No matter the type and the size of your venture, it’s of the utmost importance to secure customer loyalty. This is not something that will require your attention the one moment and you can forget about it the next. Instead, building customer loyalty requires constant work and dedication.
Many businessowners mistakenly believe that once they manage to attract new customers, that’s where their efforts end. However, while attracting new customers is important, being able to retain the ones you already have is even more so.
According to research, repeat customers spend as many as 67% more than new customers. So, knowing that, it becomes quite obvious why any business should ensure that they do – in fact – keep coming back. That being said, here are just some of the top examples how you can ensure customer loyalty and reap all the benefits it will bring.
Offer stellar customer service
For quite some time now there has been a lot of talk regarding the importance of good customer service. But for whatever reasons, not all businesses realize just how key this aspect of customer loyalty really is. According to research, as many as 39% of customers will never return to a brand if they had a bad experience. On top of that, four out of ten customers will tell their friends and family to avoid the business they had a poor experience with.
Knowing that you may start to understand the importance of quality customer service a bit better. The better your customer service is and the more your team is willing to go the extra mile, the more your customers will be likely to do repeat business with you. Not only that, but about 56% of customers will recommend a business to their friends and family if they had a positive experience.
Be present on social media
When running a business in this day and age, not having strong social media presence is simply irresponsible. With about 3.5 billion people present on social media, it’s quite clear that you need to try and penetrate this market as well. Good social media presence will not only bring more attention to your business. Instead, it will also make engaging and communication with your audience far easier.
On top of that, social media platforms can be a great place to showcase various promotions and special deals. Additionally, it will also be the perfect hub to improve not just customer loyalty, but community as well. Aside from all of this, social media presence will enable you to not just encourage but address customer feedback, which is one of the key aspects of good customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Welcome customer feedback
When consumers choose to buy from a business, they’re not only expecting to receive a quality product. They are also expecting the brand to be there for them, in case they’re not entirely satisfied with something. That’s why you should not only welcome but actually encourage customer feedback. Businesses that do actually listen to their customers stand to gain a lot from it, even though not all of them actually realize this potential.
For instance, just like in any other business, ensuring customer satisfaction in the iGaming industry is of the utmost importance. That said, thanks to numerous players managed to right the wrong they felt was done to them. However, it’s important to also mention that this costed the businesses involved quite a bit. So, simply put, to avoid such a scenario where you’d need to compensate a dissatisfied customer – and lose money – make sure you listen to customer feedback and act upon it whenever possible.
Customize your marketing lists
Next on our list are the marketing lists. Now, you may be wondering what they have to do with customer satisfaction and loyalty and the answer is – a lot. Marketing efforts have changed quite a bit in the last decade. Nowadays, business usually take on a more direct approach when interacting with customers. This has led to customers developing almost a personal relationship with brands. As such, customers – and especially repeat customers – expect somewhat of a special treatment when it comes to marketing.
As an example, one of the most common thing customers state as annoying is getting bombarded with ads about a product they’ve just purchased. On top of that, customers also dislike being advertised products they personally have no use for. That’s why any busies that customizes their marketing lists on a regular basis can significantly improve not only their customer satisfaction but loyalty as well.
Create a loyalty program
Needless to say, one of the best ways to ensure customer loyalty is to create a program that will be targeted at just that. The way customer loyalty programs work in most cases is based on a points system. Every time your loyal customers make a purchase, they are awarded a certain number of points. The more points they manage to accumulate, the better the deals they can expect to get.
Of course, this is not the only type of a loyalty program you can decide to go with. You can offer your customers special promotions or discounts, free goods or any other type of exclusive incentive. Since customers also like to have a choice, you can easily offer them multiple options to choose from and have them decide how they want to spend the earned points.
Measure customer lifetime value and repeat purchase rate
Finally, as much as all of the previous points are extremely important to take care of, you also need to ensure that all of your efforts are actually paying off. That’s why you need to measure your customer lifetime value (CLV) as well as the repeat purchase rate. This way you can clearly define if your efforts are bearing fruit.
It’s true that it is more costly to acquire new customers than it is to retain your already-existing ones. However, it doesn’t make much sense to try and retain a customer that simply doesn’t do enough for your business. So, make sure that you’re actually getting enough in return and that your efforts do end up paying off.
In this day and age, ensuring customer loyalty is one of the most important aspects of running a successful business. By following some of these tips, you’ll easily ensure that your customer loyalty is stellar.
