How well do you look after your existing clients?
The principles of client retention remain the same, but how can we use marketing automation to improve client loyalty and retention?
Here are five ways to do exactly that:
Make the perfect first impression
Whatever your first interaction with a new client, make sure it counts.
The simplest example would be a ‘welcome’ email. When a new contact has signed up for your emails, say thank you. Welcome emails have big open rates. And while you have a captive audience, why not plug a special offer? It’s an effective way to turn a subscriber into a client.
Create a lead nurturing process
People buy from you when they know and trust you.
Imagine you’re a business offering a free trial for your product or service. During the free trial, you can use marketing automation to turn trialists into paying clients. Do this by sharing valuable information that maximises their experience.
One method would be through an email series. You can design each email to keep your customers in the sales pipeline, helping to maximise their experience and combat potential objections to the sale.
Another marketing automation technique is through triggered communications. When someone is hovering over the package options page of your website, reach out to them. You can set up automated triggers to send an email or open a live chat window. Plus, you can personalise your messaging around information on packages and prices.
The stronger your relationship from the start, the better the connection. And with stronger connections, comes increased customer loyalty and retention!
Onboarding Automation Process
Onboarding is a process designed to familiarise a new client with you and your product or service.
From the moment they sign up or buy, the process should begin. Think about what steps your clients will need to take to become a returning happy client. Once you know those steps, you can guide them through your with your onboarding campaign.
As well as improving long-term retention, onboarding can help achieve short-term goals, too. Many companies offer free cancellation periods or free returns policies. So you might wish to focus on an onboarding process that minimises returns and cancellations.
Amazon does this with their Amazon Prime 30-day free trial. In their welcome email, they provide a breakdown of all the services customers can access. A customer may have trialed Amazon Prime to access one benefit, let’s say ‘free one-day delivery on books’. But after reading the email, they soon realise that membership entitles them to so much more.
Amazon, as you’d expect, do this incredibly well. And, if they notice you’ve not used one of their Amazon Prime services yet, you will trigger an email to let you know, with the subject line:
You have an unused Prime membership benefit
For Amazon, encouraging customers to use all of their benefits is important. It gives them the best chance of retaining customers after the trial period.
Onboarding can be a powerful process. So outline the steps clients take when first signing up or making their first purchase and use that as your guide.
Trigger Campaigns
Left something in your basket?
We’ve all had this email when we’ve not followed through with a purchase. And the abandoned cart campaign isn’t something new, particularly in the world of e-commerce.
The truth is, cart abandonment campaigns work. And that’s why so many businesses use them. Customers don’t always abandon carts because of pricing or delivery costs. Sometimes customers are simply distracted or forget, so they appreciate the reminder.
As well as cart abandonment campaigns, you might want to promote products or services related to their purchase. If you offer different packages of your service, then you could upsell more premium packages to already loyal clients.
Remember: Making your communications feel human improves connection and customer loyalty.
Stay Connected
Stay connected with your clients, but do not bombard them with communications. Map out your communications plan and consider how often you’re contacting them.
And don’t forget your messaging. Talk to your audience about things they’re interested in and find valuable.
Email marketing can be an ideal way of keeping in regular contact. Think about the copy you use. Promotions and offers are good, but non-sales messaging can build connections, too.
One way could be by asking customers to complete surveys. You can then tailor future communications around their feedback. For example, an e-commerce business might ask clients for feedback on their satisfaction of delivery times. And they could use the feedback as insight to launch a campaign.
The messaging could read something like this:
We listen to you. And in our recent customer survey, you told us we need to be quicker. So we’ve changed our 2-day delivery to one day, at no extra cost.
The best connections are often personal. So look at the data you have about your clients. When is it their birthday? Where are they located? How long have they been a client? It’s all readily available insight to drive personalised and targeted campaigns.
Get in touch with us
Here at Airbase, we take pride in helping our clients maximise their customer retention strategy. So get in touch today to set up a free consultation.
