It goes without saying that when loyal customers spend more and visit more frequently your bottom line benefits. Similarly, study after study shows that it’s significantly more cost effective to focus on customer retention rather than on customer acquisition.

What does this mean? It means the real magic in business happens when customer relationships are both lasting and profitable.

But how do you make this a reality?

In this post, we’ll share three ways you can build lasting and profitable customer relationships.

1. Increase revenue from your best customers

Who are your most loyal customers? Do you have faces that you recognize and maybe even know their names? That’s a great start! It means you’re doing something right and that people like your business enough to visit more than once.

However, if you want to increase your revenue from these customers in sustainable ways, you need to capture the data that helps you get to know them even better.

With the help of a customer engagement platform, you can capture and use customer data to strategically boost increases in visits as well as average check sizes from those that frequent your store most often.

With every purchase your customers make, you gain rich insights into their behaviors and preferences, enabling you to know them like never before and offer experiences that build trust and an emotional connection with your brand. That’s the secret sauce to standing out from the competition and creating a repeatable revenue source from your most loyal and best customers.

2. Create a data-driven approach to customer engagement

The key to successful customer engagement and developing personal relationships is data.

Data has long been an obstacle for offline businesses. But no longer. You can now have access to the robust customer behavioral data you need to connect with your customers in meaningful ways—and, in ways that encourage them to develop an emotional connection with your business so they’ll want to return more often and spend more.

With the data you capture from each purchase made, you’ll be able to continually evolve your customer experience to be more targeted and relevant.

3. Be picky about customer engagement platform features

By this point, it’s clear that a customer engagement platform is the best option for acquiring, engaging, and retaining your best customers to drive repeatable revenue and positive ROI.

Check out the stats:

• Customers who are members of customer loyalty programs generate between 12 and 18 percent more revenue for a business than non-members.
• 71% of consumers who are members of loyalty programs say membership is a meaningful part of their relationships with brands.
• 77% of consumers say loyalty programs make them more likely to stay with brands.

Customer engagement and loyalty programs are where it’s at if you’re looking to build emotional connections and lasting customer relationships. However, not all customer engagement platforms are created equally.

If you want to keep your customers engaged, then look for the following features:

• Cross-channel and automated. Modern consumers demand options and you need an engagement platform that can deliver. Look for a tool that provides real-time, personalized and segmented communications via app/push notification, SMS, and email, so you can talk to customers they way they want to be talked to and when they want messages from you.
• Custom-built loyalty structure. Create a raving fan-base. The modern loyalty program is focused on creating personalized customer experiences, status, and membership not just a bunch of discounts and rewards. Your program should reflect your business goals and objectives and one size does not fit all.
• No hardware and no IT complexity. Simple and robust is best when it comes to customer engagement platforms. Find a platform that acquires, engages, and retains consumers automatically, and makes the experience joyful and simple for both consumers and your staff. No need to junk up your counters with hardware and no need to have consumers enter information each time.

Wrap up

With the right customer engagement platform, it’s easy to identify your most loyal customers and to encourage them to spend and visit more creating a lasting and profitable relationship.