Customer engagement is vital for any brand that wants to get noticed, build loyalty, and generate more repeat purchases. But it doesn’t always last forever. While some customers will stay engaged – and stay loyal to your brand – others will eventually lapse. This means they’ll stop engaging with your brand, including no more purchases, enquiries, or bookings.
The good news? Just because customers have lapsed, doesn’t mean they’re a lost cause. In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of re-engaging customers and how to re-engage lapsed customers for your business.
The importance of re-engaging customers
Given that lapsed customers will stop sending business your way, it’s clear to see why re-engaging them matters. However, many businesses will see re-engaging customers as a tricky task compared to the alternative of acquiring new ones.
In other words, they must have stopped engaging with your business for a reason. You may think there’s plenty more fish in the sea, right? But you’re wrong – sort of.
While there are, admittedly, lots of other consumers out there, it’s a well-known fact that customer retention is much more cost-effective than customer acquisition. Depending on which research you read, you could be anywhere from five times to 25 times better off when retaining customers compared to acquiring new ones.
As if that wasn’t enough, Bain & Company found that improving customer retention by 5% results in a 25-95% increase in profits. Clearly, re-engaging and retaining customers should be a foolproof strategy.
So how do you go about re-engaging lapsed customers? Here are four ideas…
- Re-engaging with email
Email marketing is one of the most valuable tools for re-engaging lapsed customers. If it’s used correctly, that is. Sending out generic emails promoting products and updating customers on business news won’t make a difference for those who are lapsing. After all, it hasn’t worked so far.
Instead, you can create tailored emails, targeted at customers who haven’t made a purchase in three, six or nine months, for example. Draw them back in with a limited time offer of free delivery. Or offer a 10% discount as a thank you for their loyalty in the past. With 83% of shoppers saying coupon codes change their buying behaviour, it could have more of an impact than you’d expect.
- Two-way engagement
Customers will often lapse because they feel disconnected from a brand. That might be down to a general lack of interest or something more serious like a poor experience. Whatever the case, you can gain valuable insights – as well as potentially re-engaging them – by asking customers what’s wrong.
As above, this can be achieved with a targeted email based for customers who haven’t engaged with your brand over a certain period. Alternatively, it can be triggered by customers unsubscribing from your newsletter or closing their account. Whatever the case, showing customers you’re interested in their opinions or keen on resolving their issues, could be enough to make them stick around – especially given that 52% of people think companies need to take action on customer feedback.
- Personalization
All websites have standard service pages and landing pages which visitors are welcomed by when they find your site online. But what happens when existing customers come back? All too often, content is generic and impersonal, with 74% of customers feeling frustrated by non-personalized content.
Personalization is a way of connecting with customers that hints at the two-way engagement described above. Rather than it being solely about the customer’s interest in your products, you’ll be showing an interest in what they’re buying and looking at.
Using personalization or ‘behavioral targeting’ software, your site can be automatically tailored based on what customers have previously bought, or what visitors have previously browsed. The more bespoke user experience can re-engage customers with relevant, interesting content.
Let’s say your current homepage has an introduction to your business and the basics of your products. Existing, loyal customers don’t need to see that again. Why not show them the latest additions to a certain collection they’ve looked at before? Or the sale on products they’ve previously purchased?
- Deliver value
Sometimes, customers simply get sick of the hard-sell. While it might seem like the best option to constantly promote your products and services by email, on your blog, or on social media, it’s far more engaging for customers to see content that delivers value for them.
Try to create content that is helpful and informative or just interesting and enjoyable. How-to guides, tips and tricks and answers to frequently asked questions are all great ways you can deliver value. Talk about industry news and issues relevant to customers, rather than just your own business. Competitions are another great way to get customers involved, providing an engaging break from the usual promotional content.
How gamification can help with customer re-engagement
Whether it’s a loyalty discount or a targeted campaign for lapsed customers, re-engagement strategies require some form of communication with existing customers. Gamification apps can provide this in more ways than one.
First and foremost, the app itself is downloaded onto a customer’s phone, which can then be used to engage and re-engage with them at various points during the customer journey.
On top of that, gamification within the app can help your business gain ‘earned’ first-party data, which opens up more possibilities for customer engagement and re-engagement. Consent to contact customers by email, phone or even post is invaluable when it comes to re-engaging and retaining those customers.
Above all else, however, gamification apps reduce the chance that you’ll need to re-engage customers by maintaining engagement. Employing gamification techniques, you can facilitate effortless two-way communication with customers to build loyalty and create long-term advocacy.
Empower your business with gamification
If you want your customers to re-engage with your business – or simply avoid any lapsing in the first place – gamification is an innovative and proven solution. 3radical’s customer engagement platform, Voco, makes it easy to create bespoke, engaging experiences that keep customers coming back for more.Want to find out more? Try it for yourself online or contact our team for a chat about customer engagement.