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What our members have to say...
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"We have engaged in due diligence with one of the interested investors. AIN has proved to be effective and economic introduction service. Warmest regards."
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David Doust - Adaptive Edge |
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3 Simple Steps to Increase Customer Retention
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It takes effort and money to bring customers to your website. When a customer visits your site and they leave it’s a major bummer!
The best customers are the ones that already use your product. Here are some simple things you can do to keep the customers you already have and make them super users.
#1 Say Hello to Your Customers
Walmart specifically hires someone to stand at the door and say hi to customers when they walk in. This makes people feel warn and fuzzy inside… and makes you feel welcome. When someone signs up for your service. Make them feel like there is a lot happening.
Lets go through a few examples:
Community Sites:
If you have a forum and they ask a question make sure you reply to it.
Reddit, is one of the biggest community site and they got started by commenting on every single post that was made by an unknown user. Meetup.com works really hard to make sure people join your meetup as soon as one is created.
Ecommerce Sites:
Allow them to arrange a phone call with you or send them a personal welcome email right when they join.
#2 Email
Send newsletters and email updates. It is no secret that Groupon’s secret weapon is doing whatever it takes to get the customers email. They know that the email is the one place to actually get the most attention.
Send your users and customers weekly updates on how they are doing and what they could be doing better – stats and tips work well.
DIYTheme’s Thesis (one of the biggest WordPress frameworks) sends me weekly tips on how to become a better blogger.
Email is a great way to get customers to log back into your site. A great example of this is PhotoJojo.com, they send me weekly tips on fun things to do with photos. They also plug their store in each email and I find myself browsing it on a weekly basis.
#3 Make the customer feel important
This step can be a little tricky depending on your product. You have to make the customer feel a sense of pride when using your service. This can be done by showing stats, comments, and increasing their sales.
For example Twitter does a great job showing stats that make you feel important. The more followers you have the cooler you are.
eBay does a great job with showing total number of sales and reviews you have.
Community Sites:
If you have a social app work really really hard to make them ‘friends’. DailyBooth is a site like facebook but geared more towards taking pictures of yourself everyday. The first time I upload a picture on that site I got 3-4 comments on it. It was really cool.
If someone leaves a comment on one of your blog posts give them a reply right away.
Ecommerce/Product Sites:
Get your customers more viewers or sales.
AirBnB posts each new vacation property listed on their site to Craigslist. This allows for the new user to obtain more viewers and sales to their property.
Anytime a new user does something on your site something awesome should happen.
Bonus Tip #4 for SaaS Based Businesses: Charge Yearly
If you have a paid product that charges monthly the easiest way to increase retention is to charge yearly up front. Give them a heavy discount to make this happen. If the average time a customer stays with your service is under a year , then by charging up front for a full year guarantees longer customer lifespan.
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