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For Optimal Customer Retention, Establish Clear Marketing Tactics

Bylori

Growth doesn’t require constant hassle, but it does take clarity. Clarity is what makes a finely tuned customer retention system one of the most powerful weapons in your marketing arsenal. To be truly effective, though, that system must be based on focused, high-impact tactics tailored to your customer base. 

Define your goals

Without reasonable customer loyalty targets and the right performance metrics, it’s impossible to tell where you stand. Before you dive into improving your customer retention rate, find out the typical attrition rate for your industry.

Rely on proven systems

Once you know what you’re aiming for, work on establishing integrated systems you can automate without sacrificing personal attention.

  • Tap your local market – As tempting as mass media can seem, a simple local postcard campaign is likely to give you a better ROI and bring in customers with a greater potential for loyalty. Demographics data can help you identify potential new customers, but so can your own customer data. One of the most effective ways to reach a receptive new audience is to send mailings to the neighbors of your recent customers.
  • Stay in touch – Maintaining contact with previous customers gives you an efficient way to increase profits by up-selling, cross-selling, bringing in referrals and generating warm leads. To keep up with your customer base, schedule times to check in by mail and email and stick with that schedule.
  • Wake up dormant customers – There’s a good chance between 25 and 60 percent of your inactive customers would be happy to buy from you if given a nudge. To avoid losing lapsed customers, develop a system for renewing contact with customers you haven’t heard from in six months or more.

Just getting processes in place to cover these three aspects of your marketing can fatten your profits and lighten your workload. Have you worked out clear tactics for getting more customers to stick around? Are you working with an integrated customer retention system or do you feel your efforts are a little disjointed?

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