Customer engagement is about building meaningful relationships with your customers. The more engaged your customers are, the more likely they are to keep coming back.
Customer retention is important when it comes to ROI because it costs 5X more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones.
In this post, we’ll discuss how customer engagement relates to retention and different ways you can make sure your customers stay loyal to your business.
What is customer engagement?
Customer engagement is all about interacting with customers in a way that forms a connection and builds loyalty and trust. It’s the relationship that customers have with your business.
The more you can engage your customers in personal and relevant ways the more you can keep them coming back and spending more.
How does customer engagement relate to retention?
Engaged customers drive more repeat business. Once a customer forms a connection with your business, they will most likely become a repeat customer. Not every customer is created equally, so it’s important to retain your best customers.
Your best customers are the ones who spend and visit the most — they are the ones who really drive your revenue. By using tools and tactics to keep them happy, you can increase customer retention, and even motivate them to refer some of their friends to become loyal customers.
There are several factors that go into customer engagement and retention, like customer service, responding to feedback, sending personalized offers, and more. Let’s take a look at some steps you can take to retain your most engaged customers.
Responding to customer feedback
Capturing and responding to customer feedback in a personal way is a great way to engage customers. It’s also an important tool to use when a customer has a negative experience and you’re about to lose their business.
By responding to feedback personally, you can drive 14-21% incremental revenue, and keep customers from sharing negative feedback on third-party review sites like Yelp. You can also send personalized offers to unhappy customers, or share positive feedback with your staff to keep them motivated.
You can use an automated customer engagement platform like Thanx, to respond in real-time to customer feedback, as well as send them relevant offers to get them back in the door. You can also collect data on each customer’s feedback by sending them an automatic feedback survey after each purchase so you can measure their overall satisfaction.
Making sure your customers are heard is important when it comes to engaging one-on-one with them, and retaining them long-term.
Getting personal
Each of your customers are different — they have different behaviors and different needs. It’s important to understand who they are so that you can increase their loyalty and make sure they keep visiting your business. Sending them personalized offers is an important way to engage them, and encourage them to visit more.
With a customer engagement platform, you can capture robust data about your customers and send them personalized offers based on their visit and spending patterns. You can communicate on a personal level with targeted campaigns.
For example, if you have a customer named Susan and she likes to buy coffee at your shop every morning, you can send her an offer for a pastry on her visit. Susan will feel appreciated, excited, and motivated to come back.
Or, if you are a pizzeria chain and are opening a new location, let your customers know with a message like the one below.
The more your best customers feel appreciated and rewarded, the more likely they are to return to your business.
Re-engage and win back your customers
Customer engagement is an ongoing conversation — you need to continuously build and foster the relationships you have with your customers. It’s important to reach out to them at the right time, with the right message, in the right way.
Re-engaging customers is especially important when you notice a repeat customer stopped visiting your business. You can use re-engagement to win back lost customers and get them to visit again.
A customer engagement platform like Thanx will detect when a loyal customer stops visiting your business. The platform can then automatically send them targeted offers based on their purchasing habits to show them they haven’t been forgotten and you want to see them again.
Another great way to get a customer back in the door is by updating them about new products and services you may have. For example, If they haven’t visited your business in a while, they may not know about the update to your menu. Let them know you miss them by sending a message like “Come back and try our newest desserts and receive 20% off of your purchase.”
This type of offer can bring back lost customers by reminding them about you and getting them excited to come back.
Wrap up
Customer engagement and retention really do go hand in hand when it comes to building customer loyalty and growing your business. The more engaged your best customers are, the more likely they are to keep coming back.
