- Retention: Existing Customers Revenue
- Reactivation: Existing Customers Revenue
- Referrals: New Customers Revenue
- Reputation: New Customers Revenue
- Ranking: New Customers Revenue
Sure customers come and go, but not all for the same reason. They could be unhappy, they could’ve been wooed away by a special offer, they could simply have forgotten how great your product or service is! Whatever the reason, the only way to find out the truth is to ask. If you’ve got a customer list and you can filter it to identify the ones that you haven’t seen in quite some time, use it!
- Send out a survey.
- Give them a call.
- Connect, engage, start a conversation
- and while you’re at it make them irresistible offer!
The cost to keep existing customers, and reactivate inactive ones, is far less than marketing for new ones! Find a way to give them value. Show them that you understand their needs and have a way to fulfill those needs that sets you apart from the rest. Just the fact that you reach out to them and show an interest in why they stopped buying from you sets you apart from all the rest, so don’t be afraid to do it.
Oftentimes, we don’t reach out to people who are not happy with us in order to avoid the conflict. That isn’t in any less true for businesses and their lost customers. The fear is the same. That a customer is an inactive because they’re unhappy, mad or dissatisfied in some way and it feels easier to avoid it. Okay, so then don’t call, instead send a feedback survey attached to an irresistible offer. Embrace the opportunity to make it up to them, may be even learn what went wrong so you can take steps to prevent it from happening again whenever possible. learning from mistakes and increasing quality across your organization is the equivalent of raising the the lifetime value of the average customer. That would be the $ in our formula.
- Take a look at your list
- Figure out your businesses rate of attrition.
- Whatever that number is, multiply it by what your average customer value is to get a sense of of what your business loses in terms of revenue due to customer attrition each year.
- Then figure out what the dollar value of reactivating just 5% of the customers you lost would be.
You won’t regret it and you will find it’s a bargain!
