Customer loss (churn) is something that is a reality for most companies, but also something that you can and should do everything to counteract. Customers expect to have their needs met and are happy to have many opportunities to choose from during their journey with a company. This is something you should focus on giving them, to lose existing customers is expensive. In fact, it costs 4-10 times more to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones. Therefore, companies benefit more from setting up a good Win-back strategy so as not to lose hard-earned customers.
Various causes of customer loss / churn
- Your product / service has not met the customer’s requirements or needs
- Your product / solution is no longer needed by the customer
- Your product / service was not fully perceived
- Your customer needs to reduce their costs
- The value of your product / service was not sufficiently highlighted
- Your customer has reorganized / changed staff
- Cheaper or trendier alternatives are emerging and becoming more interesting
How to succeed with your win-back strategy
Utilize you data
Put your data to work by analyzing your customers’ behavior, in order to more easily understand what their buying patterns look like and why they have stopped being interested in your brand. It may not even be the case that a customer is lost, but only the fact that some goods have a longer period of inactivity. This applies, for example, to seasonal items such as Christmas decorations or birthday decorations and larger purchases such as a car or fridge and freezer.
By getting to know customer data and finding out the customer’s behavior and needs, you can thus begin to personalize your communication. It gives you the opportunity, on a personal level, to be able to explain to your customers why they should return as a customer with you and also encourage them to share their experiences that made them choose not to return as a customer. With the help of personalization in your email marketing, you can also attract back customers with interest-based messages, based on previous purchase history and behavior.
Try to understand what your customers want using forms
A good idea might be to familiarize yourself with the customers’ behavior and try to understand what they really want. To do that, one can proceed in different ways. The easiest way is to create a form or do a customer survey, where the customer has a chance to answer questions about what you as a company could have done better and what they were dissatisfied with.
We miss you, do you miss us?
Another way is to send a direct email, to remind you what you as a company offer and how the customer can benefit from your products / services. A classic is the email “we miss you”, followed by something that suggests that you do not want to lose it as a customer. These emails work, but make sure to use this communication properly when you still have the customer on the thread, by for example including products that previously interested the customer. This will increase the chance of repurchasing, as the customer may realize that they are the ones who really missed you and just needed to be reminded of what you have to offer.
Give the customer a chance to reactivate
It can be good to make sure to include a clear CTA (call to action) in your win-back communication, so that the customer can reactivate quickly. Sometimes you just need a simple reminder that you exist and that you can meet the customer’s needs, you can, for example, communicate this through a direct email or SMS. But then it should also be easy for the customer to quickly resume contact with you, through a clear CTA.
Foundation work is A and O
Most of all, you don’t want to end up in a situation where you notice that a customer is losing interest in your brand. To avoid this, solid foundation work and a well-thought-out marketing strategy are required. Therefore, you should always make sure that:
- Use personalization in your communication
- Work with segmentation of your customers and find out who your target groups are
- Map customer journeys to be able to meet the customer with the right communication at the right time
- Use smart communication like Marketing Automation. Set up automails that are triggered on a specific activity to ensure that you never miss a contact with the customer.
- Communicate with the customer where they are and combine channels such as SMS and email marketing in an omnichannel or multi-channel strategy
- Set up sustainable strategies for lead generation and also winback, different occasions require different types of communication.
- Reward your customers and work with customer loyalty. Customers who are rewarded for their loyalty remain customers and then ambassadors for your brand, these customers are the most valuable.
Do you want to get started with digital marketing? Contact us and we will help you. Are you already a Rule customer and want help setting up a sustainable win-back strategy? Book a workshop with us.
