23 Customer Retention Strategies to Keep Your Buyers Coming

"When the customer comes first, the customer will last."- Robert Half.

Imagine you are running a supermarket. One fine day, you get to know that your customers are not coming back to your supermarket after one purchase. In that situation, what would you do? I hope you search for solutions, right? 

No worries; I'm here to help you with this.

First of all, in this scenario, you may offer product discounts or freebies. Furthermore, you can also provide your customers with coupons after every purchase. This will increase your customer's engagement and increase the probability of returning and making another purchase.

Retaining current customers is necessary to repeat business and increase sales. It can be tough to maintain a loyal customer base. There are many reasons why customers may leave, such as poor customer service or a lack of product quality. And it's important to listen to feedback and address any concerns your clients may have.

By focusing on customer satisfaction, you can build a strong and loyal customer base. It increases the probability of retaining customers, which will help your business succeed.

Why is customer retention important in sales?

According to The Times of India, customer retention is crucial because it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Retaining customers can also lead to increased customer lifetime value (CLV). CLV is the total amount of money a customer is expected to spend on a business throughout their relationship.

By keeping customers satisfied and engaged, you can increase CLV and generate more revenue over time. This is because loyal customers are more likely to purchase additional products or services and are less likely to switch to a competitor.

Customer retention can also provide valuable feedback for your business. By listening to customer feedback and addressing their concerns, you can find the areas to improve the products or services and enhance the overall customer experience. 

For instance, let’s say you are running a tea shop and providing your customers with an excellent experience in a cost-effective way. Your customers are impressed by the quality of your product, this leads your customers to give word of mouth about your tea shop to their friends and family. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, as well as a competitive advantage in the market.

Customer retention should be a top priority for your business to improve sales performance and achieve long-term success. By focusing on retaining customers, you can reduce costs by reducing your customers' complaints or by keeping things interesting. It increases revenue, builds a strong brand reputation, encourages long-term relationships, and gains valuable feedback.

How do you calculate the customer retention rate?

By calculating customer retention rate you can help your business know how many customers you're keeping over time. This is important because it shows how well your company keeps loyal customers. By analyzing this rate, your business can make better decisions to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Formula for calculating Customer retention rate 

Calculate customer retention rate with this formula: [(E-N)/S] x 100 = CRR

Are you not aware of this formula and how to use it in your business?

One way to calculate customer retention rate is by dividing the number of customers who renew or continue to do business with a company by the total number of customers at the beginning of a given period, then multiplying the result by 100 to get a percentage.

For instance, if a company has 1,000 customers at the start of a year and 900 of them remain loyal by the end of that year, the customer retention rate is 90%.

Let's say a small restaurant wants to know its customer retention rate for the past year. At the beginning of the year, it had 500 customers. By the end of the year, 450 of those customers had returned for a meal.

The restaurant's customer retention rate for that year would be 90%, which indicates that they were able to keep a lot of customers coming back. This metric can help businesses better understand their customer base and make informed decisions about marketing and customer service efforts.

23 ways to retain your customers and coming back for more

Ready to explore the secret ways to retain your prospects and keep them coming back for more?

With a friendly touch, build loyalty that lasts, and leaves your customers wanting more. Let’s dive into detail on how you can do that with a lot of examples.

Frequently ask for feedback

Asking for feedback is important to keep your customers coming back and increase sales. You need to make it easier for your customers to give feedback by using your multiple-channel campaigns platform, such as email, phone, social media, or anything else. Try to ask your customer specific questions about their experience with your product or service.

Respond promptly and take action on your customers' feedback. Use feedback to improve your product or service and show customers that you value their time and opinions. By consistently asking for feedback, you can improve customer retention and increase revenue of your business. Let’s see an example of a brand that asks for feedback after the purchase.

Here you can see how Easybuy collects feedback after the product is purchased. It shows how much they give importance to their customer’s experience. This leads to gaining loyalty among customers and increasing the chances of repeating business. You can also use this tactic in your business to create a loyal customer base.

Provide a personalized customer experience

A personalized customer experience is vital for keeping customers engaged. By understanding the needs and preferences of your customers, you can customize your approach and fulfil the specific requirements and expectations.

Offering an extraordinary experience not only improves customer satisfaction but also builds trust and loyalty. If you value your customers uniqueness, most likely it will lead to repeat business with you. Let’s see an example of how you can provide personalized customer experience.

Here you can see how Grammarly gives personalized assistance by sending a weekly report that helps in knowing the areas to improve and provides the stats with the most used tone.

