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Charita Chutoorgoon

Keeping up with your competition isn't easy in the digital world. Consumers are constantly being fed innovative marketing techniques and fresh content. So without a solid customer retention strategy, a business can easily get left behind. The positive side to marketing is, if you’ve already convinced a customer to buy from you once, they’re more likely to buy from you again. This is where retention comes in. Now all you have to do is give them a reason to stay.

Customer retention is the process of deterring customers from purchasing from or interacting with another company. Whilst around 44% of companies focus on customer acquisition, 18% focus more on customer retention and around 40% focus on them both equally. Customer retention comes after you’ve found and served an existing customer. Some believe this step is just as important as the first ever purchase, as it increases the likelihood of that 

. Reducing future costs in marketing and business materials.

 is crucial in having a start up business, customers who keep coming back always make up a sufficient portion of a company's profits. Once they have bought or interacted with your business once, they’ve had an insight into elements such as cost, delivery, quality of goods and trust. All of which are key factors in a customer's experience. A few reasons to consider having a customer retention strategy include:

The best customer retention strategies are dependent on business goals and insights. If a business's main goal is to increase customer loyalty, the retention strategy would use techniques that focus on this. This might include improving 

 and using personalisation. Here are 5 ways to improve your customer retention.

Although this is a given for any business, finding out exactly what your customers consider good customer service is key. Even if you’re happy with your support services, there will always be areas a consumer isn’t happy with. To improve customer service and ensure you’re doing exactly what your audience wants, including strategies such as consistent communication, a range of contact options and recruiting dedicated agents can help. The main aspect of customer service is being reliable.

Collecting customer data can be used to improve their experience. Before contacting a customer, you should know their preferred platform, recent purchases, and what previous interactions looked like. This gives off the impression that the message and services are for them and them only. By offering a personalised experience, customers feel part of the company but also have trust in the fact you care for their needs. Personalisation is much easier to succeed in if customers keep coming back as you have plenty of data and research to go off.

One way you can offer your customers appreciation is through gifts and discounts. Offering customers a discount along with a personalised message is a great way to offer an incentive. Another easy way to do this is by creating memberships or special accounts, and sending them VIP-only discounts or techniques such as free delivery.

This strategy can also include simple gestures such as sending birthday messages, putting vouchers inside parcels or having secret sales.

Sending out surveys either on a monthly basis or after each purchase can help to both keep and attract customers. These surveys not only tell your customers they matter, but they also suggest improvements for a number of business matters. A good survey will have a mixture of multiple-choice questions and free-text answer fields.

Just like many of the other strategies, building a 

 is key to building a strong relationship with your customers and the wider world. Once you’ve created your brand community, measuring it becomes easy. From this, you can understand why people love your brand, and use this to improve marketing and business techniques.

This community can also be crafted through the use of 

When calculating your customer retention rate (CRR), you’re working out the percentage of customers who continue doing business with you over a set period.

The formula is:CRR = [(E - N) ÷ S] × 100

Where:E = total customers at the end of the periodN = number of new customers gained during the periodS = number of customers at the start of the period

Example:If you start the quarter with 500 customers, gain 100 new ones, and end with 550, the calculation would be:

[(550 - 100) ÷ 500] × 100= (450 ÷ 500) × 100= 90%

This means 90% of your original customers stayed with you during that time.

For the most accurate insights, measure CRR over consistent timeframes such as monthly, quarterly, or annually, so results are comparable. A high CRR typically indicates strong customer satisfaction, loyalty, and effective engagement strategies. A lower rate may highlight issues with service quality, pricing, or increased competition.

To get the full picture, analyse CRR alongside other metrics like churn rate or average order value. This will help identify trends and opportunities to improve retention strategies and ensure your customers are coming back to your site time and time again.

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How To Create The Best Customer Retention Strategy