Have you ever found yourself writing B2B marketing copy with fingers crossed, hoping your company could actually deliver? You know the copy I’m talking about that describes how great your product and the customer experience is using phrases like:
- our product has the lowest total cost of ownership
- we deliver premium customer support
- easy payments with detailed monthly reporting
- quick spare parts delivery and expert troubleshooting
- product/service reviews to ensure you get the most value
As a marketer you should be confident making promises like these to prospective customers. After all, the messages marketing and sales communicate to the customer during the sales cycle sets customer expectations. However, if expectations don’t match reality, then you’ve likely got low customer retention rates. And what marketer wants to work hard acquiring new leads, only to learn your customers defect to the competition after a short time.
Retention data
Losing customers isn’t only frustrating for marketers, it’s really bad for sustaining business growth. Consider the following data:
- From Bain & Company:
- Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits 25 – 95%
- The likelihood of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%, versus 5 – 20% to a new lead
- It costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep an existing one according to Lee Resource Inc. Although I’ve seen numbers as high as 10 times depending on your product/service and industry.
Check out this infographic Customer Acquisition Vs.Retention Costs Statistics and Trends for even more data.
The point is, if your customer retention is low, don’t assume that a retention marketing program will improve your numbers. Before you start a retention marketing program, Read more