By doing that it helps the users with a better understanding of their writing skills and it increases the probability of using Grammarly. You can also use these tactics in your business by granting your clients personalized stats of their work and achieve sales efficiency.

Educate your customers

To repeat business operations, most importantly, you need to educate your customers. By providing valuable information and knowledge, you can build trust and loyalty. It leads your customers to come back to you.

For instance, let's say you're selling skincare products. Instead of just selling the products, educate your customers about the importance of a skincare routine, the benefits of using specific ingredients, and how to properly care for their skin.

Let me give you an example of a brand that posts content on its social media magazine page about skincare products.

From the above picture, you can see Allure posts about skin care products on their social media page.This not only helps your customer make informed decisions about the product but also establishes you as an expert in the field. 

When your customers feel empowered and well-informed, they are more likely to stay loyal and continue to engage with you.

Build trust through relationships

Building trust through relationships is crucial for retaining customers and helps increase sales. When customers trust you, they are more likely to continue doing business with you. To do so, you can use customer engagement to increase sales.

Let’s imagine in this way, you're running an automobile industry. One fine day your customers come to your place and plan to buy a car from you. And for that, they are asking about the product details such as quality, price and warranty. In that situation, what you are explaining matters the most.

By giving honest and transparent information about the car. You're more likely to gain trust with your customers. This trust can lead to repeat business and positive word-of-mouth referrals. 

Moreover, by prioritizing relationships and building trust, you can create a loyal customer base who will continue to choose your products or services over your competitors.

Respond to customer issues

Answering customer issues promptly is crucial for maintaining customer loyalty and increasing sales. By addressing customer concerns instantly, you can show your commitment to customer satisfaction.

This proactive approach not only resolves issues efficiently but also builds trust and strengthens relationships with your customers. When customers feel heard and valued, they are more likely to remain loyal and continue purchasing products or services. Let’s see an example to understand this better.

From the above picture, you can see how Zomato responds to their customers gently saying sorry and giving a promise to resolve these issues. Here what you will learn is how to respond to your customer complaints.

Moreover, by responding immediately, you can also stop bad reviews and losing business. So, it's important to respond quickly to customer issues to keep your customers happy and coming back more.

Reward loyal customers

Rewarding your loyal customers is crucial for business success. Offer exclusive discounts, promotions, referral bonuses, and freebies to show appreciation. Implement a loyalty program where your customers can earn points for purchases, redeem discounts or receive free products.

Personalize the rewards by sending thank-you notes or birthday surprises. Engage on social media and host exclusive events. By rewarding promoters and loyal customers, you can build strong relationships, increase sales engagement activities and receive a  positive reputation. Let’s see how Starbucks offers loyalty programs to their customers.

Here you can see how Starbucks conducts a loyalty program and affords their customers with stars after the purchase of any drink in their place. And reward them with free coffee from their collected stars.

Keep things interesting

Keeping things interesting and exciting is crucial for retaining customers, encouraging repeat business, and boosting sales and revenue. When customers are engaged and entertained, they are more likely to stay loyal and continue purchasing from a business.

For instance, an online store that frequently offers limited-time promotions or exclusive deals can create a sense of urgency, driving sales and increasing revenue.

By constantly attracting your customers, you can thrive and achieve long-term success. Let’s see an example of a shopping brand that provides excellent deals and offers.

Here you can see how Myntra grants their customers spotlight deals and offers. This will lead to an increase in the probability of a purchase.

Always keep your promises

Keeping promises is important because it is the easiest way to impress sales prospects. When you make a promise, you should always try your best to keep it. Promises are like commitments that you make to someone, and breaking them can hurt their trust in you.

Think in this way, You are running a restaurant that guarantees to deliver food within 30 minutes and consistently meets this deadline, your customers will be more likely to order again right?. This leads to repeat business and increased sales. Moreover, satisfied customers are more likely to recommend the company to others, further expanding its customer base.

Keeping your promises shows that you are reliable and trustworthy, and it helps to build strong relationships with your customers and helps you build long-lasting relationships.

Here, you can see how Swiggy promises their customers and makes them feel valued. But before making any promise, it's important to consider that you know you can fulfill their desire.

Send engaging emails to customers

"The more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing."- John Russell.

Sending engaging emails is a great way to keep your customers interested in your business. This can lead to repeat business, increased sales, and higher revenue.

By crafting compelling content and personalized messages, you can capture customers' attention and keep them interested in your products or services.

Engaging emails can include exclusive offers, updates on new products, or informative newsletters that provide value to customers.

