Did you know that existing customers spend 67% more than new ones and it is 10 times more expensive to market to new customers than to keep old ones? Here are 5 ways to gain loyalty from your customers.
Let’s analyse this statement for a moment. We all have our favourite restaurants, clothing stores and grocery outlets but how did they become our favourite? Why do we choose to spend our hard earned cash at these stores instead of the many others available to us? Here are some ways that they might use to gain your loyalty and which you can use to gain loyalty from your customers:
1. Communicate with customers
It’s important to stay in touch with your customers. Whether you choose to send an email newsletter, a birthday message, a reminder SMS for their next appointment or service, a holiday greeting card or advertise a special, it’s important to ensure that you reach out to the customers you already have. Getting your customers to provide their email address or cell phone number can be easy if you offer the right incentives. Remember, not all communication with your customers need to necessarily be advertising your products. Sometimes sharing a blog article, a community notice or any other relevant information can be nice ways to keep you in their memories and keep them coming back to you. A Loyalty App and Merchant Console is a great way of keeping all of your customer data in a secure place. Look for an app with Push Notification functionality for you to be able to send communication to all your customers all at once.
2. Provide great customer service
Good customer service means going the extra mile for your customers. A positive customer experience will generate repeat business and word-of-mouth advertising for your business. Pay attention to customer concerns and complaints and resolve their issues quickly and efficiently. Remember, only a handful of customers will actually take the time to complain, the rest will just simply not return so make sure you or your staff are treating every customer well and that you have a way for customers to communicate if their service was not up to par.
3. Build employee loyalty
Loyalty starts at the top and works its way throughout the company. If you’re passionate about your business, you’ll earn your employees’ respect and ignite passion in them as well. If you have integrity in all of your dealings, your employees will be proud to work for and with you. If you’re consistent in your decisions and actions and display a willingness to protect your employees, you’ll earn their trust. Loyal employees are your best brand ambassadors and will treat your customers like gold. Customers are often loyal to the employees in a business so ensuring that your staff stick with you can be vital to your success.
4. Provide customer incentives
Give your customers a reason to return to your business by giving them an incentive. Set up the reward to suit your business e.g. buy two and get one free, frequent shopper points, adding a free item to the sale and discounts on their purchases etc. These will entice customers to choose your business over others when they decide to spend their hard-earned cash. Your incentives could even be set up to promote the items you wish to get off your shelves or increase revenues on items that turn bigger profits.
5. Address customers by name
Make sure that you and your employees get to know the names of regular customers. This kind of treatment makes people feel important and respected, and is one of the reasons they’ll return to your business. If you send out communication, it is also important to address customers by name. This sends the message that they are special and encourages a higher click-thru or read rate.
Did you know that WAPPoint gives their customers R200 referral fee for each successful sign-up?
