Think of customer relationships like a flywheel. It needs effort to kickstart, but once it’s moving, maintaining it becomes simpler. Acquiring new customers demands hard work. After all, first impressions rarely lead to immediate purchases.
But winning them over opens doors to retention marketing. Retention strategies aim to maintain customer happiness, preventing churn while boosting account growth and advocacy. How? By nurturing long-term relationships and helping users in achieving their goals.
This blog will discuss in detail the ins and out of retention marketing for your brand building strategy. So, let’s start.
What is customer retention?
Customer retention involves actions taken by a business to boost repeat customers and amplify the profit gained from each existing customer.
With customer retention strategies, you aim to improve both customer loyalty and the value you get from your current customer base. The goal is to ensure that the hard-earned customers you acquired remain loyal, have positive experiences, and continuously find value in your products.
Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Retention
Both customer acquisition and customer retention play important roles in sustaining and expanding a business. The common mistake many businesses make is assuming that having a great product or service naturally leads to customer retention.
It’s clear that a company needs customers to exist. Initially, you had to acquire a customer base to launch your business. Continuous customer acquisition lets you expand your customer pool, opening doors to more business opportunities.
A customer’s lifetime value (LTV) represents their projected worth throughout their interaction with your company. Consistently loyal customers who repeatedly choose your brand tend to be more valuable than one-time purchasers. A robust customer retention strategy aims to maximize customer LTV by encouraging them to return to your brand time and again.
The benefits of retention marketing (with stats)
Boosted Income
- Around 40% of loyal consumers willingly spend more on a brand they trust, even if cheaper alternatives exist elsewhere.
- Losing a single customer, on average, costs you $243.
- Raising retention rates by 5% can surge profits by 25% to 95%.
Deeper Customer Insights
- 63% of customers are ready to share more data if they receive excellent service.
- By tracking retained customers, you gain deeper insights into their buyer journey.
Simpler Expansion
- 60% of loyal customers spread the word to friends and family.
- Word-of-mouth influences up to 50% of purchases.
- Upselling costs 68% less than acquiring new customers.
The new marketing funnel becomes and Hourglass
Pre-Purchase Stages
The pre-purchase stages of the new marketing funnel are the first 6 stages that a customer goes through before making a purchase.
Engagement Stage: Creating Brand Awareness
“Hey there, brand! Do you resonate with me? Are you someone I’d like to know more about? Could you be part of my future?”
During the engagement stage, cast a broad net to connect with your audience. However, ensure that you are attracting the right audience, not just any audience. This is the only stage not directly tied to specific problems, solutions, or products. The goal here is for potential customers to discover you, have a positive interaction with your brand story, and be open to engaging with you further down the line.
Education Stage: Identifying the Problem
“Wait, there’s a problem?”
In the education stage, your aim is for customers to realize they are facing a problem that needs solving. Content-wise, you are addressing pain points, challenges, or chances to enhance outcomes. Occasionally, you might touch on the solution but not the product itself.
For instance, if the solution is “Marketing Automation,” an education topic might cover a pain point like lacking an efficient lead routing process or provide a basic introduction like “What is Marketing Automation?” or “Signs You Need Marketing Automation.”
Research Stage: Exploring Solutions
“What solutions can help me? What should I consider? What other options are out there?”
Here, the solution still takes precedence over the product. Highlighting key benefits, features, and unique aspects is important. Do this while maintaining a balanced focus that doesn’t center solely on the product. This stage also involves reaffirming the value and necessity of the solution – answering, “Why do I need this solution more than I initially thought?”
Evaluation Stage: Assessing Needs Satisfaction
“Does this product solve my problems and fulfill my specific needs and requirements?”
From this stage onward, the spotlight is on the product or service itself. Now you dive into value propositions, features, technical specifications, use cases, and the mechanics of how it operates.
This could be the product section on your website, a trial period, or even a concise document for a trade show. After conducting research, customers usually have an internal checklist of essential aspects they are looking for in a solution. Your role as a marketer is to comprehend these checklist items for different customer types and ensure they are all satisfactorily addressed.
Justification Stage: Providing Reasons & Gaining Internal Support
“Why do I truly need this now? What sets this apart from alternatives? How can I persuade my boss and colleagues?”
If a significant number of your leads aren’t converting into opportunities or the opportunities aren’t moving forward, the justification stage becomes pivotal. This is where ROI, unique features, social proof, and showcasing brand strength come into play.