This not only strengthens the relationship between businesses and customers but also encourages them to make future purchases. Let’s see an example to understand this better.

Level up your communication game and send engaging emails that make your customers feel special. Here you can see how Canva sends an engaging message to their customers via emails.

You can take a cue from their strategies book and use this in your business to improve sales engagement activities. Now you have some idea about how sending an engaging email can help you in retaining customers.

But the thing is how you can create and manage all emails. Let's discuss this scenario in more detail. While creating or sending a bulk of emails it's imperative to use relevant software.

I am saying this because sending an email is crucial while retaining customers but what if you fail to manage those emails?  Do you have any ideas? No right, no worries I'll explain this, it will lead to reducing the customer retention rate. But how? 

Let’s imagine you have thousands of loyal customers and you have their mail-ids and you are sending emails to them every week but on different days. One day you send the same email to the same customer repetitively.

This will impact your customers' time and your time. When Zixflow enters the chat it has an email campaign where you can create a bulk of mail by using their email template. While creating templates you do not need to worry about content because Zixflow has an AI feature that will generate email copy for you within a few clicks.

Moreover, Zixflow allows you to build or customize your email template. For instance, While creating an email template, you can easily drag and drop headings, add images, include columns and change text color, font, background color and more.

More advantageously, Zixflow automates your email tasks like sending follow-up emails and notification alerts, so you don’t need to worry about managing email tasks and sending regular follow-up emails. It efficiently takes care of all your email tasks. Let's see what Zixflow’s email template looks like

Offer a discount or credit to return

To keep customers coming back, offering discounts or credits can be a great sales engagement strategy. By providing a reduced price or a credit towards future purchases, you can incentivize customers to continue doing business with you. 

Imagine you're running a supermarket and offering a 10% discount on the next purchase to your customers who have previously made a purchase. This not only shows appreciation for their loyalty but also encourages your customers to return and make additional purchases.

By offering such incentives, you can build strong relationships with customers and increase the likelihood of repeat business, ultimately leading to long-term success. Let's give one more example to understand this better.

From the above picture, you can see how Apple offers discounts through its social media channels. By consistently offering discounts or deals it increases the probability of selling more.

Set customer expectations

To boost sales in business, it is crucial to effectively manage customer expectations. All you need to do is communicate the features and benefits of your product or service. And be honest about its limitations to avoid disappointments.

Furthermore, provide accurate information regarding pricing, delivery times, and any potential additional costs. This transparency builds trust and prevents misunderstandings.

Observe the image above and you’ll see how Zixflow excels at offering precise pricing plans for its users. You can adopt this brilliant strategy in your business firm too. By implementing transparency in pricing sections, you can build trust among your customers, and ultimately boost sales. 

Moreover, you need to ensure your customer service team is knowledgeable and responsive, promptly addressing and resolving any inquiries or concerns of your customers. By consistently delivering on your promises and exceeding expectations whenever possible.

By setting realistic and transparent expectations, you can establish a loyal customer base and increase sales in your business.

Build a customer profile

Creating a customer profile is crucial for your business to understand your customers better. To build one, start by gathering information such as age, gender, mail IDs, contact numbers and location. 

Then, delve deeper into your customer's interests, hobbies, and lifestyle choices. Next, analyze your customer's purchasing behavior, including their preferred products or services and buying frequency. Additionally, consider your customer's online presence and social media activity.

For example, if you run a parlour, you may find that your customers are mostly women between the ages of 25 and 40 who are interested in makeup and have a moderate income. Once you have this information, you can modify your marketing and sales strategies to better appeal to your target audience.

By building an accurate customer profile you can provide a well designed sales engagement platform to your team to work on customer retention in sales. Through that platform your team can then grant your customers a delightful experience. This will lead to repeat business and boosted sales.

Now you may have questions about how and where I can build a customer profile. The answer is Zixflow. I am saying this because it has a dashboard with extremely customizable features where you can add or create a ton of people’s contact information in a single dashboard.

Moreover, you can filter and sort your customer's database easily and quickly. By filtering and sorting your customer’s data you can get to know the stages of where your customers are in and find out the areas to improve and get analytics. Let me give you a picture of Zixflow’s people management dashboard.

Offer a referral program

A referral program is a great way to reward your customers for spreading the word about your business. To offer a referral program, start by creating a simple and clear program that outlines the benefits for both the referrer and the referred customer.

Make it easy for your customers to participate by providing referral codes or links to share. For example, you can use an invitation maker app to create attractive invites and encourage customers to invite friends and family to your business to earn rewards like bonuses, gift cards, exclusive merchandise, and other incentives.

