I have a sticky note on my monitor that says: “How are you impacting customer retention goals this week?”. That small square of hot pink paper ensures that the programs I’m building drive business impact.
Creating an effective retention strategy is no small feat! As I’m sure many of you can relate to, it’s always a work in progress. With each campaign, I learn more about how customer marketing can drive retention in a scalable way. Here are some top tips that I’ve learned so far:
CS + CM alignment
It can be difficult to track customer sentiment when feelings ebb and flow regularly, depending on where your customers are in their journey. Aligning with your customer success team on current customer priorities/blockers is essential for getting a high-level sense of account health.
If a customer journey map exists at your organization, treat it like a religious document! Having a shared vision between customer success and customer marketing of what customers should be doing at each stage in their journey makes it so much easier to build relevant programming.
Eve Chatfield
A big focus for my team right now is embedding into the stakeholder journey.
In June, we started tailoring email programs specifically to stakeholders and we’re already seeing a 10% increase in marketing engaged stakeholders MoM (we define marketing engaged as: an individual took a meaningful action with marketing content 2+ times over the past 90 days).
Customer Success drives the 1:1 use case conversations and marketing layers on top of that with relevant content, gifts, and event invitations. A campaign as simple as 2 emails per month can have a significant impact on retention.
Surprise and delight
There are few things I love more than surprising and delighting our customers. There few things customers love more than being surprised and delighted!
The most successful review generation campaign I ran at my current company was one that offered reviewers an exclusive branded t-shirt.
This initiative was fairly low cost and low effort. At the end of the campaign we were delighted by the results. We drove 65 reviews in 2 days! Safe to say our customers were surprised and delighted.
But surprise and delight doesn’t always have to mean gifting. We’re running an email campaign this month offering customers an exclusive first look at our H2 roadmap as a thank you for being loyal customers.
This is a great way to make your customers feel involved with your organization. The individuality of the message makes customers feel special and connected to our product.
Community building
Giving your customers a community space where they can connect with like-minded individuals and learn best practices is a very important part of the customer journey.
While review sites and social media are both great things, having a dedicated space within your control is a wonderful way to connect with and retain customers. It offers an easy 1:1 space for customers to interact with peers, and with your team directly.
Having community managers and yourself as easily identifiable points of contact will instead the likelihood of customers coming directly to you with their problems rather than complaining about it on a third-party site.
Being a regular face within these communities it vital. Make sure you’re in there starting conversations and responding to comments as well.
Community is a great place to understanding your customers, as for your customers to understand you! Community surfaces product value, networking opportunities, and renewals.
Let your customers sell each other on why your product is a need to have.
The ebb and flow of customer sentiment
It’s important to remember that customers' priorities change and evolve just as ours do. The program format you ran last quarter may not be relevant anymore! Flexibility within your programs, but also within your own assumptions about your customers is an invaluable trait to have.
I’m lucky to be at a company that encourages constant testing. Every quarter I sit down and evaluate performance on past webinars, email programs, and gifting initiatives. I ask myself these questions:
- What worked and why?
- What didn’t work and why?
- What industry topics are hot right now that our customers could benefit from learning more about?
The proof is in the data! These questions allow me to bring fresh ideas to our community and facilitate conversations that they might not be getting access to elsewhere.
With many of us working with limited budgets and resources, it can feel difficult to wrap your head around retention. It’s ok to start small! Segmenting your customer base by a single cohort and testing out a monthly campaign can kickstart a broader initiative.
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