10 Proven Ways To Increase Retention And Bring New Customers Into The Funnel

The term marketing funnel refers to the steps a consumer goes through before becoming a customer. People never take decisions accidentally. But often, people buy things that they do not require. This impulsive buying decision is because successful brands understand customer behaviour very well. They are very good at how to guide the customers through this journey. They adopt the best customer retention practices, which encourage their customers to be loyal to the brand. Let us elaborate on various ways businesses use customer retention to bring new customers into the funnel. 

Focus on engaging your site visitors and educate them

Visitors always want updated information about the products and services they have already bought from your site and benefitted greatly from. You can engage your visitors through these methods to increase the chances of conversion. 

  • Sending a welcome email will help create a powerful first impression in the subscribers' minds. In addition, reading a positive welcome email is likely to make your customers interested in your future emails. 
  • Push notification or product benefits notification is a great way to open a direct communication channel with your customers.
  • Abandonment cart email messages in another way to reengage those customers who left items on their cart but did not check out.
  • A special discount email is a method to inform your customers about some special discount offers to create their interest. 
  • Back-in-stock alerts notify customers when a product is restocked. 
  • Sale alerts are a way to inform customers when a sale is going on. 

Improve customer relationships with post-purchase campaigns

As a business owner, you have greater responsibilities, including making an effort to feel your customer valued and appreciated. It can be realized through these methods. 

  • By sending order confirmation notifications via email, or SMS, you let your customers know what product they are buying. 
  • Thank-you messages help to strengthen customer relationships. 
  • Feedback messages are a way to know the effects of the message.
  • The how-to guides method helps you address different customer problems and ask for resolutions
  • Product rating/reviews notifications help create trust and loyalty in the customers' minds and help to communicate with your brand. 

Let your customers see you are beyond the competition 

You should know how to stand out in this tough competitive era. Show your customers what they want to see or hear about your products and services. Accommodate these ideas into your brand subtly and show how your brand is distinct from other competitors in the market. Create value for your products and services by focusing on some important aspects of your business, such as-

  • Think about the benefits your customer will get when they buy your products and services.
  • Is there all-around customer support for your services?
  • Do you offer a refund or return policy on your site? 

When you have an app, you can send push notifications to inform your customers about your 24x7 support. In case of the unavailability of an app, you can send it on your site. Additionally, by sending some product recommendations based on customers' purchasing history, you can show the uniqueness of your brand. 

Loyal customers are those who keep coming back to your site to buy products and services without opting for other sites. You should keep in touch with these customers to make them happy as they are your brand advocates. You can opt for these ideas. 

  • By incentivizing your customers through discounts, free items, and bonuses, you will create a memorable shopping experience for them, and they will appreciate your effort.
  • Give discounts on special occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries to create a bond with your customers 
  • You can request your users about product reviews on the app store and reward them

Incorporate customer feedback on your strategy 

You should ask for customer feedback regarding the products and services they purchased from your site and the overall shopping experience. This will enable you to understand what your customers liked most about your business and what are areas your business needs improvement. 

You can conduct customized surveys for your consumers as part of your marketing funnel to collect feedback. Net promoter score (NPS) surveys and others also come in this category. NPS is a standard metric that shows the customer's loyalty to your brand. A score of more than 80 per cent is considered top class. 

However, you should send the surveys to the right kind of customers. Based on your customer type, you can categorize them in the following manner.

  • Those who have recently made the purchase 
  • Those who have received the product 
  • Those who have experienced the product for a considerable amount of time 

Classifying your customers like this helps you target the right set of customers to send NPS, excluding those yet to use your products. 

Recapture your inactive customers 

Examine your user data and check those customers who have not purchased for a long time on your site. Check when they last purchased on your site, see the trends, and find out why they did not come back to your site. The following measures may help to reengage them on your site. 

  • Birthday emails have a higher success rate of click and open than other types of promotional campaigns due to the emotional reaction it creates in the customers' minds. 
  • Special day discounts such as Independence Day discounts and women's day offers are very useful to attract customers.
  • By informing about the updates about the app, you can attract customers' attention as app updates always improve the security aspect. 
  • Providing timely and relevant content creates interest and curiosity in the customers' minds. 
  • 'We miss you' emails are great to win back your inactive customers. Those who still wish to be a part of your brand might click on these emails, and you can engage them. 

Offering incentives to those customers who frequently purchase on your site 

You should encourage those customers who come back to your site to purchase again and again through the following schemes. 

  • Subscription offers help customers pay a recurring fee to avail of your products and services on a monthly or yearly basis. This helps you to generate revenue as a business owner while providing value to your customers.
  • Monthly/yearly discount codes are buying incentives that could be personalized or publicly available. They cut down significantly the price of an order, and it is a proven way to attract customers.
  • Anniversary campaigns are a way to connect with your customers emotionally

Create a social media base 

Building a social media base for your products and services helps keep your customers engaged with your brand and acts as a reference platform when customers promote your brand on social media. You can achieve this through these tactics.

  • By creating user-generated content that includes images, videos, blogs, etc., posted by the customers  
  • You can request your customers to talk about their product experiences on social media 
  • Social media contests on Twitter and Instagram will get you more followers 

Regular monitoring of your engagement and retention statistics would help

This will help you to know the value and revenue contributed by your existing customers. Things like retention rate, churn rate, active users, and others will help you analyze the result of your customer retention tactics and adjust it accordingly. 

 Incorporate the human factor in your customer retention activities 

You should remember that the end user of your products and services will be a human. So, you need to make your campaigns personalized and tailored to human expectations. Try finding out what your customers prefer and what they discard as a close family member or friend would do. Try making products that would reflect these emotions and care at every stage of dealing with the customers.  

To conclude 

Experts say AIDA is the basic golden sales funnel that has worked for ages when it comes to marketing your products and services. AIDA is described as awareness, interest, desire, and action. Awareness is that people cannot buy things they are unaware of. Interest is when people are aware of your product; you need to build their interest. Desire is when interest is generated; you should try creating an emotional connection that would build desire in them to purchase your product. Action is when you guide your consumers on how to translate your desire into reality. In a nutshell, the above elements are an extension of these concepts. However, time has changed, and these methods are incorporated into marketing strategies.  

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