7 Methods For Nurturing Customer Loyalty
Introduction
Loyal customers not only help boost company revenue during peak seasons but can help a business last during difficult times. Developing and applying a successful customer loyalty plan requires communication and discerning consumers’ needs. A key element of business growth is customer loyalty. Repeat buyers are usually the most expected profit source and, in contrast with new customers, have less overhead for a sale. Due to this, creation of a successful approach that attracts and helps keep current customers is a main concern for brands.
Importance of Customer Loyalty
Loyal customers habitually patronize certain brands and seek them despite any inconvenience or should a competitor offer a lower price for a similar item. Having already received a positive shopping experience with a brand, its loyal customers usually shop more often than new clients.
The benefits of customer loyalty include:
- Brand referral from contented customers
- Favorable client response, such as through social media
- More focused marketing for present clients
- Greater insight into customers’ needs
- Understanding how customers purchase
Building Customer Loyalty
Establishing customer loyalty calls for discerning the main points that could help ensure a brand has a successful strategy to generate client loyalty. An effective strategy can assist in keeping present clients and turn prospective buyers into satisfied and loyal customers.
7 Steps to Loyalty
1. Keep connected with clients across various mediums
Let current clients remain in the know regarding new items, special offers, or other important information pertaining to a product or service that shoppers usually connect with the brand. Marketing automation tools such as Marketo and HubSpot allow multichannel conversations and enable consistent contact with potential and current clients within these tools. These platforms natively run a variety of methods for digital communication and integrate with prominent tools used for email, SMS texts, and social media.
2. Get to know your customers
Storing customer data, such as payment and shipping information, helps businesses make it easier for repeat customers to shop and encourages frequent purchases. The more customer information available, the more customized communications businesses can send their customers. For instance, knowing a customer’s birthday allows businesses to send a personalized birthday email with a special offer.
Tools such as Woopra and Adobe can assimilate various sources of information, including sales and customer demographic data, revealing insights into consumer behavior. This information can assist in presenting suitable offers and product suggestions that customers have the likelihood of choosing.
3. Let your customers know you
To earn customer trust, you’ll need to share information about your brand and its team. For example, keep your customers updated on the latest company news. You can also dedicate a webpage to show them the major players of your team. By letting your customers know you, they can see the humanness of your business and feel more at ease buying from you.
4. Encourage and take advantage of client feedback
Successful businesses collect and make use of feedback given by current clients. By sending surveys and requesting reviews, businesses are showing they value their customers’ opinions and insights, and are open to improving the customer experience.
Today’s popular CRM tools are an ideal way for collecting and organizing feedback obtained from customers through social media, surveys, phone calls, and other sources. Through feedback analysis and developing a strategy, businesses will have better insight into what steps they must take to retain these customers.
5. Show customer appreciation with loyalty and referral programs
Even a loyalty program with small rewards can highlight a company’s customer appreciation. Loyalty discounts or special customer promotions can provide easy incentivization to keep customers returning in order to reach a specific discount or goal. Such programs also allow a way for gathering useful information, including recognizing which customers are most valuable and which customers are at risk of taking their patronage elsewhere.
Similar to loyalty programs, referral programs incentivize customers for their interaction with businesses. Customers receive special rewards for referring a company to someone in their network. Not only will this help draw new customers, but it will encourage current customers to keep patronizing a business for these incentives.
6. Keep relevant
To keep their customers engaged, brands should stress their capability to grow in the industry and satisfy their customers’ needs. The changes should be enough to prove the brand keeps current with changing events and evolving needs of customers.
Another way to keep relevant is by engaging with customers through social media, which is a perfect way to build customer relationships. In truth, businesses with no social media presence are deemed by many consumers as irrelevant. An active social media profile on different platforms is a must for remaining relevant to them. Through social media, brands can build a solid virtual community that encourages engagement as they interact with followers and share backstage details about themselves and what they offer.
7. Observe your metrics and check them often
Creating a loyalty program by itself isn’t enough to boost profits or keep repeat buyers. A brand should additionally evaluate and study main data points to measure its success and adjust strategies when necessary.
These are the key measures to observe:
- scores for customer satisfaction/net promoter
- customer lifetime value
- ratio of customers with repeat purchases over a designated time period
- annual revenue derived by loyal and repeat customers in contrast with other customers
- profits based on level of loyalty, if multiple membership levels exist
- number of promotion-related purchases for repeat customers
Conclusion
Building customer loyalty is a key choice for improving sales and reducing marketing costs, in contrast with recruiting new customers. A loyal customer is a satisfied customer. By keeping connected with customers, offering them value, and taking advantage of surveys and reviews, brands can learn the needs of their customers, helping to raise customer satisfaction and loyalty.