Often, objections like “It’s not a priority right now” arise here, indicating a lack of urgency due to unquantified value. Internal buy-in is a cornerstone of this stage and the entire journey. Prospective customers might be convinced, but unless their superiors and other internal influencers are on board, the deal might not close.
Did you know?
In a B2B purchasing decision, there can be 7-20 individuals involved.
Purchase Stage: Transaction and Transition Considerations
“How can I obtain it? How challenging will it be to implement and change my current process?”
This stage is a significant one and often underestimated. As we approach the point of purchase, new questions, concerns, objections, and obstacles can arise as the possibility of purchase becomes more real. The fear of the perceived costs and challenges of change can be a substantial barrier that might even break the deal. Sticking with the status quo might seem safer than championing a major change that carries the risk of high costs or failure.
For instance, switching marketing automation or CRM systems could be a monumental shift for many companies, demanding significant time, energy, and resources. To overcome this hurdle, customers need assurance in their ability to facilitate a smooth transition.
Post-Purchase Stages: Customer Journey After Purchase
The post-purchase stages of the new marketing funnel are the stages that a customer goes through after making a purchase.
Adoption Stage: Introduction and Implementation
“How can I successfully adopt, receive training, and start benefiting quickly?”
When a new customer comes on board, it’s paramount that they swiftly get up and running to experience value. If you have promised a seamless transition during the purchase stage, it’s time to fulfill that commitment. A challenging beginning might lead customers to doubt their decision and even result in churn if the adoption process is cumbersome or prolonged.
Examples of support at this stage include product documentation, how-to guides, tutorials, training materials, success checklists, and kick-off meetings.
Customer success teams are essential as they closely collaborate with internal customer champions to ensure a smooth learning curve and ongoing prioritization of the solution.
Retention Stage: Satisfaction & Achievement
“Is the brand invested in my success? Am I experiencing value enhancements? Can I envision a long-term partnership? Why do I appreciate being the brand’s customer?”
First and foremost, your priority is to ensure that customers are achieving success and reaching their objectives with your product/service. It’s essential to convey this success internally and maintain a consistent sense of care.
Authenticity is key – customers should genuinely feel your dedication to their success. Educational content, best practices, tips, product updates, insights into your vision and roadmap, certification programs, and customer community initiatives all fall within this stage.
By delivering substantial value and demonstrating unwavering customer care (with no hidden agendas), you can lay the foundation for customers to reciprocate in the expansion and advocacy stages. What you sow now, you shall reap later.
Expansion Stage: Upgrades, Cross-selling
“What additional benefits can I gain from the brand? What other challenges can you help me address?”
Having succeeded in every preceding stage, you have earned the trust of your customers. Now, they are ready for conversations about upgrades or cross-selling opportunities, which might involve add-ons, enhancements, more users, alternate products/services, and so forth.
If you have truly excelled in prior stages, your customers will instinctively turn to you when facing challenges, seeking solutions before considering competitors. From a marketing concepts perspective, your role is to make these expansion opportunities easily discoverable for customers. You need to be ready to address their inquiries and clearly communicate the value they stand to gain from such expansions.
Advocacy Stage: Devotion & Endorsement
“What can I contribute to support the brand?”
Advocacy marks the pinnacle of the customer journey. A Brand Advocate is a customer who speaks positively about a brand or product, sharing favorable word-of-mouth messages with others. These advocates can become powerful promoters, nurturing loyalty and generating referrals both within and beyond their own networks. Their endorsements, testimonials, and eagerness to spread the word can sway numerous individuals. They are the first to volunteer for sales reference calls and contribute to closing deals.
No Conclusion
But your work doesn’t conclude here. As customers transition into brand advocates, your focus shifts towards maintaining their satisfaction, keeping them informed about your company’s trajectory and vision, and identifying opportunities to harness their willingness to assist. Offering special treatment is often a prudent strategy – involving them in advisory boards, granting access to exclusive advocate groups and communities, presenting them with gifts, extending special invitations, showering them with praise, and nurturing a close personal bond.
Customer retention marketing best practices (with examples)
There are many different customer retention marketing best practices, but some of the most useful ones include:
The Start of the Journey: Adoption through Onboarding
The customer journey sets off with adoption, which finds its roots in onboarding.
Customer onboarding holds immense importance as it forms the bedrock of customer relationships and success. Without a method to guide new users into a positive start, you risk losing the initial enthusiasm that led them to join, potentially resulting in customer attrition.
Duolingo’s Retention Strategy
A prime example of effective onboarding can be seen in Duolingo’s approach. They weave their onboarding process into the signup experience, focusing on understanding a user’s underlying motivations.
