Conventional advice says it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than retain a current one. Yet companies often invest more time and energy into gaining new customers instead of keeping the ones they have.
This strategy is unsustainable for companies in the long-term. An influx of new customers is always great, but if they don’t stick around for very long that means you’ve created an inferior product or service, or that the competition is stealing them away from you faster than you can count your cash.
Here’s three painless ways to improve your post-sale customer engagement without breaking the bank.
1. Use Chatbots
People love immediate answers. That’s why chatbots like ManyChat and others are exploding in popularity, providing everything from basic question answering to tech support. Chatbots provide the second highest ROI, hovering around 400%. The only marketing communication strategy that out ranks chatbots are emails, which can deliver up to 4,000% ROI!
Chatbots are an easy and inexpensive to way to provide 24/7 service to customers without having to hire additional staff. 80% of businesses love them, and as the AI continues to improve customers might not even realize that they are talking to a bot.
Facebook Messenger is the easiest place to begin using your chatbots, and you can build one for free. By linking your chatbot to Messenger, you can also include it on your website and have a way to talk to customers anytime. Other companies like Intercomm and Drift also provide chatbots.
2. Provide a detailed on-boarding email sequence
Onboarding can be a pain. Getting everyone together for a demo call or meeting can be difficult and finding a good time to schedule the call can create even more emails. To delight customers post-purchase, create an email sequence that provides vital information in small, digestible sizes.
For example, you could set up an initial “Welcome” email that goes out once a new client signs up for your service. Then you should send short, embedded video tutorials that only cover one topic every three days. Finally, after sending a handful of tutorials, send an email that schedules an in-person meeting.
Sending these emails one-by-one allows for human error and could results in an email falling through the cracks. Rather, you could use an email-based productivity application like Mixmax that will automatically send the emails based on rules. For example, you can create a rule that would trigger a series of curated emails when an opportunity is set to closed/won in your CRM.
3. Follow-up with a feedback request
According to a joint study by review site G2 Crowd and Heinz Marketing, 92% of B2B buyers are more likely to make a purchase after reading positive reviews. Reviews do double-duty. Not only do reviews show your customer you care, they also help attract new customers to your products and services.
Build campaigns that actively ask for reviews either directly to your site or on popular websites like Facebook, Yelp or others. The timing of the ask is important. Don’t ask your customer for a review until they’ve been using your product or service for at least a few weeks.
Wrapping It Up
By focusing on customer retention as much as customer acquisition, you’ll be joining the 18% of organizations that fret more over current customers than getting new ones.
Loyalty is king. 89% of companies see customer experience as a critical driver of loyalty.
By focusing on delighting customers after the sales, you’ll turn your happy customers into stark raving advocates for your products or services. Referrals are the biggest driver of small businesses nationwide, and you’ll be enjoying a healthier bottom line in no time.
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