Despite having many options, customers prefer to go where they feel comfortable. Loyalty and trust are important factors when it comes to a purchasing decision. If businesses want to be successful, they need to keep up with the latest retention strategies.
88% of consumers need to purchase at least three times from a company to become loyal. Loyalty is not as hard as it seems, but it does require consistency and if you don’t have it, you won’t acquire loyal customers.
Let’s not wait any further because in this article, we will dive deeper into learning more about customer loyalty and how to increase it this year.
8 Strategies you can use for increasing customer loyalty this year
Increasing customer loyalty is not as challenging as many may think. Customers only want to be heard and fulfilled. In order to do this, you need to find out what your customers want and need. What triggers their emotions and makes them secure purchasing from your business? We came up with eight strategies you can use to increase customer loyalty this year.
1. Know what motivates your customers
All transactions conducted between a buyer and seller are a reflection of human nature. The psychology behind motivating a consumer to buy is to understand their needs. Here are some factors behind people and how they get motivated to buy:
- Status: Products and services increase social status. This factor depends mostly on luxury brands and ensures that the buyer is feeling secure in all purchases and that the product increases their social status.
- Fulfillment: People will make purchases to fulfill their goals. Helping consumers reach their goals is an excellent way to build loyalty.
- Survival: The product or service you’re offering allows people to meet their needs. Once companies appeal to the needs of consumers, it’ll help them stay engaged.
- Safety: This includes when the buyer is feeling good about a product or service and they’re gaining results from it. Having this type of security allows the customer to be loyal.
Business owners need to always identify what applies to their product or service and understand the reasons behind buying behaviors, creating more effective consumer retention strategies.
2. Write emails with good sign-offs
Email sign-offs are another important part of customer loyalty. Yes, email sign-offs can show appreciation to your customers only by saying a few good words at the end.
In other words, email sign-offs can show the level of personalization you have with your customers. Moreover, here are some of the best email sign offs you can use:
- Best regards: Don’t show a cold approach when you send out your follow-up emails. After a reader sees it, they will feel the personalized approach.
- Yours sincerely: This shows that you are encouraging a long-term collaboration with your customers and have a formal approach to it.
- Kind regards: A classic sign-off and shows that you’re respectful to your recipients.
- Respectfully: Excellent for warming up business leaders and showing a high form of professionalism.
- Much appreciated: A warm way of signing off and showing gratitude towards your customers. An excellent way for making them feel special.
Regardless of which email sign-off you choose, it’s best to use one overall and to distinguish who you’re communicating with. There’s a big difference when you communicate with business leaders vs. customers.
3. Build long-term relationships
If you want to discover what your customers really want, you need to build relationships with them to know more. Many companies make similar mistakes and that is cutting engagement right after they make enough profit after the sale.
Building strong relationships have lots of factors behind them, but the most important one is personalization. 80% of consumers are more likely to engage with companies that offer them personalization.
Businesses need to engage in sending the required information to each buyer and social media is an excellent place to begin with. You can even consider using analytical tools for providing the right insights regarding consumer behavior and messaging consumers individually instead of in large groups.
Social media has enhanced the level of personalization and allows you to easily gain more insights about your individual consumers only through the likes, comments and interactions they give you. Businesses can slowly gather this information and always improve their personalized approach over time.
4. Ask for product feedback
Maybe some business owners don’t like it when you tell them there’s a problem with their product, but you can’t ever get better if you never make improvements. We also know that positive feedback can feel great, but when you don’t receive any negative feedback, your road to making your product better might stagger.
Short said, if your customers aren’t happy with your product, you can say goodbye to them. Feedback is an excellent way to keep a “heads up” for what kind of problems the customer might have. Changes made on time will allow you to retain customers in the long term.
You want to avoid using the same strategies forever. Times change and so do people. The needs and wants of people will change over time, so it’s important to adapt to these changes. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck with older trends and never adjust to modern-day trends!
5. Reward customer loyalty
Loyalty is an important part of running a business and rewarding your long-term consumers is an excellent way to do so. Some businesses have point systems or even clubs they set up for their long-term consumers. Standard rewards include:
- Gifts
- Coupons
- BOGO offers
- Discounts on wish lists and more
You’d actually be surprised that many companies are starting to make their customers download mobile apps for tracking their buying behaviors. Apps are also excellent for marketing managers to gather the right data and insights to promote personalization. Instead of scrolling through social media, businesses can use these apps to directly communicate with their consumers.
- Hire influencers
Social media has brought a new trend to the online world. Social media influencers have lots of power when it comes to social media channels since they have their own audience and are offering many companies personalized services. Many businesses are actually considering making them their brand ambassadors and attracting new customers in generations to come.
After all, influencers are great for attracting new people to your business and allowing fans to commit to it long-term. Business owners will use influencers as a boost to expose their products and service to a worldwide audience.
Only last year, statistics show that more than 70% of marketers used social media channels for influencer campaigns.
7. Make your customers hyped about new changes
If you want to change things up, you can do so by changing your customer base. It can be as simple as giving your site a new look and giving customers a new experience. Of course, you don’t want to change your entire look or customers might not feel the same again.
Also, if you go deep into seeing what the largest marketing blunders of all time were, you’ll find out that most of them included content that didn’t fit with customer preferences. For instance, one great example includes the New Coke in 1985. Back then, Pepsi was Coca-Cola’s new competitor and to change things up, they made their drink sweeter.
The entire reason everyone was upset was because of the new taste and how it changed the look of Coca-Cola. Therefore, this is a great example for you too. You can make minor changes, but if you change what your business represents, this will negatively influence your business.
The lesson here is to never change your business image, but to always make improvements that will make your business look better.
8. Make refunds and returns an option
While making a wrong purchase can happen, one mistake you want to avoid is not offering refunds or returns. Refunds should be part of your customer service and ensure security in your business.
If customers know that they can count on you all the time, they’ll feel secure when purchasing from you. If you offer your customers more options, they’ll always feel good purchasing from you. After all, long-term loyalty is much more important than short-term customers.
The reason you should pay close attention to customer loyalty
Customer loyalty is the main reason your business still stands. Without it, it’s not the same and you won’t always benefit from having different customers all the time. Therefore, it’s highly important to think twice about it and to always fulfill your customer’s needs and wants.
Regardless of which kind of business you run, you always need to focus on long-term relationships. They are the main drivers of a successful business and will create unforgettable moments for both you and your customers.
Dushyant is an enthusiastic and quick learner in all fields who likes to gain experience, loves to write, and works on his creativity. He loves to explore new things and information and has the potential to spread knowledge across the world. He believes in teamwork and helping others and has a strong belief in learning from our own life experiences and exploring more through our mistakes as everyone has a story to create. His hobbies include sports, drawing, learning new things, and a deep interest in geopolitics.