When users sign up for your product, they are driven by specific objectives. The sooner you grasp these objectives, the quicker you can guide them toward that “aha moment.”
At the signup stage, Duolingo inquires about users’ language learning goals and reasons behind their pursuit. By comprehending users’ motivations and commitment to their goals, Duolingo tailors its approach to engage them authentically.
To adapt this, pinpoint instances where you can extract or deduce users’ goals. Then leverage this insight to highlight essential features or provide relevant content.
Boosting Engagement with Customer Loyalty Programs
For eCommerce brands, customer loyalty programs are a valuable tool to maintain engagement and expand the customer base. An example of this approach is seen in the bracelet company Pura Vida, which cleverly employs various loyalty and rewards tactics to enhance retention.
Pura Vida’s monthly subscription program, the Pura Vida Bracelet Club, takes center stage. Each month, they unveil three exclusive bracelets, but there’s a catch – you need to act swiftly to seize the current month’s offer. This sense of urgency in joining a recurring subscription ensures a steady income flow for Pura Vida.
Pura Vida’s Retention Strategy
But how exactly does this monthly club foster loyalty? Well, it aligns with two key factors that heavily influence brand loyalty: offering gifts and staying up-to-date with the latest offerings. While most loyalty programs concentrate on gifts and deals, going a step further and building a community connection can cultivate even deeper loyalty.
By exceeding expectations and establishing a program that nurtures a sense of belonging through valuable support, insightful content, and interactive participation, brands can go the extra mile. When you invest in building a community that’s more than just about transactions, your brand will create a stronger bond.
Loyalty is a mutual relationship. The more effort you invest in nurturing it, the greater the rewards you will reap in return.
Elevate Engagement with Upgraded Newsletters
If you are not quite ready to introduce entirely new strategies like customer loyalty programs, why not consider giving your email newsletters a boost? These regular emails serve as updates for subscribers and can also keep users engaged.
Take GitHub, for instance. Their newsletter isn’t just about promoting new content with links. They go the extra mile by incorporating an “Ask Us” chatbot section that provides advice without any hidden agendas. By delivering abundant value and insights within the email, GitHub positions itself as a knowledgeable source rather than just a tool.
GitHub’s Approach to Retention
GitHub takes a different angle with their newsletter. They use it to show their community and present fresh use cases that invigorate users by showing novel ways to use the same tool. While the email highlights how the company uses its own product, it also grants readers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the people steering the ship. This personal touch can go a long way in building connections.
Empower Customers with Education, As Shopify Does
If you found the educational element of the GitHub newsletter appealing, then you are in for a treat with these examples from Shopify. Offering resources for customer education, ranging from complementary courses to live workshops and ready-to-use templates, can improve users’ resilience.
In the case of Shopify, they have taken this to heart by providing a wide array of free courses and guides that cover all the essential skills their users might require.
Shopify’s Approach to Retention
Encountering a challenge while using a product? You can head over to a community forum to connect with fellow users who can relate and assist. Need to enhance your skills? Consider delving into the company’s knowledge base or exploring its free courses. As we highlighted earlier, investing in educating your community positions you as a collaborator in their success.
Moreover, by offering resources that aid customers in overcoming obstacles, you not only enhance their experience but also boost the likelihood that they will remain engaged and committed to finding solutions.
Harness the Power of Referral Programs Like Dropbox
While traditional customer loyalty programs might align more with eCommerce brands than software companies, there’s a strategy that can benefit everyone: referral programs. Take Dropbox, for example. They incentivize users by offering free storage space when they invite friends to join their platform.
Illustrating the Dropbox Approach
The brilliance of Dropbox’s approach lies in its “double-sided” referral system. Both the existing user who refers and the new user being referred get rewarded with free space. This approach proved to be a remarkable success. Prior to launching the program, the company was spending significant resources on search engine marketing (SEM) and affiliate marketing, with a cost per acquisition (CPA).
However, after implementing the referral program, the results were transformative. Their daily signups saw a permanent 60% increase, and an impressive 35% of these daily signups originated from referrals. It’s a clear testament to the power of tapping into existing customers to drive new acquisitions.
Smart Upsell Emails: Retain Customers and Boost Revenue
One excellent approach to retaining customers while increasing revenue is through strategic upsell emails. This involves sending timely and personalized upsell offers.
Take Asana, for example. Instead of surprising users with an upsell email, as they approach their account limit, they send a proactive heads-up. This gives users a chance to think about their options before reaching that limit, avoiding any last-minute panic.
