Once you’ve gone to the trouble (and cost) of gaining a new customer, you’re going to want to hold onto them for dear life.
“It’s 6-7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one.”
Think about it: you’ve already spent your time and money with them, you’ve given them several promotions and you’ve even made an effort to make them feel special and valued. They’ve already bought from you, so you know their purchase preferences and buying habits.
Also since you have access to their direct line (email or phone number), you don’t need to do lead generation anymore. Plus, you can customise your promotional offers to them based on past data. The big thing is that if you’re not reaching out to them, then you’re leaving a lot of money on the table.
However, even the best-laid retention strategies aren’t 100% fool-proof. Sometimes customers slip away and stop responding to prompts from you. When this happens, it’s important to be proactive in your attempt to win them back. Since their dormancy could be for any number of reasons, it’s essential to figure out why they left and what they want from your business.
When you know what they want, you can start targeted marketing campaigns to turn each of those dormant customers not only active again, but sticky as well.
Here are the four steps you need to follow to do it.
Step 1: Identify Your Dormant Customers
Every business is different. Some businesses expect a regular customer to make a purchase every day, while others only expect customers to return once every year. Regardless of your businesses average purchase frequency, you should know when your average customer is likely to shop again. Knowing when a customer has dropped off the radar is critical if you want to re-engage them. If you don’t have this simple first step established, then you won’t be able to take subsequent steps to bring back their business!
Step 2. Know why these customers stopped doing business with you.
Remember these words:-
Know the “why” of inactivity, so you can devise the “how” of your reactivation strategy.
There could be many reasons why they decided to stop doing business with you:-
- Maybe they left because of your product pricing,
- Or is it because they aren’t fans of your current product selection?
- Or did they receive poor service and you don’t know about it!
- Another angle you can look at is the content of your communications – are they too promotional or salesy?
The key here is knowing and getting answers, so you can offer something of value like a free product, or free consultation for their relevant responses.
Step 3: Start a Reactivation Program.
At this stage, you have identified a few groups of ‘old customers’ who have lost engagement with you. Some of them may have been dormant for a long time. If that is so, the win-back rate is pretty low, and only a huge discount might capture their attention. Another idea is to ask if they are still interested in your business. The feeling of an ultimatum, your regret, and a huge discount may convince people to buy again from you. You can improve the odds of a dormant customer revisiting your business by making them feel like a VIP. Offering them a discount that’s not available to all customers will make them feel as if it was designed especially for them, making them feel valued. This type of small touch will go a long way towards making your least engaged customers remember how much they loved your business in the first place.
Tell Them You Want Them Back.
At the end of the day, the best way to get dormant customers to come back to your business is to just come out and say it: “We miss you!” or “We want you back!” Let your dormant customers know that you noticed that they haven’t been engaging much lately and that you’re eager to win their business back.
Step 4 Keeping them once they’re back.
If there’s one thing that will keep them once they’ve come back is a rewards program. Reward programs are a well-known and well-received way to retain customers. In fact, almost 75 percent of consumers would prefer to purchase from a business that offers a loyalty program!
A rewards program is an incredible tool to have in your toolkit because it can encourage customers to both make their first purchase and come back and buy with you again. This is especially true when you keep your program simple and introduce features like VIP tiers and progress bars.
Smart businesses go after their hard-won customers with special discounts, win-back messages, polls to let them know their customer’s needs, mobile engagement, and other methods.
Don’t let your customers slip away – get them buying again by starting on these steps today!
Twelve intensive half-day meetings.
