Only 34% of marketers report being comfortable with the idea of customer lifetime value, and even those who get it struggle to market across generations
"Know your audience" is Marketing 101, so why do so many marketing leaders miss the mark when appealing to their bases? Even when a brand is successful, it often struggles to maintain that appeal in the long run. Your brand’s customer lifetime value strategy is crucial, no matter what industry you’re in.
Unfortunately, only 34% of marketers report being comfortable with the idea of customer lifetime value, and even those who get it struggle to market across generations. They get lost in the myriad details of the marketing process without realizing it’s an audience’s culture — not one of the countless formulaic solutions that work only on paper — that maintains its loyalty.
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Answering the real questions your customers are asking can form an important part of your customer retention plan.
Customers have questions. You have answers — or so they hope! By leaving any key questions unanswered, you risk:
Your prospects bailing out of your lead generation and sales funnels.
Your customers feeling like you know and care about them, and thus looking to do their business elsewhere.
Your bottom line revenues showing the effects of your customer neglect.
But by discovering these questions and addressing them proactively, you’ll stay one step ahead of your competition.
Now that we’ve established why it’s important to actively discover the top questions being asked — or thought of — by your prospects and customers, let’s dive into how to discover them.
Begin by discovering customer questions
A recent Harvard Business Review article states that acquiring a new customer is anywhere from…
Marketers can expand relationships between existing customers and their brand at a lower cost than attracting new clients
Don’t you just hate it when someone only shows up when they want something? You know the type; the fair-weather friend who is suddenly chummy after weeks of absence because they want to call in a favour. It’s a social etiquette faux pas that can act as an important lesson for marketers because businesses do it too.
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The relationship between a brand and its customers is all too often transactional and stilted, with companies only getting in touch when they want to sell a product. This is a trap that travel marketers should avoid for…
Churn is a growth and revenue killer but it’s not something that occurs when the customer is abandoning you.
It is a customer lifecycle problem, which should be tackled throughout your entire relationships with customers (and even before they start).
In this post, we are going straight to the battlefield and explore low-cost, actionable ways to combat churn and boost the growth of your SaaS business.
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1. Optimize your targeting
If you’re acquiring new customers at a fast pace but aren’t keeping them in the long run, your offer may not be the right solution for the people you’re targeting.
Focus most of your marketing campaigns on your ideal customers - people who apriori look for the benefits that your product is able to give them.
Study…
Learn how to retain the customers you already have
Strategies for winning new customers are always being tried and tested, many without success.
It is much harder to bring in a valuable volume of new customers than to make the most of those you already have. Time and costs increase as you focus on new customer acquisition, when you could be reaping the benefits of your loyal and already engaged existing customer base.
Growing your loyal customer base needs to be a key focus for all businesses looking for measurable ROI they can be proud of. Below we’re looking at three key marketing methods for bolstering customer loyalty and growing your returning customer base.
Be Remembered Through Email Marketing
In 2017, there were 3.7 billion recorded global e-mail users, with forecasts suggesting this will increase to 4.1 billion by 2021. While no one is suggesting you can capture the attention of all these…
Chart of the day: Research shows the power of email marketing to encourage return visits
Much of the insight about how our audiences interact with us online relates to acquisition channels and conversion to sale. So, I was interested to see this research from Ecommerce personalisation platform provider Monetate which shows returning visitor behaviour related to channels.
It prompts us to evaluate returning visitor rates and their impact on sales and how we can influence them through communications using different channels. This curve shows an interesting behavioural trait where most visitors return within a short period of a week or so (if they are going to return), but others do return.
What are the implications? Monetate conclude with this takeaway:
While outreach tactics, such as targeted emails, should be concentrated within that one-week window, there’s plenty of opportunity to re-engage shoppers after that one-week window: Nearly…
Practical customer retention tactics that any business can apply
For any digital marketing strategy or digital communications plan, defining a set of objectives and clear strategy behind your plan is essential to the success. This post focuses on creating an actionable online customer retention plan, which by definition is maintaining or growing your existing customer base loyal to your product offering.
Retention should be at the heart of your digital strategy in maintaining and building communication with your existing customer base. Separate to this post, I’ve also created an outline covering techniques for creating a digital marketing strategy for acquisition.
So, where to start? I advise the same place as for all marketing plans!
Know your audience
Before embarking on your retention strategy, understanding your audience is a key requirement to ensure the chosen retention tactics are in line with your existing customer base – so begin to build up a profile of the type of customer/s that…
Why a focus on the fundamentals of customer retention is essential to business growth
Many marketers are grappling with the challenges posed by fundamental changes in consumer behaviours, increasingly competitive markets and a host of digital technology developments, mobile innovations and social media proliferation.
The good news is that marketers are far better placed to operate in this brave new world than they may think! The fundamentals of customers, brands and marketing have not changed.
However, customers are still the most important asset of any business, so in my view, the number one priority for marketing to acquire and retain customers by creating a compelling value proposition and brand story that resonates with customers.
There is a danger if there is too great a focus on customer acquisition, then businesses spend too insufficient time on managing customer retention. Instead the balance is wrong and they focus too much on acquisition using paid, owned and earned media and insufficient time…
Chart of the Day: Customers around the world chose retailers with loyalty programs over ones which don't.
As this chart from Nielson shows, customers spending decisions are highly likely to be influenced by the presence of a customer loyalty program, with 65% of US and European customers reporting they'd buy from a retailer with a customer loyalty program over one that didn't, all else being equal.
A majority of those surveyed also reported they'd be more likely to continue doing business with a company that has a loyalty program, and on average over 60% said they'd be more likely to shop at online retailers if they provided similar loyalty benefits as in-store retailers.
That said, before you go rushing off to start a customer loyalty program for your online store, there is one caveat. All the survey respondents for this data set were themselves already members of a customer loyalty program. This means they may be predisposed to…
Retention strategy often takes a backseat in marketing efforts, find out what leading global travel brands are doing to combat this.
Performance Horizon and WBR Digital have recently joined forces to publish the Benchmarking Performance Marketing and Digital Strategy in the Travel Industry Report, which we got a sneak preview at. They surveyed a large range of executives representing leading global travel brands back in may to unearth their findings.
The report brought up some interesting results. Email marketing is by far and away the most favoured channel when it comes to customer retention, followed by Social Media, which is used by 63% as their primary driver of customer retention.
Bringing up the rear was Marketplaces and Comparison Shopping Engines with 8% and 11% respectively. This was of interest to me, particularly the lack of…
