Seeing your customers unsubscribe, discontinue using your service or stop buying your products is incredibly disheartening. This scenario, though, is an inevitable part of the business. Some of your customers or clie nts may decide to stop doing business with you for whatever reason.
As an entrepreneur, you’ll need to remember that customer retention is crucial for a growing business. Attracting new customers can cost a lot more than retaining one. After all, customer acquisition requires various stages, including identifying people who fit your ideal target market and running a marketing campaign to convince a prospective customer to purchase your product or service. This costs time and money.
If you are losing customers, though, don’t panic. You can take steps to target lost customers and entice them to do business with you again.
Here are a few strategies that can rekindle your relationship with past customers, as well as retain the investment you made in their success:
Come up with a “We Fixed It” Campaign
Customers stop doing business for a reason. If you want to win these people back, you’ll have to determine why they left in the first place.
Some customers jumped ship because they did not feel satisfied with the product or service they were using. Another reason is poor customer service. If you are not sure what exactly caused the breakup, monitor social media and review websites closely.
What’s more, consider asking customers to fill out a survey for feedback. Check for common threads that caused customers to abandon ship and move to a different brand or business. Online platforms, such as SurveyMonkey, will help you create a survey quickly and effectively.
Once you’ve successfully figured out the problem, work to fix it. Once you’ve corrected the problem, spin it into a marketing campaign.
Take Domino’s Pizza as an example. This well-known pizza chain gathered feedback from customers. The company discovered that the audience had a problem with the taste of the pizza. Domino’s Pizza then responded to the comments, corrected the issue and explained the situation to customers. This resulted in “The Pizza Turnaround” campaign that explained how Domino’s Pizza listened to the feedback of pizza-loving customers to produce a better pizza.
Although “The Pizza Turnaround” campaign may be a large-scale example, small and medium-sized businesses can pull off a campaign on a similar scale.
Pick Your Winback Targets Wisely
Take note that not every churned customer is worth pursuing. There’s little point in spending time, money and effort on a lapsed customer if your research shows that they will likely abandon ship again or offer only limited revenue.
A customer success tool is instrumental in figuring out the potential value of a lost customer. If your figures show that the customer never advanced beyond a 20 percent license utilization rate, this could mean any of the following:
They are not likely to return to your store
They complain about your product or service regularly, even when there’s nothing wrong with it
They had low feature adoption
If your data, however, indicates feature adoption and high usage but a particular disruption to service use, you’re more likely to win back the lapsed customer.
Incentivize Customer Return
An excellent way to revive a business relationship is to provide new deals. Tailored messaging that addresses the motivations and interests of your churned customer can entice them to reconsider their decision to abandon ship. You could, for instance, offer access to premium features, free training sessions or webinars, VIP support or discounted subscriptions as a way of luring back customers.
Some online retailers go the extra mile by offering direct discounts on products or services related to past purchases as a way of getting them to do business with you again. Whatever incentives you go with, remember that your goal is to demonstrate increased value.
Use Social Media to Win Back Customers
Create a campaign on social media to address common concerns and complaints. If your customers, for example, are annoyed by the rising prices or a popular item that is constantly out of stock, use the feedback provided to make amends. You could, for instance, launch a customer appreciation day that provides customers with a special coupon.
Alternatively, you could run a poll for a product that you’ll bring back. Tim Hortons, a popular global coffee chain, launched the “Bring It Back Campaign.” The company gave fans on social media a list of treats that are no longer on the current menu. It then asked the audience to pick one item to bring back.
Don’t let churned customers prevent you from achieving business success. Implement these strategies to convince people to keep using your products and services.
