Businesses are spending vast sums in marketing to acquire new customers trying to replace their lost customers. But research shows that they might be better served by designing strategies to bring back your lost customers.
The chances of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%, while the chances of success for selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. Existing customers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more, when compared to new customers.
So, how are you re-engaging with your past customers? Or even, do you have a track of who had been your past customers?
There might be a number of reasons why they have left you. Probably, they have left you because of the price, or because of your poor service, or even because they have forgotten about your existence.
- Launch a strategy to get back your customers
Remember, your past customers are your best prospects to be considered again. That’s why businesses should focus on strategies to win back lapsed customers, firstly because these customers have already demonstrated a need for their product or service, they have better chances of successfully converting them to purchase mode again than the random people from a cold-list. Secondly, they already know your product or service, and hence need not spend much on brand-awareness and marketing. Thirdly, these customers’ data will allow your company to draw in more information about their first purchase which will later help to curate more win-back offers and will help businesses to identify the most profitable lapsed customers for targeting.
Again, just launching a strategy to lure your past customers is not enough, businesses should also have a good calculation of the costs involved and the return of investments on implementing this strategy.
2. Predict the reason for their leaving
Your past customers might have left you for price, or service or it could be any other reason. Probably, they have just forgotten you. So, before throwing any offers to these customers, you should try to find out what had led them to leave your brand. You can curate the new offerings in line with what value they would appreciate and willing to come back to you. The price sensitive customers might love to have a competitive price offer, although they might seem to be fickle minded but their second time stay with your brand might be longer. Also, the customers who have referred their peers, friends or families and have never complained are more likely to return. You can work out on the various feedbacks you have received from them.
3. Focus ‘NOT’ on winning back all your lost customers
Brands should not focus on bringing back every customer it has lost, rather should analyse these customers’ past behaviour to gauge their tendency to return. You can always predict the reason for leaving, could be because of the price, or because of the service or could be any other reason. It’s always a better idea to focus on your best customers.
4. Automate the process of bringing back your customers
With the advent of digitisation, brands are utilising various technologies to automate their process to save their time and money.
With the help of Poket All-in-one Loyalty Software, now you can automate and pull back all your lost customers by sending out the right offers at the right time. You can choose to automate the process of sending the best suited rewards based on the last activity date of the customer. With Poket, you can analyse the data of the customers’ behaviour and set rules to automate the various offers or rewards you want to send them. You can also set the eligibility criteria for each rewards program.
What are you waiting for? Start bringing back your customers! Get started for free!