7 Proven Ways to Attract and Keep Repeat Customers

Where do you invest most of your business resources and time? Many businesses, unfortunately, spend most of their valuable resources by focusing on acquiring new customers. While customer acquisition can increase your revenue and brand awareness, the results are not that significant when compared to customer retention.

What is the meaning of repeat customers?

Repeat customers are those who return to your business, again and again, to make more purchases from you. Typically, a repeat customer has made at least two purchases from your company.

Returning customers are also known as recurring or loyal customers because they are loyal to your brand and are likely to make many more purchases from you in the future. Repeat clients also turn about to be the best advocates of your brand and bring repeat business.

Why are repeat customers highly profitable for your business?

The first rule of any business is to retain customers and build a loyal relationship with them, and thereby avoid customer acquisition costs. Not only do repeat customers convert more often, but they also have a higher average order value than first-time buyers. This means that your repeat customers are buying more from your store and more often.

Increased probability of next purchase

A repeat customer has already made multiple purchases from your brand. Meaning, such customers are already familiar with your brand, they love your services, and have an affinity towards your company.

Hence, it is easier to sell your products and services to repeat customers than to new customers. With the same amount of resources, you can generate more purchases using repeat customers.

Repeat customers cost less

Acquiring new customers for your business by promoting your products can be much more expensive than selling your products to repeat customers. This is due to obvious reasons like repeat customers are already comfortable with your brand and prefer your products over your competitors.

Repeat customers have higher lifetime value (LTV)

Apart from higher conversion rates, the average order value of repeat customers also tends to be higher as compared to new customers. For every purchase made, a repeat customer is going to spend more money than a new customer, either through upsells or an increased quantity of orders.

Moreover, the likelihood of a repeat customer making frequent purchases from your brand is more than that of a new customer. Hence, promoting new products to repeat customers takes much fewer efforts compared to new customers.

Likely to refer to new customers

Your repeat customers are loyal to your brand because they have had good experiences with you. Due to this, repeat customers are highly likely to promote your brand through word of mouth or social media. Hence your repeat customers have the added advantage that they refer numerous new customers to your business.

8 proven ways to attract and keep repeat customers

By now you know how valuable and profitable repeat customers can be for your business. Businesses can plan strategies to engage customers in a way that they become repeat customers.

Let us discuss some innovative ways to retain your new customers and turn them into repeat customers for your business:

1. Deliver excellent customer service

Any business’ primary goal is to attain lifetime loyalty from customers, and this is easily possible by providing a best-in-class premium experience to your customers. And the most viable way to improve your customer experience is through excellent customer service.

Here are some ways to deliver superior customer service.

• Offer live demos and training: It is important to make customers comfortable with your products through comprehensive training and demos. While recorded training can be helpful to your customers, there is nothing like so that your customer gets all their queries clarified and highly satisfied with your brand.
• Live chat: Did you know that most customers are likely to switch to your competitors after having one bad experience with your brand? You can easily avoid such bad experiences by providing extensive support to your customers through personalized support.
• Resolving problems through co-browsing: Many times, solving customer problems is not possible through videos and instructions. For such scenarios,can come extremely handy. Through co-browsing, your support team can gain access to your customers’ screen and resolve any issues within minutes.

2. Automated customer conversations

An important aspect of good customer service is round-the-clock availability. Your customers may be joining from different time zones at different hours of the day, and they will expect you to respond to their queries as soon as possible.

How bots help businesses to deliver better service.

• Failure to respond quickly will lead to frustration and a bad experience with your brand. You can totally avoid such frustrating scenarios for your customers by offering 24/7 automated customer service. You can automate customer interactions by using AI enabled chatbots for your products and services.
• All you have to do is build a chatbot customized for your products with zero coding efforts. Once set up, you need not have to worry about customers churning because of a lack of immediate responses. Your chatbots will provide quick resolutions to most of your customers’ problems and queries.
• By improving your customers’ experience with your brand using such automated conversations and 24/7 availability, you can retain a massive percentage of customers into repeat customers for your business.

3. Extensive education about products

Any customer feels empowered and confident about products only when they understand the entire features and benefits of it. Hence, without timely customer education and training, your customers are likely to be lost and confused about how to get the maximum value out of your products.

If you focus on providing high-quality comprehensive customer education, then your customers will be highly satisfied with your brand and will stick around for much longer.

Here are a few ways in which you can educate your customers.

