Acquiring a new customer can be extremely expensive and time consuming. From awareness to purchase, the new customer journey is long and difficult. This is why it is so important to keep your existing customers happy and coming back purchase after purchase. While a great product is one way to get return customers, there are many other ways you can stay front of mind for your best customers and encourage them to choose your product over your competitors’.
Send Follow Up Emails
Email marketing is a great way to convert and retain customers. Whether you sell online or in person, when a customer purchases from you, do your best to ask for their email address. You can do this by offering a future discount, ensuring shipping updates or even promise early access to future sales or releases. Once you have their email address in your system, send high-quality, valuable emails that remind your customers how amazing your business and your products are.
Tip: Try adding a call to action at the bottom of the email for your customers to reply with any questions they have. This gives your emails a personal touch and allows your email marketing to also serve as customer service as needed. A customer who can quickly find the answers they are looking for is a happy customer.
Give Bonus Incentives
Giving customers a little bonus incentive to purchase from you again is a great technique to retain customers. You might include a discount code in your product packaging or have a punch card system where they get a free gift after 10 purchases. Either way, rewarding your customers for coming back can make all the difference.
Tip: Add an expiration date to the discount code you give out in your product packaging. If you notice that most of your customers make their second purchase around four months after their first, give your discount code an expiration of 90 days to encourage quicker, more frequent purchases.
Use Retargeting Ads
You might be using digital ads on a platform such as Google or Facebook to reach new customers, but it can also be a great way to encourage your existing customers to repurchase! As you start to gather your customers’ email addresses, you can upload them into an online ad service and create a custom audience. Show these customers ads about new products, special sales or exciting company news! One quick caution – be sure that the ads you are showing your existing customers are valuable. You don’t want to annoy them with overbearing or irrelevant ads.
Tip: As your customer base grows, you can begin to segment this audience even further, making the ads you show them even more relevant and valuable. For example, if you sell Botanie’s white-labeled soap in both bar and liquid form, you can create an audience for current customers who primarily purchase liquid and one for those who primarily purchase bars. You can then show these individuals more relevant information or encourage them to try a product they don’t typically use.
Keep Your Return Customers Happy
Ultimately, new customers become return customers when both the product and experience they receive from your company are high quality. When they are looking for a way to fill the need your product fills, you want to make sure they remember you in a positive light. What is your favorite way to get return customers? Let us know in the comments!