When a customer is devoted to a particular brand, they are not readily swayed by availability or price. They will spend extra if they receive the same high-quality product or service that they are accustomed to and like. A devoted consumer also has the following characteristics:
- They are not actively looking for different suppliers
- They are more likely to recommend a brand to family and friends.
- They are not interested in hearing from competitive companies.
- They are open to other goods or services provided by a specific business
- They are more understanding when issues arise and trust a business to resolve them
- They provide feedback on how a brand may enhance its products or services
- They will continue to buy from a company as long as there is a need
To keep customers shopping and to encourage them to promote their brand to new audiences, all firms should try to enhance customer loyalty. Brands can go for building customer loyalty by using email marketing to strengthen ties with existing customers. Email marketers cultivate relationships by sending appropriate messages that boost customer retention and loyalty, resulting in faster growth than other marketing methods.
What is Customer Loyalty?
Customer loyalty is a metric that determines how likely customers are to do business with you again. It's the outcome of their overall pleased with your products and services, as well as every touchpoint throughout the customer journey.
Customer loyalty allows you to form stronger bonds with your clients. You become more than simply another website or online store when you improve a customer's experience with your brand. They put their trust in you because you provide them with something of worth in return.
The correct customer loyalty methods can help you build these long-term relationships, which can help you raise customer lifetime value, new customer acquisition, and income. Customers who are loyal to your firm refer to others, stay longer, and spend more money with you.
Importance of Customer Loyalty in Business
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Customer loyalty is important for any business, regardless of its size. Because they are unfamiliar with the services or items offered by a company, first-time clients are more difficult to persuade. As a result, the company requires a full marketing funnel to entice people to buy.
Customers who have previously purchased from a particular store are easier to market to because they know what to expect.
Here are a few reasons client loyalty is so important:
1. Repeat Customers Spend More Than New Consumers
They have a far greater average order value, which increases with the time they've done business with a company.
2. Customers Who are Loyal to You Convert at a Higher Rate
Existing clients convert at a far higher rate than new ones. The conversion rate of the loyal customers ranges from 60% to 70%, whereas a new customer's conversion rate ranges from 5% to 20%.
3. It Increases Earnings
Brands must promote consumer loyalty in order to increase profitability. When client retention rates are enhanced by just 5%, profits can increase by 25 % to 95 %.
4. Keeping a Current Customer is Less Expensive
Keeping a current client is less expensive than acquiring a new one. According to studies, acquiring a new customer is 5X more expensive than keeping an existing one.
5. Having a Devoted Customer Aids in Good Planning
Customer loyalty allows organizations to better foresee growth, which aids in financial planning. Marketing teams can identify loyal customers who can be counted on, making it easier to make budget-based decisions in advance.
6. Loyal Customers Shop Regularly
Repeat clients are more likely to return after a positive experience with a brand. As customers complete more transactions, their likelihood of making future purchases grows.
7. During the Holidays, Repeat Consumers Spend More
While all consumers spend more throughout the busy Christmas season, loyal customers perform significantly better.
How to Build Customer Loyalty?
A company's goal is to make its customers happy since happy consumers are more likely to spend more money on the company's products or services. This, as well as the other advantages of having a solid relationship with customers, should motivate every company to invest in customer loyalty. Fe suggestions to get you started are :
・Reward Loyal Clients With a Loyalty Program
A loyalty program is a terrific strategy to keep your most loyal customers coming back. Customers gain loyalty points every time they buy from a brand under the most basic and perhaps most popular loyalty programs, which use a point system. Then, after they've acquired enough points, they'll get a reward, such as discounts, special client treatment, freebies, and so on. Another sort of loyalty program is a card-based system, in which customers are rewarded for filling up and spending money on the card. People will feel compelled to return if you have a loyalty program that rewards customers with monetary or non-monetary prizes.
・Make Customer Service a Priority For the Brand
Customer service is an important aspect of every organization. More focused solutions for specific customer demands are the result of an excellent client relationship management approach. First, discover everything you can about the business's various client categories, such as their purchasing habits, preferred items, and comments on the brand as a whole. Make use of this data to improve the service. Also, ensure that staff who deal directly with consumers have access to the information they require to provide good service.
We have a support center at Strikingly that helps our clients better comprehend our website-building tool and its capabilities. Lookup any question you have and find a ready-made response. There's no need to wait for our reply to gain your answers this way. You can go through the tutorials and FAQs in the support area to learn more about our website builder.
