Customer Retention Through Interactive Content: A Guide

Wouldn’t it be great if you could get twice the results for half the effort? Guess what, customer retention is all about that. What is customer retention, you say? It’s simply the ability of a company to retain its customers over a specified period of time. It ensures that the customer that you worked so hard to get, stays with you.

Almost 65% of a business comes from existing customers. The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%. On the other hand, the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. So why don’t you save all that effort on generating new leads and pamper your old ones a bit? Learn about why customer retention is amazing and why you should definitely take the reins on that! Furthermore, we will tell you all about managing your customer retention through interactive content, our weapon in the sack!

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Advantages Of Customer Retention

1. Cost-Effective

Who isn’t up for saving a buck or two every now and then? Customer retention through interactive content is far cheaper than customer acquisition. Just think about all the cost and effort that goes into acquisition – E-mail campaigns, social media, SEO, and whatnot. Even though customer retention comes with its own set of costs. You may need to hire extra personnel to look after your clients. You may need to nurture them, provide them with content and communicate with them. But that is almost 25% cheaper than what you would spend on the acquisition! Research by Bain and Company shows that increasing your customer retention rate by a mere 5% could, in turn, increase your profit margins by almost 25-95%, depending upon the industry and the length of the sales cycle.

2. Improved Referral System 

Old, loyal customers will always be a ray of sunshine on dark days. They will get you more profits than new ones. Despite all the new tricks in marketing, word of mouth still takes the cake. The Nielsen report reflects that 92% of consumers believe suggestions from friends and family more than advertising. Increasing your customer retention results in an increase in the number of people who have already used your product. They trust your brand and your product. Developing a good referral rewards system works very efficiently with old customers. Wherein you can offer discounts and coupons to your old customers in exchange for referring you to interested people.

Also, customers acquired through this kind of system also tend to have shorter sales cycles. This will not only decrease your cost but also improve your brand image. Referred customers also tend to develop greater customer loyalty than self-generated ones. To exemplify, Uber has maintained a great, successful referral system for its customers. All you need to do is get someone you know to sign up. And as soon as they take their fist ride, you get a ride free!

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3.  More Profitability

Your retained customers don’t only have a smaller sales cycle but also make higher sales. These customers have already gone down your sales funnel and aren’t looking for alternate products. They have tried and tested your service and have minimized the risk. Research shows that engaged customers buy 90% more frequently and spend 60% more per transaction. Not only that, they are five times more likely to indicate it is the only brand they would purchase in the future. On average, they deliver 23% more revenue and profitability over the average customer.

4. Improved Brand Image

The brand image of a company refers to its general impression held by its real and potential customers.  A positive brand image helps a business acquire new customers, cross-sell and upsell to customers. Here’s how customer retention can help you maintain a good brand image. As customers make repeated purchases, you get a better idea of who they are and what they want. Also, long-term and satisfied customers are also more willing to fill out feedbacks and profiles. This data collected assists in preventing the same problems that your new customers might face. This maximizes your chances of success as you literally learning from your mistakes. This improves the vitality of your brand profile and build better relationships with your customers.

Those are some sweet, sweet benefits that you can gain out of customer retention for almost nothing. Let’s move on to see how you can facilitate the process of customer retention. Interactive content is our go-to solution for everything. So why not this? Let’s see, in detail, how you can use interactive content for the art of customer retention.

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Customer Retention Through Interactive Content

There are a lot of ways of retaining customers. And what’s more, you can optimizer by interactive content. Let’s see how you can effectively put in this kind of content for customer retention.

1. Onboarding 

Onboarding refers to teaching your new customers how they can use your product or service. More often than not, a customer representative from the company teaches a new customer how to go about the tool, rather than them learning on their own. It makes the customer feel special and also helps them make the best use of your product.

It is a great way of customer retention, how? When you sit out and run your customers through your entire product, it saves their time and effort. Not only that, it also helps them achieve their goals through the best possible use of your product/service. This, in turn, reduces the churning with new customers. Interactive content is a great way to go about the process of onboarding. You can make interactive videos, create surveys, quizzes, assessments, etc. to teach and test your customers. For example, here is a detailed and well made Outgrow Pop Quiz. This quiz contains questions about all the features of Outgrow, different content types, features, etc. These kinds of assessments help the customer know every nook and crook of the product.

2. Company Newsletter

A company newsletter is the first thing that comes to mind when one talks of communication. Once the customer has used your product, a weekly newsletter seems like the most feasible and cost-effective way of reaching out to them. A newsletter generally contains all the product updates of a company, latest blogs, events, podcasts, etc.

But that’s the thing, everybody does newsletters. And customers are always looking for something fresh, something new, something INTERACTIVE. Well, you’ve obviously guessed what we’re going to talk about now. But once you put awesome interactive content on your newsletter and see the results, you might just think we are onto something! It is extremely important to engage the present customer. And newsletters can be made much more engaging with interactive infographics, e-books, surveys, calculators and quizzes! Engaging newsletters reduce customer attrition and make sure they don’t lose their way.

A make up products’ company could simply embed a quiz, ‘Which Make-Up Product Is Right For You?’ and see the charm! These kinds of quizzes provide real value to the customers and increase purchase intent as well. It is one of the easiest ways of customer retention through interactive content. 

3. Rewards/Incentives

What’s a better way of saying ‘thank you’ than giving a nice and sweet discount? And what better way of giving a reward/incentive than a contest/giveaway? Providing rewards and incentives to old customers especially incline them towards your company. Not only do they already trust your product or service, but they’re also getting something in return. For instance, you can offer them  a 10% discount on buying from you again. Referral systems work better than any other in the world. As we said earlier, word of mouth still takes the cake when it comes to marketing. They could get some kind of a discount or a free trial/product for referring a friend. For each friend that opts for your product/service, they get a 25% discount. You will not only end up retaining your old customers but also get a lot of new ones!