Adding a Personal Touch
Personalization is key to successful upsell emails. Let’s look at a great example from Freelancer. The company tailors their upsell recommendation based on the user’s actions. If a user has set up a project but hasn’t hired anyone to complete it, Freelancer suggests their paid “recruiter” service. This approach aligns the upsell with the user’s actions and goals, creating a sense of assistance rather than a hard sell.
By crafting upsell emails that are well-timed and personalized, you can make your customers feel like you are offering a helping hand rather than simply pushing for a sale. This fosters a more positive customer experience while boosting your revenue.
Listening to Improve: User Feedback for Better Retention
Knowing where you are missing the mark with customer expectations is important for making meaningful improvements. That’s why collecting user feedback should be a crucial part of your retention strategy. Take a look at the email example from Scoot; it cleverly combines feedback and win-back efforts.
When Scoot noticed a decline in user activity, they reached out with an email asking how they could enhance the experience. This approach not only helps retain the specific customer but also offers insights into the overall sentiment of users. Consistent feedback patterns can highlight areas that need attention.
Another method for collecting feedback and boosting retention is through customer advisory boards. These groups consist of willing customers who provide ongoing feedback. Regular interactions with these engaged users allow you to align company strategies with customer goals and assure users that their opinions matter.
Why track retention rate marketing efforts?
When you are running a SaaS company or managing an email program, various metrics demand your attention. One of the most vital metrics is retention, even though it’s not always the topic of discussion. Ever wonder why?
At first glance, growth and acquiring new customers might seem more glamorous and exciting. Showing the number of new customers you have gained this month or sharing impressive growth percentages can draw positive attention. However, there’s a limit to what acquisition can achieve.
The challenge with acquisition lies in its expense and time consumption.
Even if you work on reducing your cost-of-acquisition (CAC), there’s always a process to nurture the customer relationship until they are ready to make a purchase.
Now, I’m not saying you should disregard acquisition. But it’s equally important to focus on boosting your retention rates. Generally, keeping an existing customer is more cost-effective than acquiring a new one. In reality, attracting a new customer can cost up to 5 times more than retaining a current one.
Apart from maintaining a consistent monthly income, retained customers also offer significant growth possibilities. Content customers are more receptive to upsells or expanding their accounts over time. Moreover, your most engaged customers are ideal candidates for recommending your business to their peers.
All things considered, focusing on retention rates lead to a more sustainable business model that establishes a trustworthy and profitable rapport with customers.
How to calculate your company’s retention rate?
Understanding retention rates might sound easy, but applying the concept to your data can be a bit challenging sometimes.
If you are running a SaaS company, you will need to choose a specific time frame to consider, like monthly or annually.
Tracking annual retention rates is great for long-term growth analysis, while monthly rates help you monitor progress when you are testing new strategies.
Make sure all the numbers you are using are from the same timeframe.
For instance, it wouldn’t make sense to compare the number of users in a month with the total number of users you have throughout the entire year. Using consistent timeframes for all your data keeps your results accurate.
Here’s the info you will gather from your analytics or business tracking software:
- The total number of customers during the chosen timeframe (like existing accounts and new signups in January)
- How many customers will continue using your service for the next time frame (for example, the accounts billed for February on January 31st)
- If you are unsure about finding customers who will stick around, think of retention rate as the opposite of churn. The number of customers who canceled their accounts in a month tells you the number that stayed.
Once you have your numbers, use this formula to calculate your retention rate percentage:
(Number of customers continuing subscription / Total number of customers) x 100
How do e-commerce or non-recurring billing companies track retention rates?
It might be a bit more complex to find the numbers for your equation, but it’s doable. Measuring retention for an e-commerce business without subscriptions focuses on figuring out what percentage of customers make multiple purchases over at least a year.
Here’s the formula for this equation:
(Recent repeat shoppers / All past shoppers) x 100
For this equation, you need to know:
- How many customers shopped with you between a year and two years
- How many customers from that time range made another purchase in the last six months
Churn will happen … but how often?
After you have learned about a new metric, a common question pops up: what’s a “good” or “bad” number? People often wonder, “What’s a high retention rate?” Although there’s no universal benchmark, you should understand what’s typical for your company and industry.
Let’s stress how important it is to track your progress against yourself.
While you can get insights into how other companies are doing, your main competition is your past performance. Watching your retention rate month after month and year after year is the best way to gauge your progress.
Even the best companies face some customer loss. In the short term, customers might leave because they didn’t realize your company’s value. Over time, they might churn due to ongoing product or customer service issues.
