6 Tiny Tweaks To Enormously Improve Customer Retention

Saying goodbye is never easy. Saying goodbye to customers you’ve worked hard to earn is heartbreaking.

Customer retention is hard, we know.

It can seem fruitless:

Despite your best attempts, loyal customers are slowly slipping out of your grip. You may think you’re doing everything to improve customer retention, but you could be making small mistakes that are pushing customers away.

Here are tiny tweaks that will enormously improve your customer retention.

[Tweet “Saying goodbye is never easy. Saying goodbye to customers you’ve worked hard to earn is heartbreaking.”]

1. Send less emails (and get more response)

Email marketing is a key component of customer retention. Most people think the best way to improve retention is to stay at the forefront of customers’ minds and frequently email them updates and newsletters.

While this is a good idea, its execution isn’t always so great. When it comes to customer retention, timing is key.

Sending too many emails can have the opposite effect and push customers away. How do you know how much is too much? And what can you do about it?

Stop messaging people who aren’t responding. Let time pass before you reach out again so you don’t hurt your brand image by seeming like a bother. Segment your email lists by engagement levels.
Send less frequent emails to customers who aren’t opening or clicking on your emails. If you notice customers who are entirely inactive, try to offer a coupon or incentive to grab their attention and bring them back to your brand.
Divide email lists by engagement so that you’re not sending weekly emails to a customer who hasn’t interacted with you in months.
Whatever you do: Don’t be an annoying email marketer. Email marketing is one of your best chances to boost customer retention, so don’t mess it up.

There’s a fine line between being effective and being a nuisance – make sure you’re not emailing too frequently or making other mistakes that can push customers away.

2. Get the most from your subscribe and unsubscribe landing pages

Email newsletters are fantastic for customer retention. But they don’t matter if you’ve got no one subscribed. Too often, people focus on the CTA’s to sign up, forgetting about what happens after someone clicks that “Subscribe” button.

Do you know how many people you’re losing who forget to confirm their email address? In a post on Startup Workout, Kevin outlines how he increased his newsletter sign-up by almost 20% by tweaking his subscribe landing page.

Tiny changes can enormously impact your numbers.

First impressions matter, but so do last requests. The moment right before your customers choose to unsubscribe from your mailing list is the perfect opportunity to pull out your personality and charm them back into staying. Check your unsubscribe landing page to see if you’re doing everything you can to get your attention.

Groupon’s amazing email unsubscribe page shows the power of a great last request:

[Tweet “First impressions matter, but so do last requests. “]

3. You’ve got to give a little to get a little

Think about how many emails litter your inbox that you overlook simply because you don’t need to do anything and you don’t get anything. People are more likely to engage when they feel an action is required of them.

In contrast, emails that offer you something or ask for something are more likely to grab your attention. There’s two ways to add these tweaks to your own emails: special deals and review requests.

Coupons, discounts, and other rewards are a key way brands try to get customers back to them. When you see a customer is slowly becoming more less engaged, great deals can reel them back in.

However, these customers should be treated with care: give them a deal they can’t refuse. For customers who recently purchased from you, you can also couple your discount offer with a review request to help them remember their past experience. What’s the benefit of this?

Review requests remind customers who you are and the positive experience they recently had with you.
Combined with a coupon incentive to make another purchase, reviews paired with coupons bring shoppers back to purchase more.
This is the start of strong customer retention: bring customers back, get them to buy again.

And it works:

Yotpo data found when stores combined review requests with discounts, conversion rate raised from the industry average of 2% to a whopping 26.83%.

Remember, when you email your customers, always ask something of them or give them something. Check to see the improvement in your response rates, and thank us later.

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4. Gamify your emails to keep them interested

Another incentive that can be used to keep customers engaged is gamification. Gamification is useful both for boosting long-term engagement and strengthening customer loyalty, making it perfect for customer retention.

The reason gamification rocks is because it uses psychological principles to get – and keep – customers hooked.

5. Include social proof to show them what they’re missing

People hate to miss out on things, which is why Instagram-induced jealousy and Facebook FOMO (fear of missing out) have become such big issues in our modern social media obsessed society.

Use social media jealousy to your advantage:

Keep on-the-fence customers loyal by showing them their friends who are using your service or buying your products. Think about Facebook’s page when you try to deactivate your account: they show you photos and names of all the friends who will “miss” you. There’s a reason this is so powerful.

People really, really don’t like to feel like they’re missing out.

For bonus points, integrate gamification social proof. An example of this is by showing photos of friends’ progress in using your app or recent purchases with challenges for customers to start participating.