No matter how good your business is, clients will come and go. However, you want to gain more customers than you lose at any given time.
The rate at which you lose these customers versus the number of customers you acquire is what we refer to as customer churn.
You can calculate your business’s churn rate as churn rate=(no. of customers lost) ⁄ (total number of customers). This simple formula gives you a powerful index for knowing if you are retaining or losing clients. Beyond that, it lets you know how satisfied your clients are with the quality of services or products you provide.
You must be proactive with your customer retention, because decreasing your customer churn rate in the early stages is an easier problem to solve than retroactively winning clients back.
How to improve your customer churn rate with performance marketing
One of the ways to help lower customer churn is performance marketing. Performance marketing is a catch-all term for marketing based on performance. Although the term used to only apply to marketing tactics where an advertiser pays exclusively when measurable results are achieved, it’s now thought of as a combination of paid advertising and brand marketing. So how do you use performance marketing in decreasing your churn rate and increasing your customer retention?
Acquiring an ideal audience
The very first step in ensuring you’re using performance marketing tactics to lower your customer churn rate is to target your ideal customer.
Even if you’ve created the most helpful product or service, chances are high it’s only going to be extraordinarily helpful and applicable to a specific subset of the population — not everyone.
To make sure you’re attracting and acquiring ideal customers who will continue engaging with your company — and hopefully even one day become raving brand ambassadors — it’s your job to correctly advertise your company to the target audience you can most help.
Now, if someone outside of your target audience happens to buy, that’s great! But to keep your churn rate low, you’ll want to hook the customers who need your product or service so desperately to fulfill their pain point that they keep coming back.
How do you practically do this in your marketing tactics?
1. Adjust your PPC ads so they display to the proper audience.
When running ads on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram, you have the option not only to cater your ad copy to your ideal customer, but also adjust the ad settings so that you’re only spending money to display your ads to super relevant potential customers.
Don’t skimp over adjusting your demographic settings when running ads. Typically, you have the ability to target based on:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Education
- Job title
- Interests and hobbies
- Prior behavior and purchases
- Device usage
- Connections
- And more
Aside from social media ads, you have the option to use search engine ads. Google AdWords is the most popular search engine marketing tool available at the moment. It uses keywords to display ads to people searching for content on Google.
When a user conducts a search using keywords relating to your ads, pages and ads embedded with those keyword phrases appear at the top of the search results.
So in these instances, using search engine optimisation (or SEO) techniques and including keywords into your ad copy and results page offer you the opportunity to connect directly with potential customers who are looking for exactly what you have to offer!
2. Post sponsored content on highly relevant and reputable websites.
The main advantage of sponsored articles is the high possibility of attracting clients with long-term purchasing behavior. Not only does sponsored content significantly drive traffic to your products and services, it increases your brand’s visibility within specific groups of audiences that are just right for you.
When you’re able to publish long articles about your product, you’re providing your audience with an extensive description of the products offered by your business. As a result, clients and customers come to your product with a more in-depth understanding of their needs as well as your proposed solutions.
That means they’ve been educated, nurtured, and primed to buy. So, just make sure you’re posting this content on highly relevant and reputable websites.
There are plenty of publishers out there with low-quality content and traffic. By posting to high-quality sites in a similar or adjacent niche as your company, you’ll be attracting people who are more likely to be interested in your offerings — and happier customers in the long-run.
Nurturing new leads
Once you’ve acquired a new customer, the best way to keep them buying again and again is 1. to have an amazing product (but we think you already have that!) so, step 2. is email marketing.
Sending consistent communication via email helps keep your brands top of mind for the customer. It also gives you the opportunity to connect with your audience on an emotional level, introduce them more to your brand values and personality, as well as educate them around your product and their pain points!
That’s why we recommend:
1. Sending a welcome series to new customers (and subscribers)
Subscribers who get welcome emails are, on average, 33% more engaged with your brand. Most customers expect to hear from you immediately after joining your email list. And it makes sense why you should! When customers sign up, the intent is there. They’re saying, “hey, I’d like to engage with your brand and hear what you have to say.” That’s why you should always send a welcome series to new customers and subscribers to take full advantage of this perfect opportunity you’ve been given.
2. Sending a post-purchase email series
The second email sequence we recommend is a post-purchase flow. You can use these emails to:
- Explain how to use your product or service
- Share other customer testimonials to get your new customer excited about the transformation coming their way if they stick with you
- Remind them to reorder!
- Snag a review for your website
- Offer a discount code on their second purchase
Now is a great time to convert this new customer into a repeat customer. It’ll help reduce your churn rate, and repeat customers’ order sizes (and values) tend to increase over time.
3. Checking in with customers through surveys
One of the best actions you can take for your business is understanding your audience. You can do this through customer surveys sent out via email. Ask questions like:
- What brought you to [insert company name]?
- How can we improve your experience with [insert product name]?
- Multiple Choice: Of the following categories, which are you interested in learning more about?
- What’s been the biggest challenge with [insert product name]?
- Is there anything else you’d like us to know? (If your customer has complaints, chances are they’ll tell you.)
Use this information to understand how you can better serve your customers and avoid customer churn.
These surveys are only beneficial if you accept the feedback (don’t take it personally, trust us!) and put it into action. You’ll end up creating a better overall user experience.
4. Maximising your email personalisation capabilities
These days, email personalisation means so much more than a name in your subject line. While you should refer to your subscribers by first name (in moderation and where applicable), it’s also helpful to personalise your emails by how your reader has interacted with your website, which products they’ve purchased, and how they responded to your survey questions. Even something as simple as emailing your subscriber on their birthday can go a long way in building a relationship and trust.
So, you’ve acquired a new customer… That’s totally worth celebrating! But, after gaining a new customer’s trust enough to purchase, it’s time to maintain that relationship to avoid customer churn. By landing the right leads during initial advertising and then nurturing through several possible means, including email marketing tactics, you’ll be able to better avoid customer turnover. Which performance marketing tactic will you begin applying to help reduce your churn rate this week?
