Day 7: 7 Tips To Increase Your Repeat Business

There are 100’s of tactics to encourage repeat business, but if you’re looking for quick, simple and effective, the following seven strategies will serve you well.

1. Get it right the first time. 

The best way to get customers to come back to you or refer you on is to delight them the first time! Simple and obvious but 100% true. 

Look at some of the complaints or feedback you’ve had and use it as a springboard to make your business better.

2. Get customers’ contact info.

It should be your goal to get some contact information from every customer who walks through your doors. With contact information – such as name, phone number, email address and mailing address – you can reach out to customers in the future, and make them aware of sales and deals. This allows you to engage them on your terms, not just when they decide to shop with you. This will also help to build a relationship with your customers. 

3. Email Past Customers

If you have your previous customers’ data and permission why not reach out to them in an email. It doesn’t have to be weekly but a monthly newsletter packed with valuable information could be the difference between them coming back to you or not. 

Email campaigns are one of the best retention tools for businesses and super cost effective too! 

Personalising email marketing and targeting a specific subscriber based on the data that you already have about them goes a long way toward building positive rapport and repeat business. It can be a lot of effort to segment your audience but well worth it once you start to build and use your lists. 

For example, those who have recently purchased something from you that you offer a maintenance service on could well come back to you if they have information about it?! 

4. Start a loyalty program.

One of the classic ways to encourage repeat business is to start a loyalty program. 

You can get as complex as you want, but simple is usually the most effective. All you need to do is gather a customer’s information, give them a special account number or card, and then start rewarding them when they make a second purchase. You can make it more simple and have business cards to stamp each time they make a purchase but there are slicker systems to monitor it. 

Not only do loyalty programs encourage repeat purchase behaviour, but they also tend to increase the average transaction value.

Here are some tips for an effective loyalty program:

• Make sure to have special offers exclusively for members of your loyalty program.
• Offer special rewards for members who refer customers to your business.
• Make use of a bonus point campaign.
• Organise a prize draw for loyalty program members.
• Make sure loyalty members are given top priority.
• Offer personalised customer service.

5. Offer customers the opportunity to provide feedback.

Providing feedback opportunities will make your customers feel heard and as though they are more than just another number. 

We often hear businesses saying they are selective when they ask customers for feedback and only ask the ones who they know had a great experience. But, there is a lot to learn from those who didn’t. There are many different methods available for getting feedback, but one of the most common is the use of anonymous surveys. When looking for feedback, it is important to ask for it often. 

And, of course make sure you provide the opportunity for customers to leave reviews across multiple platforms.

6. Little touches count

Look at the entire process of your business and see where you could improve and add extra value to your customer experience… It could be that you chose to include a handwritten thank you note once your invoice has been paid. Or send chocolates on a client’s birthday or  do give a bottle of bubbles for referrals.

Think about a way you can delight anyone who comes into contact with your business whether it is a customer, potential customer or referrer.

7. Maintain an active social media presence.

Social media is uniquely valuable in developing a personality for your brand. 

It also helps to keep your business top of mind. 

Creative, eye-catching social media posts not only garner attention for your business, but also provide your current customers with material to point to when recommending you to other people. 

Video content is especially helpful in showing the behind-the-scenes work that you do in order to keep your business running smoothly.

Remember to tag us into your post @idomarketinguk and use the hashtag #idmcalendar2022