How Do You Stay in Contact With Your Past Customers?
Keeping in touch with your past customers can be as simple as emailing them a regular newsletter with promotions, event invitations, or valuable tips. But you have several other options.
It is seven times more expensive to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer.
Customer retention is so critical to any company, large or small, that mastering it almost guarantees your business success.
▶ What Is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Why Small Businesses Should Embrace It
Since new customer acquisition is so costly, many companies turn to loyalty rewards programs to keep existing customers engaged and reward them for referring your business to a friend or writing a customer review.
Loyalty Discounts
The typical loyalty rewards program sends customers loyalty discounts based on how much they purchase in a specific time frame. The more they are spending, the higher the discount. Since these discounts are tied to a single customer, most programs allow you to choose a validity period — say three, six, or twelve months — after which they expire, creating a deadline for your customers to take action. Otherwise, they would lose the discount.
Loyalty discounts can be a great tool to give your loyal customers a reason to continue buying from you.
However, they reduce your product or service gross profit. Depending on the discount level, the reduction in your profitability can be substantial. Therefore, you should know your business's monthly profit before implementing a loyalty program.
▶ 5 Reasons Why Knowing Your Profit Is Crucial for Your Company's Success
Additionally, you also have to pay the program's monthly subscription fee, which can be significant and usually varies with the features you select. Unfortunately, the best features are always in the higher-priced plans. Although you can cancel most subscriptions easily, it can become a nightmare and financially expensive to settle the unused reward balances with your existing customers without upsetting or losing them.
If money is an issue and you do not have much leeway to reduce your margins or pay the monthly loyalty program subscription fee, there are other ways to reward your loyal customers without spending anything except, maybe, your time.
Reward Loyal Customers Without Spending Anything
If your business caters to food enthusiasts, you could give your loyal customers password-protected access to exclusive recipes on your website. You could also maintain a Facebook group, which only they are invited to join. You can also host an exclusive product preview evening for your local customers, offer extended shopping hours, or give them priority when booking a cooking event. The key feature is exclusivity.
You can find more ideas in my article ▶ Reward Loyal Customers Without Spending Anything.
If you only want to stay in contact with your past customers, you could also email a regular newsletter, where you announce new products or update on recent trends. For example, a store that sells hiking or sports gear might also provide valuable tips on getting the most out of their equipment in the field.
Email Marketing
Newsletters are very flexible. You can use them as an email campaign to announce a new product launch or invite to an upcoming event. You can also use them as informational emails to distribute the content of your latest blog post to your subscribers. The broad spectrum of use cases makes newsletters a valuable and inexpensive marketing tool. However, for email marketing to be effective, your newsletter must provide value to the reader. Otherwise, they will unsubscribe or label your email as spam.
For more information on how to use email marketing effectively, please read this article ▶ Are Email Newsletters an Effective Marketing Tool?
Given the hype around social media, especially Instagram, Reel, or TikTok, email marketing can feel a bit old-fashioned among the Gen Z demographic. Therefore, if you sell to a broad demographic range, it may be best to use different media to communicate with them. That way, you reach your target audiences through the medium they prefer.
Think Long-Term
Whether you send past customers loyalty discounts, provide non-monetary rewards, or email a newsletter, your business's long-term success depends on staying in contact with them. Maybe, they'll reward you by referring your business to a friend.
