The Key Tool for Business Retention: Essential Tools for Maximizing Business Retention
Ron Slee brings our skills for retention back to the forefront in “The Key Tool for Business Retention: Essential Tools for Business Retention.”
Building and maintaining strong customer loyalty is essential for your company’s sustainable growth. Success depends on keeping your customers engaged with your products and services rather than losing them to competitors. It requires dedicated effort across all dealer departments, from sales and customer service to parts and service teams—anyone who interacts with customers.
Key business retention tactics
Here are several proven approaches to strengthen your retention rates:
Regular customer engagement
- Maintain ongoing contact through email campaigns, and make sure anyone who hasn’t purchased in 9 to 12 weeks is contacted by phone.
- Use past purchases to determine which products should be promoted when.
- Identify industries that your company works with, and contact more that look just like your current customers.
Listen to customer input
- Conduct customer satisfaction surveys to identify any areas in your organization that may need to be improved.
- Respond to customers with suggestions or complaints about your operations or products.
- Implement changes based on the feedback that you receive.
Provide support after the sale
- Outstanding after sale support is important to improve customer retention.
- Schedule follow up communications, provide maintenance support, share best practices, and recommend related products.
- Customers stick with a dealer when they feel they can consistently rely on them for parts and service.
Monitor essential metrics
- Customer retention – How long you keep customers over a given period
- Purchase frequency – How regularly your customers purchase from you
- At risk customers – Customers that show signs of leaving you for the competition
- Customer lifetime value (CLV) – The estimated total revenue a business can expect from a single customer
- Types of purchases – What your customers are buying from you and which products are most popular
Two powerful retention tools
Among the many available strategies, two tools stand out as particularly effective for enhancing equipment dealer business retention: satisfaction surveys and email campaigns.
Customer satisfaction surveys
Understanding customer needs and satisfaction levels is fundamental to improving retention. Surveys conducted by a third party, especially phone surveys, provide valuable unfiltered feedback about potential issues. Phone surveys achieve a 33% response rate, far exceeding the 2% response rate for email surveys, helping you identify concerns before customers leave you for the competition. Companies that actively respond to survey feedback can boost retention rates by up to 30%. Plus, customers whose issues are addressed become particularly loyal advocates.
Strategic email marketing
The return on investment for email marketing campaigns can be remarkable. Equipment dealers working with our partner Winsby, for example, see annual ROI ranging from 208% to 10,205% – meaning customers receiving emails spend between $208 and $10,205 more than non-recipients for every $1 invested in email marketing. This exceptional performance largely stems from the ability of emails to boost purchase frequency and retention rates. Regular emails keep your brand top of mind, showcase your offerings, highlight service quality, and reinforce your value proposition. Higher purchase frequency typically correlates with stronger retention.
While satisfaction surveys and email marketing can serve as powerful retention tools, their effectiveness depends on proper implementation. Reach out to Winsby today to implement these strategies and begin improving your retention metrics and customer purchase frequency.