I’m always one to make things simple. So here’s my simple guide to retention marketing:
- Identify what made the customer fall in love with you in the first place
- Identify what’s changed since them – is it them or is it you?
- Address that issue and get them to fall in love with you again.
So here’s an example: A phone & broadband provider known as a ‘value player’ was suffering heavy rates of churn by some of its most profitable customers as they approached the end of their contract.
1. What made them fall in love? Value.
2. What had changed? They were no longer getting value.
This needs unpacking – why weren’t they getting value? In this instance, we kept sub-segmenting until we found a few distinct pockets of customers who were leading the churn. They were those on the premium ‘all inclusive’ package who weren’t making use of the product (few calls, low downloads). They woke-up and realised they weren’t getting value, so they left.
3. How to get them to fall back in love? Offer them value once more. We contacted those customers, we told them that they could be on a better value package and switched them.
End result
- Reduced churn
- Higher customer satisfaction and NPS
- Increased lifetime value
Oh and one other metric: Increased agent satisfaction. Agents felt better about their calls, so they made better calls. And they stayed longer.
If you’d like help identifying why your customers fell in love, why they’re falling out of love or how to get them to fall back in love with you, drop me a line.
Richard Leader 