5 Customer-Retention Tools Will Help Ensure That Your Customers Keep Loving You Want to become a rockstar at building a base of loyal customers? Retention is key. And tools can help.
By Victor Ijidola Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
What if your customers decided to stay with your brand, totally ignoring your competitors? What if they not only stayed but also started referring more customers to you? Customers like these could take your business to heights you never thought possible.
Related: 10 Customer Retention Strategies That Supercharge Your Marketing
Certainly, customer retention can be powerful: Gartner says that increasing your retention rate can boost your revenue by 25 percent to 125 percent). And certainly, a strong retention strategy will give customers a good reason to stay.
But, is the strategy you have as good as it could be? If you've been a regular in the marketing sphere, you know that some marketers don't make a move without the aid of some form of marketing technology. To become a rockstar at building a base of loyal customers, here are five powerful customer-retention tools you might, similarly, find useful:
1. See it all with Smartlook.
What if you could get a video of actual events on your site?
Smartlook software, available in both free and paid versions. shows you replays of what users do when they come to your site. With this tool, you can see which countries they came from, the pages they visited, the length of time they spent on any given page and which pages visitors signed up for on the site and which pages they exited from.
The tool also shows you how your pages are seen on the various devices, operating systems and browsers used by each visitor. If you want a clear window into the customer experience your site presents, and want to analyze how to improve your retention rate, Smartlook is a good tool to add to your marketing arsenal.
Related: Yes, Believe It: Taylor Swift Is a Customer Retention Expert
2. Make customers trust you with Yotpo.
Earning customer trust is becoming an increasing issue. According to Edelman's 2018 Trust Barometer: "Globally, nearly seven in 10 (70 percent) of respondents among the general population worry about fake news or false information being used as a weapon … "
When customers don't trust you, there's no way they're buying anything from you -- unless they have to. A tool like Yotpo helps you generate product reviews, photos and Q&A's, strategically planting them in places customers visit on your site.
The tool keeps putting these reviews and user generated content (UGC) in front of your potential customers' faces while they're checking out your business. In the end, Yotpo helps to solidify your customers' trust in you, and increases your conversions and sales.
3. Validate market demand with Validately.
Retention or customer loyalty won't happen for your business if there's no real market demand. You can either guess it or actually test if there's any demand at all.
There are a lot of tools out there to give you insights into whether or not your product idea is in demand or not, but Proved is one of the cheapest and most effective options.
The tool collects your product idea, sends a questionnaire around and partners with Cint -- the world's largest exchange platform -- to get feedback from potentially millions of targeted respondents. Once your results are ready, there's a dashboard you can easily reference to see whether your product will be a hit with your target market or not.
One user quoted on Proved's homepage said the tool helped to reassure her company about its product ideas: "I'm so glad to have found Proved.co online," she told the site. "The service they provide allows companies like ours to have peace of mind when it comes to our product ideas. The account management team is very hands-on, walking us through our program, even on the weekends."
4. Run A/B tests with Optimizely.
A/B tests are a powerful retention-marketing strategy. You can run tests between an item A and item B to see what your customers prefer.
For example, the computer training company MedienReich increased its engagement rate (which improves retention rate) by a whopping 40.87 percent -- after running an A/B test on two different versions of its homepage.
A marketing tool like Optimizely makes it easier to run A/B tests. It helps you run experiments on virtually every single hypothesis, item or function on your app, website or product in a short period of time. It shows you which options your target users find most useful about your product, and consequently helps you make better decisions.
5. Measure your customer retention efforts with Google Analytics.
Like millions of many other website owners, you probably already have Google Analytics installed on your site.
Besides looking at traffic numbers and sources, bounce rates, most visited pages, etc., Google Analytics can play a huge role in your customer retention efforts. You can use the tool to see:
Which page your customers spend the most time on
What time of the day users are most active
Which pages customers hate
The monetary value of your traffic
Most marketers underestimate the power of Google Analytics, yet it provides some reat functionalities for measuring your customer retention effort.
In conclusion
Other tools are available to help you retain customers and encourage them to refer you more often. Some tools will cost a few bucks but are worth it, and some cost nothing but time and effort. An example of the latter is a thank you page where giving customers a freebie can gladden their hearts and even entice them to refer your product to friends and family.
Related: 5 Ways Small-Business Owners Can Improve Customer Retention
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by implementing one or more of the customer retention tools described here. With just a few adjustments, they can help you make a difference to your business and keep your customers' love coming your way.
