A user-seller relationship is more than a business transaction. In order to keep a business stable and going, you need the loyalty of your users more than their initial introduction to your product. In short, you need to prioritize user retention.
How Do You Crack the User Retention Code?
After all, loyal users are satisfied and happy users. Getting the users initially to purchase a product is a good validation of the product’s quality at the beginning.
But given the competition businesses face in this economy, companies must put forth some effort and go the extra mile. Now, how does that process happen? The answer is simple: keep the user hooked.
What Is User Retention?
“User retention” is how well a company keeps its paying users over a specified period of time. Successful user retention involves giving people more than what they want.
Source: Redbytes
Michael LeBoeuf has said, “Every company’s greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company.”
The customers need to keep coming back for the company to function efficiently. You need to actually keep them, not merely get them to come back. Retention deals with keeping your customers.
Exactly How Do You Retain Users?
Getting users is easy. Keeping them is a little hard. With so many competitors coming up, it’s hard to keep your place in the market. It’s even harder to keep your users because your competitors can easily sway them.
Then what do you do to prevent your competitors from having influence? There has got to be some code you can break. So let’s get cracking. Here are some strategies for user retention.
1. Develop Smart User Retention Techniques
Coming up with new and innovative ideas for user retention is good. You must do this. But you need to focus on your already existing data and also look into what you are doing that is encouraging your users to stay.
Let’s look at an example. New businesses, especially stores, come up with an opening discount for a particular period. This sale ensures that customers keep coming back.
Another example is the trial period. Gym memberships, phone applications, and even car companies all provide trial periods. They put their best foot forward during this time in order to ensure users will sign up for their product or service.
Once you know who your target users are and who is coming back, you can figure out how to retain them.
2. Engage and Respond with Users
Businesses today interact with users a lot better than they did in the past. The reason why is their interactions are not only limited to feedback forms or restricted to when users visit a site.
Businesses have expanded their interactions to include social media. Social media is interaction on the go. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are a few of the most popular channels.
Businesses often hire social media managers to make their announcements and promotions on their social media handles and to interact with users. The managers ask for their valuable feedback. Because the users feel valued, there is more of a chance they will come back. A little interaction goes a long way.
3. Give Loyal Users Perks
Loyal users are better than satisfied users. They are happier because they get more than they have asked for, and in return, they come back again and again.
People like feeling special, as though they are a part of something exclusive. Organize invite-only parties, give out privilege cards to the loyal users, or offer exclusive pre-launch samples.
4. Go the Extra Mile for the Users
People like it when someone goes out of their way for them. You could thank buyers personally for their first purchases. Some online shopping websites send out hand-written thank you notes for the first orders.
Another way to go the extra mile would be to get in touch with buyers on social media. Follow them on Twitter, Instagram or whatever social media platform they use. Follow up on the feedbacks and complaints.
Make sure you look into each and every mention, as much as you can. If you want to go one more extra mile, you could invite people to exclusive lunches and dinners.
5. Use Target Marketing to Your Advantage
There are many types of software and services that allow you to know what users like. You could make tailored deals for each type of service. One good option would be email marketing.
You can send regular newsletters to your users, tailoring them according to preferences and by languages. If your users are exclusive members, you could provide them special coupons and offers before you officially announce these promotions.
6. Use Content Marketing to Improve User Retention Strategies
People are usually a little skeptical about trying something new. When it comes to purchasing a product, we usually opt for ones that our friends recommend. In some cases, we opt for something we have seen online and have researched in detail.
So there has to be good content about the product or the service, something even you would read. You should be able to promote your content to your target audience. No matter how good the content is, if you are unable to get it to the target audience, it won’t make any difference.
7. Improve Customer Experience
Similar to Maslow’s hierarchical needs pyramid, Forrester Research has generated a “Customer Experience” pyramid. The “Customer Service” and the “Customer Journey” components of the pyramid focus on how a company engages with its customers.
The “Customer-Centric Services” and the “Experience” components focus on the value the company delivers to the customers. If there is efficient customer service, there is customer retention.
8. Create Meetups and Offline Events
I agree that social media platforms are very efficient, but users like a personal touch. By being personal, you can build rapport with your users.
Create an official event. You could use the Facebook event option or services such as Meetup.com. Make it a fun meetup. Try not to talk about business, as having an official event is branding and promotion enough.
Provide food. People love food. Make it a regular event so that people are already waiting for the next one.
9. Give Rewards at Variable Time Intervals
If we know we are going to get rewards, we will be motivated to work harder or even buy a product. But over time, people come to expect rewards at a particular time, so eventually offering a reward won’t matter.
Giving rewards at not-so-regular intervals will help because anticipation will drive users. There is even an experiment to prove this hypothesis.
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. – Bill Gates.
You learn the best from people who get upset at you. Incorporating all these strategies can be overwhelming, so it might be best to implement them one at a time. But you’ll learn and achieve so much. Best of all, you will crack the code of user retention.
Why Do You Need User Retention?
Of course, you know why.