Types of sales promotions – I

1. Reward your customers:

Customers love discounts and stuff like that. Thus, rewarding your customers will help you build a solid base of loyal, long-term customers and it will entice people to shop more at your online store. Providing great customer service is crucial to the success of your business. These days offering a loyalty point system is a popular form of sales promotions.

In this case, the customer can gain points every time they buy and then use their points to get money off future purchases, or if they buy more, they save more.

Loyalty points
Loyalty points

2. Give away freebies:

Giving away freebies not only gives potential customers the chance to test out your product but also entices people to buy your stuff!

Now, the question arises, what to give away as freebies? Well! Branded keychains, bumper stickers, magnets, pens etc. are some options. Customers will appreciate the gesture, feel valued and will think of you whenever they see their branded gift.

3. Add discount to your products:

Offering your products at a price lesser than the regular one is the most popular sales promotion strategy. Adding a discount to your products is possibly the best type of promotion. Customers love to grab a bargain, so it makes sense to offer discounts every now and then to boost your sales. Always consider your bottom line and be sure to not constantly have a sale, as people will just come to expect this as a norm of your business.

Discounts
Discounts

4. Offer virtual coupons:

Offering digital or virtual coupons is an effective sales promotion technique that will make the promotion seem more exclusive and will give the customers more of a push to visit your online store. You should send coupons to loyal customers who have spent a certain amount. You could also consider sending coupons to visitors who have experienced bad customer service. This may help convert them back to happy customers!

 

Digital coupons
Digital coupons

5. Lowest price guarantees:

Price match promise has become one of the most popular ways to promote your brand these days, particularly if you have a lot of competitors trying to leverage the lucrative market. It allows your customers to shop with you and will be safe in the knowledge that if they can get it cheaper somewhere else, you’ll refund the difference and keep your words. There’s nothing to lose for them and it means that you still get to keep a solid, long-term customer base.

Price match promise
Price match promise

Best customer retention strategies: Part V

1.Measure lifetime value:

There is a huge difference between the one-off profit you might make on an average sale and the total combined profit your average customer represents over the lifetime of their business relationship with you. Once you recognize how much-combined profit a customer represents to your business when they purchase from you again and again,  you’ll realize that customer contentment is the most important aspect of the customer retention process.

The moment you understand how much time, effort and expense you can afford to invest in retaining that customer, you will be in control of your marketing expenditure.

Related image

2. Gifts and premiums:

Premiums are promotional items like toys, collectibles and household products linked to a product, and often require box tops, tokens or proofs of purchase to acquire. Premiums fall into three categories:

i) Free premiums – sales promotions that involve the consumer purchasing a product in order to receive a free gift or reward

ii) Self-liquidating premiums – the consumer is expected to pay a designated monetary value for a gift or item

iii) In-or on-package premiums – small gifts are included with the package.

You can include these goodies into your customer retention plan to make it successful.

Premiums
Premiums

3. Tell your stories through case studies and testimonials:

Testimonials and case studies will facilitate your customer retention strategy further. It will make it easy for you to convince your existing and potential customers. They’ll help you tell your story in an easier way.

Case studies can also act as great content pieces for your blog. Once you have your reviews you can leverage them to do a number of things from increasing traffic and sales to turning them into fully fledged case studies.

Customer reviews

4. Meetups, webinars, and offline events:

You can organize meetups at local boutiques where fans of the service will meet up and have conversations about the different creative projects they are working on. You can also invite experts in your niche to participate and give knowledgeable presentations to the participants.

Make the event an iterating experience so that people can know when the next one will happen and so it will turn into a routine for your fans. Assure that all the sound and other logistics are organized appropriately and beforehand.

Offline events
Offline events

5. Sell over and over again:

Precisely, your selling has just begun when someone makes that initial purchase decision because virtually everyone is susceptible to buyer’s remorse. To lock in that sale, and all of the referrals and repeat business that will flow from it, you need to employ techniques that allay your customers’ fears and demonstrate by your actions that you genuinely care.

You should thank them and remind them again why they’ve made the right decision to deal with you. In other words,  you need to prove constantly that they have made the right decision.

Sell and then sell again
Sell and then sell again

 

Best customer retention strategies : Part III

1. Employ a proactive approach towards customer service:

Instead of waiting for problems to occur, a company that implements anticipatory service can curb problems before their occurrence. And the best way to do that is to employ a proactive approach. Knowing the problems beforehand and being ready with the best solutions helps a lot in customer retention.

Anticipatory service
Anticipatory service

2. Inculcate courtesy system:

A courtesy system refers to a powerful system that enhances the interpersonal skills of your team and changes the spirit of your organization. It involves speaking to colleagues politely and pleasantly and treating them just like you would want them to treat your customers. This will help your team to feel worthwhile and important, which will further result in pleasant social contacts at work. It also motivates them to provide extraordinary service consistently. This results in long termed loyal customers.

3. Be an expert in your particular field:

As a matter of fact, if you know every bit of your business you will likely retain more customers. Your customers will trust you, rely on you for the best pieces of advice, and recognize you as an inevitable part of their business success. All you need to do is inform them of upcoming changes. Also, you need to provide some insightful recommendations regarding their business. This proactive, approach will render customer retention strategies more effective.

4. Do whatever it takes to woo your customers:

Going that extra mile for your customers to provide customer satisfaction is an easy way to build strong relationships. By doing this, you can build some serious long-term loyalty. Moreover, if your clients know you are more than ready to go above and beyond, they will stick with you when competitors enter the lucrative market.

 

Wooing customers
Wooing customers

5. Loyalty Programs:

Loyalty programs are defined as structured marketing strategies designed by merchants to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of businesses associated with each program. In marketing generally and in retailing more specifically, a loyalty card or rewards card identifies the card holder as a member enrolled in a loyalty program. With these cards, customers typically earn the right:
i) either to a discount on the current purchase

ii) or to an allotment of points that they can use for future purchases.

Loyalty programs

Customers prefer live chat

Here we are stating a simple fact : Customers love live chat

According to the survey conducted by Forrester research, it was stated that 44% of the online customers say that having a live chat available while making an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.

The basic thumb rule in sales, is to make your customers happy. Hence giving them the basic website functionality which they want and being available for them on the customer service channels where they are the most comfortable is crucial.

Live chat acts to be an intermediate step between the conventional call center and more 21st century technologies like social media.

Business-Communication

However regardless of which channels your customers are preferring, having live chat on your website is surely more convenient than making consumers move to another site before they are able to make a purchase.

Live chat provides your clients, visitors and the potential prospects with real time answers to all their queries and concerns. Live chat is there at your website round the clock and all 365 days of the year! It usually happens that the visitors need assistance at odd hours. With live chat they are happy as they know that they are not alone on their shopping excursion and there is someone at the website, who will be more than happy to help them out, in case any assistance is required.

Hence with live chat your customers are more happy and satisfied.

So get the powerful icon, live chat at your website and delight your customers.

 

 

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