Offer attractive incentives, such as discounts or freebies, to encourage your customers to refer others. Track and reward successful referrals promptly.

Moreover, promote your referral program through various channels, such as social media or email, to maximize its reach and effectiveness. Let’s see an example of a brand that offers an excellent referral program.

Encourage your customers to invite their friends and family to your business and reward them with bonuses or incentives.

Here you can see how Uber provides excellent referral opportunities to their customers to invite their friends and family. By doing so Uber encourages their customers to ride more with them. It increases the probability of a ride that leads into more sales.

Empower customers with convenience

Are you looking for ways to make your customers feel empowered and increase your sales?

Well, let me tell you, convenience is key! By providing easy and hassle-free experiences to your customers, you can make them feel valued and appreciated.

This can be achieved through various means, such as offering online ordering, providing multiple payment options, and having a user-friendly website. By doing so, you can create a loyal customer base, attract new ones and improve the sales process.

Let me give you an example. Picture this: You own a grocery store, and you've noticed that your customers often struggle to find certain products. How about creating a user-friendly app that helps your customers locate items in your store effortlessly?

This simple solution will make your customer's shopping experience a breeze, and they'll keep coming back for more. Remember, convenience is the key to winning over customers and driving sales!

Find ways to delight your customers consistently

Finding ways to consistently please your customers is important for keeping them loyal to your business. By going above and beyond to surpass your clients expectations, you can make a lasting impact that keeps your customers coming back. When your customers feel valued and appreciated, they are more likely to stay loyal to your brand.

This not only helps retain customers but also generates positive word-of-mouth referrals, attracting new customers. Therefore, consistently finding ways to please your customers is a strong strategy for ensuring long-term success in sales.

Looking at the picture above, it is evident that KFC enchants its customers by replying to their messages with pleasant words.

By delivering delightful responses to your customers you can earn their loyalty. This will superiorly increase the probability of sale.

Deliver real-time customer engagement

To engage customers in real-time, you can use various methods. One way is to provide quick responses to customer inquiries through social media or chatbots.

Another way is to personalize the customer experience by using data to modify recommendations and offers. By the way, you can also use real-time analytics to monitor customer behavior and adjust customer strategies accordingly.

It's important to prioritize customer needs and preferences to create a positive experience. By delivering real-time customer engagement, you can build stronger relationships and increase sales through social media, leading to increased loyalty.

Take a look at the picture above and see how Zixflow enables you to engage with your customers through email, SMS, and WhatsApp. When you connect with your customers through these channels, you establish reliable relationships and gain insights into their needs and preferences.

Customer surveys

Customer surveys are a valuable tool for your business to retain customers. By gathering feedback, you can gain insights into your customers needs and preferences.

This information allows you to make necessary improvements to your products or services, ensuring customer satisfaction. Surveys also provide an opportunity for you to address any issues or concerns that your customers may have. And surveys can help you identify loyal customers who are more likely to continue purchasing.

By utilizing customer surveys, you can enhance customer loyalty, improve offerings, and ultimately retain more customers.

Start a customer loyalty program

“Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.” – Chip Bell.

Conduct a loyalty program for your customers to encourage their continued business with you. On this program, try to offer incentives such as discounts, free products, or exclusive access to events. Make sure to communicate the benefits of the program to your customers through various channels, such as email, social media, and in-store reminders.

Collect your customers' data to personalize rewards and track program success. Encourage your customers to sign up for the program by making it easy to join and highlighting the benefits. A loyalty program can increase customer retention and simplify the sales process, making it a valuable investment for your business.

Determine customer lifetime value

CLV inspires you to make better decisions by teaching you to spend less time acquiring your customers at a lower value. It helps you understand the long-term possibilities for your customer.

To understand this concept, let's consider a coffee shop. Imagine a loyal customer who visits the shop every day for a year, spending $5 each time. Their CLV would be $1,825 ($5 x 365 days). Now, compare this to a customer who only visits once, spending $10. Their CLV would be $10. Clearly, the first customer is more valuable in the long run.

By understanding CLV, you can make informed decisions about marketing, customer retention, and pricing strategies to maximize profits.

Use omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing allows you to gather and analyze data from multiple channels. By tracking customer interactions and behaviors across different touchpoints, you can gain valuable insights into customer preferences, interests, and buying patterns.

This data can then be used to personalize marketing messages and offers, ensuring that customers receive relevant and targeted communications.

For example, if you're running a mobile accessories store, in this scenario, you can provide multi-channel sales engagement platforms for your customers to browse and purchase products online as well as in-store.