For e-commerce and direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, the average retention rate is around 28%. Some e-commerce brands using a subscription model have even higher rates. For instance, Dollar Shave Club kept 50% of customers at the 12-month mark.
That means if 100 people signed up on the same day, 50 were still subscribed a year later. BarkBox is even more impressive, with 95% of users sticking around each month.
Moving to the SaaS world, the average annual retention rate is 90-95%. At their IPO, HubSpot retained 82.9% of users each month, and Atlassian boasts an impressive 98% user retention.
What can you learn from these retention numbers?
What sets apart the companies that are just doing okay from the ones that are really holding onto their customers? Every company has its own twist on retention, but successful strategies tend to share a few key elements:
Crystal-Clear Company Vision and Customer Understanding: To start, having a clear purpose and knowing your customers inside out is vital. When your brand identity and outlook resonate with your ideal customers, you are on the right track. Building a connection based on shared values and interests can move you beyond competing solely on price.
Creating an Outstanding Experience at Scale: The focus should be on providing an exceptional experience, even as your company grows. This means maintaining the quality of your product or service and ensuring that customer interactions remain positive and memorable.
Tools and Strategy for Engagement: Keeping a close eye on how engaged your customers are and reaching out to them as needed is crucial. This might involve personalized follow-ups, feedback loops, or special offers to keep them invested.
Now, let’s see these elements in action.
Take Everlane as an example. This clothing company has cracked the code on customer retention.
Everlane doesn’t just sell clothes; they have woven a commitment to sustainable fashion and transparent pricing into their core. Their retention strategy starts right from their product selection and pricing tactics. The company has set a goal to eliminate single-use plastics from its supply chain, and they have introduced a line of products made from recycled plastic bottles called “ReNew.”
By taking a firm stand on their beliefs, they are standing out among eco-conscious shoppers who are likely to become devoted fans. This demonstrates how a clear vision and meaningful choices can make a big impact on retaining customers.
Specifics of Everlane’s strategies
They have revolutionized the pricing game by being utterly transparent. Everlane openly discloses where their products are made, their production costs, and the profit they make from each sale. This “radical transparency” not only involves customers in the process but also builds trust by proving the company isn’t trying to overcharge.
Their refreshing approach to pricing also extends to sales. When it comes to discounted items, customers have the power to choose what they pay. They are given three price options, each clearly broken down by cost. This unique method makes customers feel in control and well-informed about their purchase.
Now, let’s shift gears to SaaS or subscription-based e-commerce companies.
For them, holding onto customers relies on creating fantastic experiences on a large scale. Atlassian, for instance, has adopted a self-serve model powered by automation and AI. Here’s how it works:
Empowering Users with Information: Atlassian ensures new users have all the essential info they need. This sets the stage for a smooth experience from the get-go.
Leveraging Automation and AI: They then employ automation and artificial intelligence to assist users as they navigate their products. This kind of support at scale is key to their retention strategy.
Take Jira’s signup process, for example. Atlassian asks users about their roles and objectives. This input enables them to send tailored messages and assistance, making the user feel valued and understood. Collecting insights about users’ goals and challenges, whether right at signup or later, provides valuable context for providing relevant support.
Let’s dive into the practicalities.
In-app messaging is a star player in your retention playbook. Think of guided onboarding and tooltips as your helpful sidekicks that dish out vital info when users need it. This kind of assistance works on the user’s own timeline. If you are running a SaaS gig, this in-app messaging can also be a superhero that swoops into rescue users who might be losing interest.
Don’t limit your retention tactics to just within your app. For e-commerce and SaaS businesses looking to keep users hooked, emails and mobile push notifications should be your trusty allies. Retention emails pack the most punch when they are triggered by user behavior or segments.
Check out Grammarly’s email as an example.
Grammarly noticed a user hadn’t added their browser extension, so they sent a reminder email. The email sells the perks of using Grammarly in your browser and gives a crystal-clear button to add the extension.
But your retention strategy isn’t just about rescuing the disengaged. While those personalized emails and targeted push notifications do wonders for giving a boost to users on the fence, sparking engagement is your secret weapon for preventing churn.
Keep your brand on your users’ radar by sending recurring push notifications. Headspace nails this technique. These friendly nudges make sure your brand colors stay memorable and keep users coming back for more.
Essential Retention Metrics for eCommerce Industry
Repeat customer rate
These are the customers who keep coming back for more, and they are great for your sales because you don’t need to spend bucks to get them back. To figure out this rate, check out what portion of your orders are from people who have purchased from you two or more times.