Dropbox successfully churned up a referral system that got successful like no other! According to founder/CEO Drew Houston, referrals increased signups by 60%, permanently. That’s a 40x increase. In April 2010, Dropbox users sent 2.8 million direct referral invites! This is just one great example of an extremely successful referral system. And there’s no reason why you can’t be the next Dropbox!

4. Customer Feedback

Feedback is the dessert to the 7-course meal of marketing. W Feedback is an important part of customer retention, no matter which industry you belong to, what methods you adopt, how big you are. Amazon is huge and it never forgets to ask how much we liked that order!. Feedback makes the customer feel valued. It not only allows them to share their opinion but also helps you figure out where you’re going wrong. And we? We’re just happy with our interactive content. In the words oft Michael Scott, it’s a ‘win-win-win’ situation.

Now, how does interactive content come into the picture? Well, are you really going to ask for feedback without some great interactive surveys? We can’t let you do that for the world. Surveys are a great way of asking for information. They ask all the relevant questions, and customers can fill them up at their own convenience. No more standing in the store being pestered by representatives. It makes it easy to collect the data and draw reasonable insights from it too. For example, here’s a survey that Outgrow created for its own feedback from its customers. It’s nice and short and helps with customer retention like nobody’s business.

5. Upselling And Cross-Selling

Upselling refers to the process of convincing the customer to buy an additional product or something more expensive, like sprinkles on top of ice cream. Cross-selling, on the other hand, refers to the process of convincing an existing customer to buy a different product. In ice cream terms, selling a chocolate one since they already bought vanilla. Tempting, right? These processes help increase customer retention. Once you understand your customers and what they need, you’re capable of driving better products to them. It improves customer satisfaction and customer service.

You can upsell and cross-sell easily through interactive content. E-commerce recommendations are a great way of cross-selling. For example, there’s a recommendation ‘Which Make Up Product Is Best For You?’. In addition to showing a blush palette as a result, it will also show you a brush to apply it. A person who sees an ad for a brush along with a blush palette has more purchase intent comparatively. As for up selling, you can create outcome quizzes and calculators in order to sell better products.

6. Communication Calendar 

A communication calendar is a kind of tool that keeps track of the company’s communication with the customer. It tells you the last time that a customer has reached out to you and alerts you when existing customers are not interacting with your brand. Using this, the company knows when to launch promotional messages to a particular customer. It also reminds you to remove any kind of hurdles that the customer may be facing. For example, if a customer’s subscription is about to expire, you can send them a message reminding them to renew their account.

You can use chatbots to perform this kind of activity. Chatbots can be used to send instant reminders to customers every time they open their accounts.  You can also create chatbots to send recommendations and tips to customers who haven’t interacted in a while. It acknowledges their interest in you and keeps them informed. The personalized customer communication that chatbots allow are crucial to increase customer satisfaction. Chatbots also offset post-purchase doubts. It makes them feel part of your business so that they want to come back again and again.

7. Educate Your Customers 

Customers appreciate content, as long as it is educative. Just because a customer has made one purchase, it does not mean that their sales cycle has ended there. It’s only begun, my friend. You can offer them so much more apart from your product. You can offer them extra information about something in their field. This would develop loyalty within your customers and their trust within you. They would appreciate you going the extra edge to provide them with real value.

You can create calculators, assessments, recommendations and other types of content to do the same. Suppose you are a virtual marketing platform like Buffer. You can create an assessment test that tests how well a customer knows Buffer. Now, if they score above 80%, you can offer them a discount of 20%. If they score below that, a discount of 10%. This way, you incentivize your customer to know your product better and encourage them to purchase again.

8. Reactivating Cold Leads

As winter is gradually coming, all of your great, hot leads are turning cold. Cold leads are potential customers who have stopped engaging with your brand. They have stopped responding to emails and showing an interest in your product. How do you woo them back? Interactive content is the answer! You can send them relevant infographics, videos, calculators, quizzes and whatnot. Something that’s going to spin them right into your cycle.

Through interactive content, you can educate them, offer them product knowledge and other relevant skills. Make them feel like they’re an important part of your customer pot. Go the extra edge. Start giving them good reasons to consider buying from you – and not your competitors. For example, this ‘How High Of An ROI Can You Get With Outgrow?‘ calculator is a great way of drawing back a lead that has stopped responding to emails! 

Case Study

R&G Technologies 

R&G Technologies is an Australian IT support firm. It is popular knowledge that they have developed strong, long-term relationships with their clients. How did they do it? Rapid response times and strict service-level agreements are only a small part of this. They get back to their clients quickly, simple as that.

However, the biggest reason behind reducing their customer churn is their customer satisfaction surveys. This gives their customers an opportunity to express what they’re doing right and, more importantly, what they’re getting wrong. This allows them to identify unhappy customers before they fall out of the roster. These surveys ask the right questions in order to gain insights that they can execute on. They use this information to make better business decisions and retain customers.

One-to-one conversations with your clients are a sweet not too often tasted. Don’t underestimate it.

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Conclusion

Hold them tight. Customer retention through interactive content is the key to a successful business. If you can’t keep the old ones with you, you can’t expect the new ones to stick with you either. But don’t worry, with the right recipe, you’ll find your old customers to be loyal in the batter. If there’s anything else that you’d like to know about customer retention, its benefits, its challenges, or anything else, you know where to find us!