Marketing Blueprint - Part4
4) Increase Customer Retention/Reduce Attrition
Clients drift away for a number of reasons. Often complacency of business owners and staff is the cause. And sometimes clients drift away for reasons that have nothing to do with us.
“Salvaging†clients from leaving has the same impact on your bottom line as increasing sales by that same percentage.
For example, if a business normally has an annual 30% loss of clients but works to bring that to zero, this is the same as giving the business a 30% increase in sales. But the best part is, the business grows without taking on a single dollar of additional advertising expense. This is as close to getting free money as a business is likely ever to find.
And it’s easier and cheaper to improve your bottom line by preventing attrition, than prospecting or advertising to generate sales through new clients.
The first step in minimizing the number of clients who leave is to determine your current annual customer attrition rate. Then put programs in place to prevent that attrition.
The types of programs you want to use are designed to boost client loyalty and trust. Ideally you become so valuable and likable the client would never even consider leaving for a competitor.
But lets be real…that’s all well and good for the future, but what can you do now if clients have already decided to ‘jump ship’?
An excellent example of a powerful client retention program (though leaning towards the ‘dark side’) for recovering clients who’ve decided to mutiny is America Online’s Retention Manual.
America Online’s Retention Manual is one of the best examples of how to keep customers from leaving that you’ll ever find. Copies of the retention program are floating all over the internet.
Simply go to Google.com and type in “AOL Retention Manual”. Make sure to use quotation marks, as I did in this example. You’ll come across the manual fairly quickly on a number of consumer awareness sites.
Once you find AOL’s client retention program, study it for ideas on how you can ethically adapt that method to your business.
Also, look for ways you can prevent attrition in the first place. Start a client loyalty program. Implement a regular, ongoing client communication program such as a newsletter or mailing list. This helps your clients see you are thinking of them and will help reduce mutiny over to your competitors.