There is huge profit to be made if you can get your product to stick with customers and get your monthly revenue set up to grow exponentially. The actual number of customers companies maintain does not indicate an easy path to profit. Within a week, over 70% of all users that have signed up for a product (even free trials) fall off and don’t return. Valuing customer loyalty and implementing effective customer retention strategies is key.
On average, a loyal customer is worth 10x their first purchase. As a result, just a 5% increase in customer retention can boost company profitability by 50%. It’s extremely expensive to get potential leads to your site and convert them and you don’t want to be spending over and over again just to retain the same level of customers. If you nail customer retention, you will secure recurring profits.
Here are 7 strategies to boost customer loyalty:
Focus on word of mouth acquisition.
Huge success stories like Hubspot and Netflix generate over 70-80% of new customers through word of mouth. However, knowing how users make purchasing decisions online, this makes a lot of sense. Customers are 92% more likely to trust their peers over advertising when it comes to making an actual purchasing decision. Paying extra attention to word of mouth and influencer marketing can be one of your most effective avenues.
How can you do this online?
You want to figure out how to build credibility and long term loyalty from customers. Hubspot has done a great job at creating a huge base of shareable content that anyone can benefit from, not just customers. Their content is shared frequently. It makes them look authoritative in marketing and sales helps keep customers hooked to not just their product but their brand. Create content that is easy to share and valuable information for your target audience and their peers. Netflix takes advantage of user generated reviews and content to get other potential customers excited about new shows. Using little ways to build customer loyalty and trust like providing them with useful information and leveraging positive opinions about them is key.
Improve user onboarding both on your site/app and off.
So you got users far enough to convert from lead on your site to customer. How you introduce and guide them into using your product or site can make a huge difference in how long they continue to pay to use your product. Onboarding is where you need to show users how to work your product into their processes and immediately start benefiting from the value. If they don’t see the value within the first few days, they will bounce and return to what they were doing before or find an alternative. Onboarding isn’t just for SaaS, onboarding for e-commerce and blog sites is important too. The way users initially bond with your site and interact with your brand can all be optimized to maximize customer loyalty.
Here are a couple of ways you can improve your onboarding process to boost customer loyalty.
Add social elements to your onboarding process:
The more of a community you build on your product, the more likely users are to return. Have new users invite team members to work with, etc. to give them a reason to come back and build more of a commitment. If you’re a e-commerce site, repost user content and reward users for inviting others to join.
Use clear CTAs throughout the process:
You want there to be a actionable way forward for users to get used to using your product. Make sure that CTAs are clear and actionable. For example, in Hibox, users are prompted to create a profile complete with uploaded picture, invite other users via email, set up chat streams, and begin with creating a task. They have already explored a few actionable features throughout the onboarding process rather than being thrown into a complex product. Don’t have users bounce immediately after landing on one blog post, make more interesting content available through clear CTAs.
Add a progress bar or check list:
Showing a clear end is a great way to keep users moving through the whole onboarding process. Our brain naturally want to complete the sequence and you have them engaged to introduce the most valuable features.
Read the rest of our tips on how to improve your user onboarding process.
Let customers know that you care about their needs and value loyalty.
On average, 68% of customers who leave a company for a competitor do so because they feel the company doesn’t care about them or serving their needs. Going the extra mile to boost customer loyalty and show customers that you are working to bring them what they want in terms of product and service is the key to making sure your customers don’t end up in that 68%. It doesn’t have to be an exhaustive effort either. A couple of simple ways to show users that your team cares is to ask for their feedback in convenient places and send them regular updates on the improvements your team is making. You can use a tool like Beamer to announce new updates and features to effectively let users know you’re working to meet their needs. Beamer is an in-app or site newsfeed where you can announce anything to all users in one central place. You can also ask for feedback and gather users’ comments and reactions: it’s more in context than an emailed survey; you’re more likely to get a response.
Update users on improvements and new features effectively.
Informing users of new features and updates is also a great way to bring back users who are on their way to dropping your product. Email is the standard way of doing this but the average open rate is around 20%, if you’re lucky, and mabe 6-8% of customers will click through. Beamer is a great way to reach customers new and returning on your site. Beamer is a interactive newsfeed that sits within your site or app interface that users can open up to see all of your updates from your team. You can update users on new features, new posts, new products, deals, etc. You can also activate push notifications to reach users who have opted in even when they are off your site. Use the Beamer and Zapier integration to post your Beamer updates simultaneously across your social pages and even to your email lists so all customers are updated everywhere. Beamer is great for blogs to update all readers on your content no matter where they may look for updates. This is the easiest and most effective way to boost engagement and communicate with customers to retain them.
Maximize the amount you’re spending to acquire customers and make sure you are keeping them. Shifting some of your time and budget and making just a few changes to improving your customer retention can result in exponential long term profit. Try out a few of these simple strategies to boost engagement and retain customers and try Beamer to boost user engagement 10x today.
