Author: Thomas Ligor

Thomas Ligor
Thomas Ligor

Building Customer Loyalty through Relationship Marketing

Thomas Ligor New York

Nowadays, it isn’t enough to simply attract new customers to your website or business. You must retain their loyalty to keep them coming back. Thomas Ligor of New York discusses below how relationship marketing can help with this lofty endeavor.

Relationship marketing helps build and keep customer loyalty by personalizing the experience and rewarding loyalty to the brand. For example, many businesses have loyalty or rewards programs. A business can also retain repeat clients by improving customer service, building a community, sharing educational content like blogs and newsletters, and following up on their experiences.

More details below on the various types of relationship marketing strategies that exist, and why this tactic builds a trustworthy brand.

Relationship Marketing Strategies

There are a handful of relationship strategies that are proven to generate customer loyalty at scale. Utilizing such tactics will improve customer retention, increase profits, and broaden the business’ reach.

Personalized Experience

Personalizing the customer experience is one of the easiest ways to boost their devotion to the brand. By using simple, personal details such as their name in a confirmation email, for example, profit margins can increase by more than 25%. Other ways to personalize the customer experience include:

  • Birthday greetings and special offers
  • Profile creation
  • One-on-one interactions (such as live chats and other customer-facing employees)
  • Provide more choices in communication (social media, live chat, email, phone/text) to cater to every customer preference
  • Ask for their feedback
  • Personalized service offerings

Implement Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs that reward customers with points or other redeemable rewards (such as free products) are an incredible method of encouraging customers to keep choosing the same business over and over again.

Guarantee Great Customer Service

Customers who have a positive experience interacting with a business are much more likely to return. Improving the customer experience and developing more involved training for customer-facing employees are reliable ways of guaranteeing that clients feel validated when they have concerns and feel that their needs have been met.

Thomas Ligor New York

Build a Community

Building a community for a customer base makes them feel more connected to the business. Prime examples of how to foster community include:

  • Forums
  • Brand events
  • Support of a specific cause for customers to rally around
  • Leveraging user-generated content
  • Hire a social media manager to interact with customers across all major online platforms
  • Utilize the skills of a community manager

Generate Educational Content

Creating content like blog posts, videos and webinars, interactive quizzes, questionnaires, and surveys, and more, will help customers engage with the brand in more meaningful ways. Plus, getting in front of the audience more regularly with various content puts your brand at the forefront of a customer’s mind.

Why Relationship Marketing Works

Relationship marketing is effective at boosting profit and customer retention for one reason: people feel valued by the businesses using these strategies, so they’re more likely to return. Additionally, customers develop a bond with companies that take these steps to connect more meaningfully, and it’s unlikely for them to receive the same top-notch experience with another business or brand.

Ultimately, customers want to give their business to brands who make an effort to be communicative, receptive, and personal in their dealings with customers.

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Strategies for Retaining Customers and Ensuring Loyalty

Thomas Ligor New York

Customer retention — a company’s ability to keep customers coming back for more — indicates high-quality products, services, or brands. The higher the retention rate, the more satisfied are customers of a particular business.

And companies across the globe are striving to obtain the sky-high retention rates. But to do that, Thomas Ligor of New York says that businesses need to employ these loyalty and retention strategies to ensure consumers don’t switch to other names offering the same product or service.

Customer Feedback Mechanisms

Perhaps one of the major factors influencing customer retention is knowing how they feel. Understanding consumers’ sentiments and what they like or dislike allows businesses to make effective changes, refining their approach and ensuring they meet needs.

Ultimately, this requires a customer feedback loop — a strategy intended to continually improve and enhance a company’s product or service based on reviews, suggestions, and opinions.

There are four stages in a customer feedback loop:

  1. Collect consumer feedback through surveys, online reviews, social media monitoring, call data, live chat, and more.
  2. Analyze feedback to understand how to take action.
  3. Apply feedback and test to ensure it’s working.
  4. Close the loop by following up with consumers.

With all four steps in place, businesses have a better chance of retaining loyal customers.

Personalized Communication and Experiences

Evergage data suggests 99% of marketers say personalization has advanced customer relationships, with a whopping 78% stating it has an “extremely strong” impact.

This makes sense when considering that no two people are the same and, therefore, neither are two customers. In this modern world, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work.

Instead, businesses should communicate with customers on a personal level and ensure all offerings remain relevant to the individual. The attentiveness will encourage them to stick around.

Thomas Ligor New York

Loyalty Programs

Customer loyalty programs, sometimes called reward programs, are another effective customer retention strategy. They motivate people to keep buying from the same place.

There are many ways to implement such programs. But the points program is the most popular due to the ease of earning and redeeming it.

Typically, customers can redeem their points for money off their next purchase, giveaways, or discounted offerings. While they used to be managed by loyalty cards, many companies have switched to mobile apps, making it even easier.

Smooth Onboarding Processes

First impressions don’t just matter on a face-to-face personal level — they matter for consumers too. After the original excitement of purchasing a new product or service, customers often default to their initial experiences with the company; if it is good, they’ll stay.

A smooth onboarding process is one of the many keys to retaining customers, setting businesses up for generations of success. Companies should strive to make it personal, hands-on, and as frictionless as possible.

Surprise in The Best Way

Finally, adding seemingly spur-of-the-moment gifts to customers’ orders will exceed their expectations and increase the likelihood of them returning to purchase more.

It brings unexpected joy that customers won’t forget. And no, the gifts don’t need to be expensive or big — just something to show customers they’re buying from brands who care.