• Make the best possible first impression through a comprehensive onboarding process for all your products and services.
• Utilize all kinds of communication channels such as blogs, social media, one-to-one live chats, video sessions, and chatbots to be available for your customers for every hurdle that they gave during their customer journey.
• Offer high-quality video tutorials and demonstrations so that your customer gets highly accustomed to your products.
• Frequently initiate conversations and connect with your customers to let them know that you are always available to educate them through their journey with your brand.

4. Create customer loyalty programs

A successful customer loyalty program can contribute heavily towards retaining your customers and turning them into repeat customers. In fact, a customer who is a part of your loyalty program is 47% more likely to make another purchase from you when compared to other customers.

The main reason is that loyalty programs have the power of making your customers feel valued, empowered, and more connected with your brand. Such a connection provides the right kind of motivation for your customers to lead them to make more purchases from your company.

Here are the ways to increase customer return rate with loyalty programs.

• Offer attractive rewards: Offer valuable rewards in your loyalty programs so that your customers are driven towards opting for your loyalty programs and then making more purchases to earn more rewards. Such a situation becomes the perfect win-win for both you and your customers.
• Give customers a head start: While starting a loyalty program, try to give your customers a head start in winning points. This way, your customers feel they only have to make a few more purchases to win the rewards which motivates them to purchase more.
• Provide welcome points for new customers: By providing welcome points, you are adding value to your customers right from the start and this will help you get an increased number of repeat customers for your business.
• Make it interesting and creative: The more enjoyable a loyalty program is, the more will be your customer retention rate. Hence, try to make your loyalty programs more fun through gamification and creativity.

5. Offer discounts and incentives to repeat customers

Who doesn’t love discounts and offers? Everyone does! Hence you should start using offers and discounts to retain your customers if you haven’t done it already.

When your margins are tight, offering discounts might not be the best option for your business. However, offering discounts to new customers after their first purchase can prove to be highly profitable for your business.

Delight your repeat customers by following different ways of offering discounts & incentives.

• Provide onboarding offers: During onboarding provides offers like free shipping or some exclusive discount codes to your customers which will give them a good experience with your brand.
• Offers after first purchase: You have the opportunity to turn new customers into repeat customers by offering them discount codes and special offers after their first purchase. This will nudge them to make more purchases from your brand.
• Keep experimenting: Every business and their customers are different. Hence, experiment with different offers and see what is most profitable for your business by giving you the most significant increase in customer retention rates.

6. Collect feedback and update your products

Customer feedback is essential for the good customer experience of any business. Without effective customer feedback, you may be lost about what exactly your customers are looking for.

Customer feedback needs to be proactive rather than reactive because most of the customers won’t come to you telling about what extra features they would like to have. It is your responsibility to approach them and upgrade your existing products aligned with the feedback.

Here is how collecting feedback can impact your recurring customers.

• Proactive customer communication: Use different communication channels such as automated chatbots, in-app messaging, and live-chat sessions to collect feedback from your customers, especially new customers.
• Observe common patterns: After you have collected extensive feedback from your customers, you need to analyze the feedback and watch for common patterns. Like, maybe 60% of your customers feel that your products lack a particular feature or add-on service.
• Upgrade your products: Based on the feedback, make necessary upgrades to your products and services so that they appeal to your customers.
• Inform your customers: After you upgrade your products according to your customers’ requirements, let them know that you have done so. Through this, your customers’ satisfaction index will soar, and churn rates will reduce drastically.
  

7. Add value through email marketing

Emails can be a powerful tool to drive one-time customers to make multiple purchases from you. By tactically strategizing each email that you send, you can significantly improve customer retention and thus generate repeat business with numerous loyal consumers.

Tips to follow for email marketing to add value to returning customers.

• Change your order confirmation email: You can turn your new customers into repeat customers by sending information about related products, special offers, and discount coupons to your customers with the order confirmation email of their first purchase.
• Send follow-up emails: After the first purchase, send 1 or 2 follow-up emails to your customers to let them know that you have kept the communication channels open and they are always welcome to contact you for queries. Ensure that all your emails are highly personalized.
• Add immense value: Promotional emails are good, but not always. If you keep bombarding your customers’ inbox with sales emails, your emails are most likely to land up in the trash folder. You should also send emails that purely add value to your customers in some way.
• Keep your customers updated: Whenever you launch new products or if you have upgraded your products, you should keep your customers informed through emails. This will increase your customer engagement and improve customer experience.