You may also offer personalized recommendations based on previous purchases and send targeted promotions via email, SMS, WhatsApp, and social media. Let’s see an example of a brand that offers excellent customer support via multiple channels.

From the above picture you can witness how Amazon provides multi channel support via email, WhatsApp and SMS. This approach ensures that customers can interact with your brand in various ways. This leads to increased customer engagement and the likelihood of making a purchase.

Zixflow's omnichannel campaigns can help you reach your target audience through multiple channels, including email, SMS, and WhatsApp. This means that you can engage with your customers wherever they are. It increases the chances of your customer seeing and responding to your message.

Moreover, Zixflow's omnichannel campaigns can help you create a consistent brand experience across all channels, which can improve customer loyalty and trust. More importantly, it provides analysis of those interactions. This can help you optimize your marketing efforts and improve your ROI.

Form a community around your product or service

Try to incorporate lead conversion tactics that will help you get not only new customers but also retain the existing ones.  You can do that simply by creating a community around your product and services. By building a community, you can establish a loyal customer base that will continue to support your business. This can be done through social media, forums, or events.

Try to engage with your customers and encourage them to share their experiences with others. Offer exclusive deals or rewards to members of your community to show your appreciation. Let’s see how Shopify provides a community to their customers.

Building a loyal customer base is crucial for any business, and Shopify makes it easy with its community channel. It engages with its customers via groups, conducts events, and makes separate channels for discussions and blogs. It allows the customer to participate in all their events and discussions which increases the sales. This fosters a sense of community and brand loyalty among business owners running Shopify stores. These store owners leverage the Shopify community support from budding entrepreneurs and creators leading to strong business for Shopify.

By forming a community, you can create a sense of belonging and build a positive relationship with your customers, leading to improved sales engagement and long-term success.

Address customer complaints

When your customer has a complaint, it's important to address it promptly and professionally. First, listen carefully to the customer's concerns and acknowledge their feelings.

Then, apologize for any inconvenience caused and offer a solution to the problem. Try to follow up with your customer to ensure satisfaction and take steps to prevent similar issues from occurring in the future.

Remember addressing customer complaints effectively can turn a negative experience into a positive one and build customer loyalty. Let’s see an example of a brand that carefully deals with customer complaints and use this tactic in your business to resolve all your customer's inquiries gently.

You can observe here how Zomato addresses its customers' issues and provides them with a gentle solution by asking for their order details and contact details. And says we will get a look right away.

It’s a witness how they cared about their customer and valued their time. This is the time for you to observe your customers' issues or concerns and resolve them. By doing so you can build a loyal customer base and keep your customers coming back for more.

Become difficult to replace

It's important to make it hard for customers to leave your business. You can do it by offering unique and valuable products or services. You can establish a strong bond with your customers, making it difficult to switch to competitors.

Think in this way, you own a local bakery shop that specializes in creating customized cakes for special occasions and you are trying to become an irreplaceable brand. For doing that you need to pay attention to detail, such as delicious flavors and personalized designs, to make it the go-to choice for your customers, making it challenging for them to find a similar experience elsewhere.

This can build rapport in sales, lead to repeat business, positive word-of-mouth referrals, improve sales performance, and ultimately help your business grow and succeed.

Ultimately, raise sales and revenue by using right strategies

Smart companies have realized that customer loyalty is the most powerful sales and marketing tool that they have. - Bill Price

The future of your business is waiting; are you ready to seize it?

By focusing on retaining customers, you can build long-term relationships and loyalty, which can result in repeat purchases and higher revenue. Customer retention strategies may include personalized marketing campaigns, excellent customer service, loyalty programs, and regular communication to ensure customer satisfaction.

By prioritizing customer retention, you can maximize your sales potential, generate consistent revenue growth and ultimately impress sales prospects.

We already discussed in detail how we can retain customers by using tactics but before using tactics you have to be very careful about how you can do that in your business operations.

For instance, let's say you're looking to provide multi-channel support to your customer, but the question is: where? Here Zixflow enters the chat; it helps you maintain and provide omnichannel support via email campaigns, WhatsApp campaigns, and SMS campaigns. By using these campaigns, you can easily connect with your customers and increase sales engagement activities.

Moreover, with Zixflow you can easily create and manage your customer's profile like their contact details such as name, mobile number, and mailing address and also you can customize fields as per your requirement.

By maintaining such information you can easily send engaging emails to your customers and it increases the likelihood of customer retention. Still thinking? 

Book a free demo right away with Zixflow and utilize its features and benefits.