These stats are not small potatoes. You probably realize that, and you may have already taken steps in your marketing to maximize retention at your company. But if you haven’t rethought your entire marketing strategy (and maybe even your business model), you’re probably still losing clients that could be saved. Luckily, it’s not too late to make a change! Here are three ways to completely rethink your retention marketing and save your team time, money, and stress. 1. Reallocate your resources. Don’t just talk the retention talk — walk the walk! In order to truly change your company’s ways, you need to invest in retention and reallocate your resources. Here are just a few ways to do that. • Provide additional training for your team on customer service. Import- ant points to emphasize for retention (per Forbes magazine) include frequent and friendly customer communication, transparency, listening, and relationship-building. • Create a fund for customer perks and gifts. Celebrate your clients! When someone has a baby or you hear they’re going through a difficult time, send a gift or card to show you’re thinking of them. These gifts cost resources, but as Newswire reports, multiple studies show cus- tomer gifts increase retention. • Invest in retention tools. Staying in touch with your customers is the best way to keep them happy and remind them that you care. You can stay on top of this by doing the hard work of reaching out personal- ly each month, but it’s easier and more efficient to invest in recurring communications like automated weekly emails and regularly printed newsletters. 2. Make personalization possible. In order to retain customers, you must build quality relationships with them. This starts with knowing who they are, what they need, and how they interact with your company and your marketing. To figure out those key points, you have to gather and interpret a lot of data, both online and off. You can do some of this data-gathering and calculating yourself (for exam- ple, you might consider calculating the lifetime value or “LTV” of each client), but hiring a third-party data analytics company will help you take your reten- tion marketing to the next level. SAS, Alteryx, Kissmetrics, and InsightSquared are great options for small-business owners. 3. Hire (or create) a retention expert. If you truly want to maximize your retention, you need to make it an integral part of your team’s marketing approach. As RetentionScience.com puts it, “Retention marketing is a full-time endeavor and should be treated as such. This means getting buy-in from the top down because it has to be a priority for the business, not just your marketing department.” Investing in specialized training for your team is one way to do this. But you can also hire a retention expert or shift one of your existing team mem- bers’ roles to focus exclusively on managing and retaining clients. Yes, hiring is expensive, but remember: Increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profits by as much as 95%. That new team member will pay for themselves in no time! These three retention marketing mindset shifts will be game-changers for your company. You can start with one of them or dive into all three, whatever feels right for you. It won’t be long before you see the difference in your bottom line.
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