Top 5 Customer Experience Marketing Strategies to Boost Customer Loyalty
Are you struggling to improve customer loyalty?
If so then this article is going to discuss five strategies to increase customer loyalty and retention.
So without further ado, let's dive in.
Customer loyalty is more important for any kind and size of business. Loyal customers are more likely to recommend your business to other customers.
Besides, loyal customers spend up to 67% more than new ones. Plus gaining new customers is 10X more costly than retaining the existing ones.
If you're looking for ways to increase customer loyalty, then we're going to teach you some practical strategies that will help you achieve that.
But before that, let's understand a few things first.
What is customer loyalty?
Before we talk about the strategies to increase boost customer loyalty, what's the meaning of customer loyalty?
Customer loyalty is the lasting relationship between a brand and its customers that's manifested by the willingness of customers to engage with and purchase a brand's products instead of those of the competitors.
In short, customer loyalty is how customers continue purchasing from a brand for a long period.
According to Johansen Lindsay, who is the author of college-paper.org reviews, customer loyalty can be enhanced by the price, benefits, and rewards customers get from a brand.
How to evaluate customer loyalty
Customer loyalty can be measured in many ways. It's not about how customers continue purchasing from a brand or stop doing business with a brand.
Customer loyalty evaluation involves determining the intent behind ongoing purchases, and many other factors.
Some of the best strategies to measure customer loyalty include:
Churn rate
Churn rate is the percentage of customers that terminate their usage of your products or services.
This is one of the practical strategies for measuring customer loyalty by SaaS or subscription businesses.
Repeat purchase rate
As the name suggests, repeat purchase rate or repeat customer rate is the percentage of customers that continue to buy your products or services for a long period. A higher repeat purchase rate percentage shows that a brand has healthy customer relationships with its customers.
You can use this technique to define customer loyalty and come up with strategies to build customer relationships.
For instance, you can determine how and when to create promotional campaigns based on how customers are buying your products or services.
Customer satisfaction levels
Customers are either not satisfied, very satisfied, slightly satisfied, satisfied, or extremely satisfied.
You can measure customer satisfaction levels based on reviews or customer interviews.
Reviews can help determine customer satisfaction levels and other details especially if customers live a detailed comment about the brand's products or services.
Customer surveys let you ask more specific questions that demand more specific answers from customers. Customer interviews provide detailed feedback on a brand's products or services.
With that's let's learn how to boost customer loyalty.
1. Know Which Communication Platform is Right for Your Customers
When it comes to how to increase customer loyalty, you need to determine the best communication channel for your customers.
Remember that staying in touch with your customers frequently makes you stick into their minds and also allows you to communicate important information.
However, not all communication channels and platforms are for all your customers.
Some will prefer communication to be done through email, others through phone calls, while others through social media.
Let's take an in-depth look into each communication channel and platform:
Phone calls
Phone calls are easier, can be faster, and there is no delay in communication. However, customers are more responsive to texts than phone calls and emails.
Still, no business can ignore the power of a good phone call.
Even though automated phone systems are inexpensive, nothing beats the experience customers get when they talk with a highly-trained customer service representative.
Undoubtedly, email is one of the oldest communication channels out there. However, it's still one of the preferred methods of communication by customers. Studies suggest that 83% of consumers around the world prefer email when receiving communication from brands.
Social media
Social media offers customers a great opportunity to connect and engage directly with brands through instant chat messages or calls. This can help brands to understand their customers better.
As you can see, there are many channels and communication platforms out there. However, you don't need them all. You need to choose the best channels for your customers. How you communicate with your customers can help to keep their trust and loyalty.
2. Provide Excellent Customer Service
No matter how great your products or services are, if your customer service sucks, retaining your customers will be like shooting in the dark. To boost customer loyalty, you really need to provide excellent customer service.
Remember that customers make a judgment of your services based on the interaction they get with your customer support representative.
Customers keep score when having different interactions with your brand. For instance, when calling to inquire about your products or services, interacting with your employees, etc. Boosting customer loyalty will depend on how the customer is served during all the interactions.
In a certain survey, 71% of customers said they have terminated their relationship with a company due to poor customer service.
To avoid this, you need to invest in a friendly, helpful, and more efficient customer support team. This means that your customer support team should be accessible and be able to solve customer complaints fast. Your customer support department should also be able to respond to comments, replies, and messages on social media in a timely fashion. Remember that 42% of consumers expect brands to respond to their questions within an hour.
Remember that good customer service isn't only about treating or responding to customers only when they make positive comments. It's about treating both negative and positive comments professionally.
3. Reward Your Customers
The same way you want your customers to appreciate your services is the same way you should reciprocate. After all, customers also want to feel appreciated.
One of the best strategies to improve customer loyalty is to reward your loyal customers.
You can achieve this by creating a loyalty program that helps to reward customers with gifts, discounts, and other bonuses.
Depending on your business or brand, below are some of the common reward programs to help you keep customers coming back to purchase from your business:
Spend program
How the spend program works is simple.
If a customer spends more on your products, you give them more rewards. This program helps to increase customer loyalty and reduce the churn rate.
Point program
This is one of the simplest customer reward programs. With this program, customers earn points on each purchase or transaction they make with your business.
Customers can then convert the accumulated points into some special offering.
Exclusive VIP program
This program is offered by some companies where customers are required to pay a monthly or annual fee to become members to qualify for special discounts and offers. Customers who join the program are the only ones eligible for the offers.
Tiered program
Tiered reward program rewards customers based on their spending abilities. With this type of reward program, all customers are eligible for rewards depending on their spending power.
Having a reward program for your loyal customers enables you to keep them doing business with you for a long time.
4. Pay Attention to Feedback
You're more likely going to overlook your current customer base when focusing on attracting new ones.
Customer reviews can help to build customer loyalty. After all, you're more likely going to purchase from a company with positive reviews than one with negative reviews.
Don't focus solely on the negative or positive side of the reviews though. Ensure you pay attention to what your customers are saying. Each word in a review or comment matters a lot.
Gather as much feedback as possible and act accordingly. You can collect feedback using website surveys or email questionnaires.
5. Offer Different Payment Plans
There are many payment plans or options you can have for your business. However, you need to offer more than one so that customers can use one that's convenient to them.
For instance, some customers prefer to use PayPal while others prefer Stripe or other payment methods.
How Do You Boost Customer Loyalty?
Investing in customer loyalty is key to your business success. How do you get customers to keep on coming back to purchase from your brand for a long period?
Share your tips and strategies in the comment section below.
This guest post was written by Jessica Chapman, a business consultant and online entrepreneur. She is also the founder and owner of essayontime.co.uk, a paper review website based in the UK. Besides, Jessica works with reputable companies and businesses offering consultation services and advises on how to boost customer loyalty.
