If you are a business owner, product manager, product designer you may have a common question running in your mind "What keeps customers coming back for your product?"
Also, the answers pop-up with your guesses are
"Is it the features you provide?" or "User-friendliness?" or "Is it something special?"
Let's see what has worked for world-class brands and how we can apply them.
What is customer retention?
Among the various product metrics, retention is seen as the most important.
Retention refers to the process where customers return your product over and over again.
This, in a way, shows customer satisfaction and also confirms the ongoing value of your product.
Strategies you would use for customer retention vary from the strategies for acquisition.
Acquisition refers to getting new customers for your product or website. It depends on the promise you make and how attractive your product is to them.
It is the acquiring of new customers to try your product.
Whereas retention is how well you kept your promise and how beneficial your product has proven itself that they keep coming back.
Customer retention management helps a great deal with your digital experience.
Read More: 10 Best Product Analytics Tools for Product Managers and Teams.
Why customer retention plays a huge role?
It is common knowledge that customer acquisition is pretty darn expensive (around 5 to 25 times more expensive).
It is definitely more pricy to acquire a new customer than to retain the old ones.
Customer acquisition is something you need to pay for. On the other hand, customer retention is what rolls in the cash.
Retention tells you if your product is helpful to its users. It measures if it's being applauded in the market or not.
Apart from keeping the users coming back, customer retention develops customer loyalty over time.
Any percentage of loss in customer retention doesn't only reflect as a loss in income, cost, sales, or renewal but also a loss in growth.
You need to grow by 43% each year in order to maintain a steady number of users.
And it is clearly smarter to choose and invest in retaining customers than in acquiring new ones who might leave after 1 or 2 trials.
Below are some creative and realistic strategies to help you boost your retention efforts:
1. Shorten the trial period
Does the length of a trial period make a difference? This question has a fairly easy-to-comprehend answer.
If your trial period is too short, your user might not have the time to check out all the features.
But if the trial period is too long, we might lose them when they're the most excited about the product.
So, the trick is to hold them when they're at peak excitement and most likely buy.
Whether it is a long or short period, the users ended up buying the paid version. But they waited until the trial period ran out.
A shorter trial period would bring in the revenue earlier than the longer one.
2. Take a scientific approach
The best way to make ideas and strategies stick is to take the scientific way.
Retention rates cannot be improved by guesswork.
We can't do 5 things and expect that one of them might work and go with it.
Using reliable data to locate opportunities is how retention rates improve.
Brands and product managers use the objective methodology to carry out new strategies.
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Observations: Make observations on what options your customers are opting for the most. If you're considering an entry of a new feature to replace the old one, you can add that feature as an alternate option. If maybe they choose that repeated over the old one you'll know that particular feature would work.
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Hypothesis: Draw out a hypothesis from previous data to bring out a proposed or predicted explanation for bringing in a particular change.
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Test it out: Test the feature on your customers to see if they like it or not.
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Measure: You can also measure the changes in rates that occurred after the implementation of the new feature. If it shows an increase in the hurray, and if it doesn't, then well, we can always work on another feature.
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Repeat: Lastly, you can repeat the procedure for each addition you plan to bring. You'll have supporting evidence along to help you.
3. Impressive onboarding
Make sure your product has the "WOW" factor. You must have features that draw in your customers and make them want to stay.
It is your responsibility to show users the product value as quickly in the journey as possible.
The product team can use analytics tools to research which features give your users the most value.
Once you have this information, your digital team can now drive users toward these features in the onboarding sessions.
This way, users would gain more confidence in your product as they have seen your best features already, and hence, renewals also become automatic.
Customer retention is not something to lose your hair over.
Making sure your customers' first interactions leave a lasting imprint in the best way possible will ensure that they stay on.
4. Simplified reports
Teams must be focused on the important aspects of customer experience rather than on irrelevant information.
Instead of providing every team with every information detail, streamlining information in a way where only relevant information is received by each time. Not every team requires all details.
Streamlining information allows each team to get only the details that they work on. This helps the team focus on what is necessary and less distracted.
You may find potential insights in the simplifies reports from ReplayBird - digital user behavior analytics tool.
5. Customer feedback
Paying attention to customer feedback helps you step into their minds. Customer feedback is essential in bringing in necessary changes that will stick for sure.
One foolproof method of keeping your customers engaged is to quickly satisfy their needs and keep up with the dynamic requirements.
Analyzing data and working accordingly will make you better at giving your customers what they need and keep you at the top of your game!
Wrap up
Improved customer retention rates depend highly on how well your product delivers to its users.
Impressive delivery ensures that your customers keep coming back for more.
ReplayBird is a great analytical tool that helps you measure and maintain your retention rates.
It analyses data in a way that extracts the most relevant information for your brand and helps you grow on all fronts.
ReplayBird - Driving Revenue and Growth through Actionable Product Insights
ReplayBird is a digital experience analytics platform that offers a comprehensive real-time insights which goes beyond the limitations of traditional web analytics with features such as product analytics, session replay, error analysis, funnel, and path analysis.
With Replaybird, you can capture a complete picture of user behavior, understand their pain points, and improve the overall end-user experience. Session replay feature allows you to watch user sessions in real-time, so you can understand their actions, identify issues and quickly take corrective actions. Error analysis feature helps you identify and resolve javascript errors as they occur, minimizing the negative impact on user experience.
With product analytics feature, you can get deeper insights into how users are interacting with your product and identify opportunities to improve. Drive understanding, action, and trust, leading to improved customer experiences and driving business revenue growth.
Try ReplayBird 14-days free trial
Further Reading
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