As any long-term business owner will tell you, keeping an existing customer is a whole lot cheaper than finding a new one. As a retail business owner, your goal should always be to ensure that your current customers are happy. You want them to keep returning. Businesses only survive when they have returning customers.
On this page, we want to share a few tips that should help you to gain returning customers. Some of these may seem obvious, while others are fairly unique methods. All of them, if implemented properly, have the potential to increase your sales and profitability.
Loyalty programs
In the world of retail, loyalty programs have always been a proven winner. Loyalty programs give customers incentives to keep shopping at the same place. You’ve probably had the same feeling when you are part of a loyalty program. For example, places like Starbucks offer programs like ‘Buy 10 cups of coffee, and your 11th is free’, or something similar. When you are part of something like that, why would you want to go anywhere else?
Loyalty programs can take many forms, and you’ll have to choose the kind that suits the needs of your business the most. For example:
– Free product when you purchase a certain amount (either in the same transaction or long-term)
– Special loyalty discounts
– Collect points by spending cash, which can be redeemed for discounts
It is so easy to set up a loyalty program nowadays that there is no reason why a retail business shouldn’t have one. You don’t even need to custom-build your own. There are plenty of off-the-shelf solutions that you can purchase.
Keep in touch with your customers
Sometimes, you need to remind customers that you exist. If a person has purchased from you before, then most of the time they’ll be willing to purchase from you again. If not, then you best find out what the issues with your business are!
We recommend that you try to sign up customers for a newsletter. This is easy if you have an e-commerce operation — every retail business should have e-commerce, as it extends your brand’s reach. However, if you don’t have an e-commerce operation, then try and collect your customer’s email addresses in another way. This means talking to them and asking for permission to add them to your mailing list.
Once you have customers on your mailing list, reach out to them regularly — but don’t become annoying. Let them know of any special offers you may be running, especially offers related to products they have purchased in the past.
This is now easier than ever before. There are many systems available for setting up mailing lists, some of which are free.
If you want to pull in regular customers, you’ll need to put a bit more work into this. This means personalising emails. This is something that might be a little bit easier if you have an e-commerce solution. Amazon is probably the best known of this. They regularly track the purchases of their customers and provide recommendations of products that a person may like in the future. This will likely take a bit of work to set up, and it will cost money, but if you can nail your product recommendations, then chances are that you’ll be sitting on a goldmine.
Social media
Social media serves a few purposes:
- Keeps people interested in your business and up to date on your business, including new products and promotions.
- Provides access to customer support.
- Allows people to review your business.
Social media can benefit your business massively. All retail businesses, no matter the size, benefit from a social media presence. If your retail business is mostly online, then having a social media presence may be the primary way that your customers get in touch with you. As you’ll see shortly, having decent customer service goes a long way to helping customers stick around.
Social media can also be important to help grow your business. It is not uncommon for smaller businesses with a social media presence to gain customers far outside of their normal catchment area and advance to international trade.
Social media isn’t just good for retaining returning customers, it is great for gaining customers in general.
Customer service
Customer service can make or break a company. If you have terrible customer service, people will never return. Customers want to know that when they come to you, they’ll have a good experience. They know that you’ll cover them if something goes wrong, such as making the returns process easy. Some people are willing to spend a little bit more just to have decent customer service experience.
Make customer service part of your brand. Train your staff to offer a service with a smile. Offer a service where you can recommend products to customers. Refine your sales and return processes. Listen to customer feedback and act upon it.
If your retail business is known for quality customer service, then your business will thrive. Customer service is an area where many smaller businesses struggle.
Keep your store unique (and update often)
Your retail operation should have a unique selection of products. You want a unique selling point (USP) that keeps people coming back for more. A good example of this is the casino industry. Most slot machines in the casino business have a high house edge, which lowers the chance of the player winning. However, some games have a return to player of 99%, meaning there is a 1% house edge. The improved chance of winning keeps players spinning the reels. There are a few of these games too, some of which you can see at www.johnslots.com/en/slots/rtp/99-rtp.
This means your business needs to offer something a bit different from the norm. There should be a reason why people want to come to your retail business rather than a similar business that sells the same products.
Make sure that you keep your product range refined too. Keep giving customers a reason to come back and see what you have on offer. You want customers to see something new each time they come to your retail store. If they do, there is a higher likelihood they will keep returning, and the more they return, the more money they’ll spend.
Final thoughts
These simple tips should help you obtain returning customers for your business. However, simple is the way to go. These techniques have been refined, and put into practice, by some of the biggest businesses. Every single tactic here is used by key retail players like Amazon. The hard part is implementing them, but once they are up and running, your return customer rate will soar.
