As a business owner, you want customers to keep coming back and making repeat purchases. After all, it is much more expensive to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. Moreover, returning customers are more loyal and often spend more per purchase. In this blog post, you will find 10 smart ways to keep customers coming back for more sales.
- Create a reward programme
- Aim for excellent service
- Build a community
- Take advantage of personalisation
- Look at upselling and cross selling opportunities
- Follow-up
- Invest in your team
- Communicate with your customer
- Ask for feedback
- Give exclusive access
Create a reward programme
With a reward programme, customers earn rewards and benefits for subsequent purchases . Think of a points system where you build up discounts or a special status where you can enjoy more benefits such as access to the pre-sale of a particular product.
Based on previous purchases, you can also create a clear customer profile . That way, you can reward loyal customers with specific products or actions that are interesting to them. This will make them feel appreciated and keep them loyal.
Aim for excellent service
Providing good customer service is essential for creating a positive experience for customers. It is therefore a key factor for customer retention . This service is provided during the purchase as well as after the sale. During the customer's purchase , it is important to listen and respond to their needs with providing accurate information. A good after-sales service can ensure that customer satisfaction remains high making the customer loyal.
Build a community
Building a community is not something you do overnight; it is a long-term strategy . This can be done both through online channels such as social media and offline moments such as events. A community is built around the company's values, norms and interests. Then, customers join it. Here, they can meet others and share their experiences. This creates a sense of belonging among customers.
Lego is an absolute leader in this. They organise events for customers and ask them for input and ideas when developing new products.
Take advantage of personalisation
There are several ways to apply personalisation. For instance, you can provide recommendations to customers based on customer data, previous purchases, search queries and browsing behaviour. Another way to do personalisation is by sending personalised content. This content could, for instance, be a tutorial on other ways they can use their product and, as a result, matches the customer's interests. Because this e-mail is personal to the customer, they feel more addressed.
Look at upselling and cross selling opportunities
Upselling and cross selling are sales techniques that persuade customers to buy a better or more comprehensive product. An important aspect of upselling and cross selling is listening to the customer. You do this by asking targeted questions that give more insight about the customer's needs. Based on this, recommendations can be given in the form of form of upselling and cross selling.
Read our blog post on upselling and cross selling here.
Follow-up
Follow-up after sales is the key to future sales. Staying in regular contact with customers builds a relationship, so to speak. It ensures customer satisfaction which also makes customers more loyal. From that, repeat purchases can also come every time. Today, follow-up can be done through various channels. So it does not always have to be through a phone call or an e-mail. If you want to know more about follow-up, be sure to download our whitepaper.
Invest in your team
By investing in your team, you can ensure that your customers have an excellent experience and are happy to come back to you for more purchases. You can do this by offering education and training. It gives your employees a chance to improve their product knowledge, customer service and communication skills. In addition, evaluating and giving feedback is something from which a lot can be learned. This way, it is possible to make small changes where necessary that can improve the customer experience.
Want to improve your sales and marketing skills? Read more about our courses and training programmes here.
Communicate with your customer
Ask yourself what problem your product or service solves. This should be the focus of your communication rather than listing product specifications. The way you communicate is hugely important to leave a good first impression and, above all, to create interest.
Engage in a dialogue with your customerand thus ensure two-way communication. Ask the customer for a sincere opinion and afterwards also show that you appreciate this or that you will act on their feedback.
Ask for feedback
We mention it briefly above, but asking for feedback, is hugely important. This can be about both the service offered and the service or product. Next, listening to the customer is very important here. That way, the feedback can be used to make improvements to the product, service or service. Once these adjustments have been made, it is interesting to communicate this to the customers. This shows that their feedback is being listened to and can make the customer feel appreciated.
Give exclusive access
When you launch a new product or service, it is interesting to give current customers the opportunity to test it exclusively. For a product, this could be a free sample before launching the product and for a service, it could be about a certain trial period. By letting them test it, they are introduced to something new and you lower the barrier to purchase. Here, it can also be interesting to listen to the feedback on this and it is possible to make small adjustments afterwards to further optimise the product or service.