But don’t just calculate this rate and call it a day. Keep an eye on it over time. Look at how you are doing month after month and year after year. Also, peek into whether this rate differs between different products or groups of customers. This kind of number-crunching helps you figure out where your money’s coming from.
Purchase frequency
This is a close cousin to the repeat customer rate. It tells you, on average, how many times a single customer orders from you in a certain time period. It’s simple to calculate – just divide the total number of orders by the number of unique customers. Use the same time period for both.
Customer lifetime value
This is the big one. It’s not just about how often people order but how much they are worth in the long haul. This is your loyal bunch. When you know what you gain by hanging onto a customer, your retention strategies start making real sense.
So, how do you calculate it? First, find out your average purchase value, how often people buy, average customer value, and how long they typically stick around.
Let’s break down some formulas with an example: Say you made $1,000,000 last year from 10,000 unique customers. That makes your average purchase value $100.
Now, let’s look at how often people are buying. You had 10,000 customers but processed 16,000 orders. That’s an average purchase frequency of 1.6.
With me so far? Good. Now, take those two numbers and work out your customer value. That’s $100 purchase value multiplied by 1.6 frequency, giving you $62.50.
Now, let’s talk about customer lifespan. If the average ecommerce retention rate is 28%, then your annual churn rate is 72%. Crunch the numbers, and your average customer lifespan is about 1.38 years.
Finally, multiply that $62.50 customer value by 1.38 years. Voila! You have got yourself a customer lifetime value of $86.25.
Just remember, keep your time frames the same across all your calculations. If you are looking at May’s revenue, use May’s order numbers too. Keep it all aligned.
Essential Retention Metrics for Marketplaces
Let’s talk about marketplace demand metrics. If you are into e-commerce, this will sound familiar.
Repeat purchase ratio
This is the purchase frequency for buyers. It tells you how often they are coming back for more. To find this ratio, figure out how many customers bought from you more than once.
Now, if your marketplace is into bidding, check out the average number of bids per buyer. When newbies start, they might bid less, but as they gain trust, they bid more. And as they bid more, you will need fewer buyers to connect with each seller.
Keep track of this over time. In the beginning, you might need 100 buyers per seller, but as time goes on, this ratio can drop.
Demand liquidity
This is important because if people are visiting and bidding but not buying, they will get frustrated. To avoid that, figure out what percentage of visits result in actual sales.
Now, let’s switch gears to marketplace supply metrics – this is all about your sellers.
First, check the average number of listings per seller. Just like we track buyers’ repeat purchases, we want to see if sellers are listing products again and again.
Supply liquidity
If sellers are putting up listings but not getting any sales, they might lose interest. So, along with demand liquidity, look at the percentage of listings that actually sell.
And there you have it, marketplace metrics made simple!
Essential Tools to measure customer retention
Let’s look into some tools to help you understand and improve your retention rates. No fluff, just the info you need!
Google Analytics
It might not be the most specialized, but you can use it to track how often users come back to your site. Look into the Loyalty features to see how engaged your users are.
Mode
This tool is about looking into user data. It’s got SQL, Python, and R notebooks, so it’s a bit technical. But if you are into detailed reports and visual exploration, it’s a solid option.
Amplitude
This one’s great for understanding user behavior on your website and mobile platforms. SaaS companies looking to crack the code on what keeps users around should give this a shot. There’s a free plan, but the predictive reports are in the paid version.
Looker
They have got tools for everyone, from easy-to-connect options to super-tailored reports. It’s a toolbox for understanding your data better.
Key Takeaways
- Customer retention is about keeping your existing customers happy and engaged so they keep coming back for more.
- Customer acquisition and customer retention are both important for business success, but customer retention is often more cost-effective.
- There are many benefits to customer retention, including increased revenue, deeper customer insights, and simpler expansion.
- The new marketing funnel is customer-centric and focuses on building relationships with customers over time.
- The post-purchase stages of the customer journey are adoption, retention, expansion, and advocacy.
- The key to customer retention is to deliver value and provide excellent customer service.
- You can use a variety of strategies to retain customers, such as providing personalized experiences, offering discounts and loyalty programs, and collecting feedback.
- It’s important to track your customer retention rates so you can measure the effectiveness of your retention strategies.
- Customer retention is an ongoing process that requires constant attention and effort.
Final words
To boost your retention rates, think about your customers first. Map out their journey, use behavioral data to trigger the marketing mix across different channels, and you are on your way to better retention.