・Introduce VIP Levels to Improve Customer Experience
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Consumer preferences are strongly influenced by social status, which can strengthen a company's client loyalty strategy. A corporation can improve customer loyalty among existing consumers and persuade new and less engaged customers to take part more with the brand by creating VIP tiers for the most loyal customers. Begin with modest prizes for all clients in the program, then increase the rewards for each step up the loyalty ladder to encourage repeat purchases.
Have you ever heard of a VIP membership that costs only $49 per month? It may seem too good to be true, but the Strikingly VIP access plan includes everything you'll need to design and maintain your website. Consider the following scenario: you have everything in the Pro plan plus the ability to add up to 500 products per site.
・Segment Your Customers
It's hard to fathom a customer loyalty program that doesn't include a personalized approach. It makes each client feel valued and cared for. Use segmentation to be at the right place at the right time with the correct message. Marketers will segment their mailing lists based on age, gender, geographic area, occupation, preferences, interests, engagement, and other factors. Then they create multiple email campaigns for each category, each with relevant offers. As a result, each subscriber gets exactly what they want.
・Send Event-based Emails
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This is the most effective technique to tailor your client communication. Stop sending the same email to everyone on your list and go for event-based marketing instead. This implies that if a user does a specific action while interacting with your brand, you immediately respond with the email. A new user subscribes, a shopping cart is abandoned, an order is placed, and a tour is booked – these are the events that cause the email to be sent. There's no need to do it by hand; instead, use a marketing automation tool. Users may send tailored emails, online push notifications, and SMS to thousands of consumers at once with Strikingly.
Through its audience plan, Strikingly simplifies collecting email addresses and distributing newsletters. Newsletters are an excellent approach to engage clients who have already subscribed to your services with inbound marketing. You may import your emailing list into Strikingly, create unique messages, and manage sharing options.
・Optimize the Company's Referral Program
Consumers prefer recommendations from a friend or family member to other types of marketing when purchasing a product, according to various reports, including Neilsen. That is why it is critical to establish a customer loyalty program in which customers are rewarded for referring the business to others. Increase the effectiveness of the referral program by rewarding both senders and recipients, encouraging customers to spread the word about the business through various media, and developing inspiring and shareable referral messaging.
・Encourage Customers to Provide Feedback
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Make it simple for customers to contact the company and to submit feedback. Inquire about why they prefer to buy from the brand over competitors and how they think the company can improve. Set up a specific line of contact with consumers who need help with a problem. Finally, thank customers for their input and use it to discover issue areas in your company.
You may add a contact form to your site using Strikingly and have your customers fill it out and offer you feedback. If you create a site with Strikingly, you'll be able to include a contact form on it so that your visitors may simply contact you.
How to Assess Client Loyalty
Marketers can assess customer loyalty by observing their behavior. Customers who return make more purchases, stay with you for a longer time, and refer others. These factors are easily quantifiable. So, here are the criteria that can determine loyalty.
1. Lifetime Value (LTV)
The term "Lifetime Value" refers to the total amount of money spent by customers on a brand from their first to their most recent purchase. Marketers can get this metric from a variety of subscription payment methods. Loyalty is measured by increasing Lifetime Value. Brands must build customer loyalty, cross-sell, and upsell in order to increase lifetime value. LTV is viewed as a critical concept by most of businesses.
2. The Rate of Churn
It's all about clients who drop out or cancel their subscriptions. Marketers calculate this measure by dividing the number of consumers at the start by the number of customers at the end of a specified period. Divide the total number of customers churned by the total number of customers from the beginning to get the user churn rate. The percentage might help marketers figure out how many clients they've lost monthly or quarterly. Revenue churn is a more important churn statistic. It enables organizations to calculate churn in terms of revenue lost as consumers cancel. Revenue churn provides a more accurate view of how things are going in the firm.
3. Referrals
A company that runs a referral program can keep track of how many new customers sign up because of referrals. A brand can track not only new conversions but also customers who are satisfied enough to tell others about it by measuring referrals.
4. The Net Promoter Score (NPS)
NSP calculates a customer's likelihood of telling others about a brand. Though this indicator does not show whether a customer would recommend a product or brand, it assists the company in determining the overall customer loyalty rate of its users.
Conclusion
Finally, excellent customer service shows that you care about your clients. As a result, these customers will become loyal and purchase from you regularly. Connect with your present clients. They'll continue to engage with your brand and tell their friends and family about it. Customer loyalty and true word-of-mouth marketing go hand in hand.
Simply said, a loyalty program should help your brand to grow in value and enhance client lifetime value. Discounts aren't available in every reward program. Some companies use exclusive experiences to engage members.
