As a business owner, the ability to make your clients and customers feel special is crucial for customer retention. The fact is, some customers are worth more than others. Some of your customers will spend more than others, send you more referrals, and stay loyal to your business longer.
These are considered your high value customers, and they are worth more than the average customer. Don’t get this confused with customer spend; while customer spend is a metric in determining high-value clients, it’s not the end-all be all. For instance, one customer who spent $1,000 in a single transaction isn’t the same as someone who has spent $50 here and there for years, and recommend others to your business. Here’s what you need to know about creating a strategy for the high-value customers in your field:
Identifying Your High Value Customers
Having a CRM platform in place makes it easier for you to calculate and understand the lifetime value of each customer is necessary. Knowing the lifetime value of a customer is important. You can get this number by comparing the business’s predicted customer lifespan to the customer’s revenue value. If you have a referral program, this is also incorporated into the equations; customers who continually refer others are highly valuable today, as the majority of consumers will turn to reviews and trust the opinions of their friends.
Providing a VIP Service
Once you’ve identified your high-value customers, you can provide them with a VIP level of service. What you’re able to offer them depends on the nature of your business. For example, in a service-based industry like real estate, you might send them wine or a gift basket during Christmas. In the ecommerce industry, you might send all your high-profile clients exclusive or discounted access to new products. As a local business, you might invest in custom printed envelopes and send your high-value customers handwritten cards during the holidays, or extra rewards for their loyalty. What’s important is that you take your service up a notch to maintain above-average relationships with each and every VIP.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a necessary strategy for any business, regardless of industry. The fact is, email marketing is still the preferred form of communication between brands and consumers. It offers simple, informative, and non-invasive interaction between you and your customers. It’s cost-effective, and when utilized correctly, can have a high return on investment.
With the right tools in place, you can segment your subscriber list by lifetime customer value, creating separate campaigns for high-value customers. This gives the ability to create a more tailored messaging campaign for people that dedicate their dollars to your products and services. And in business, everyone likes to feel special. Personalized messaging goes a long way towards retaining customers and keeping them coming back for more.
Create Value for Customers
Wouldn’t it be great if all your customers were high-value customers? While this is almost always impossible, there are things you can do to infuse more value and build high-value customers. For starters, you can analyze your data to determine what’s most important to them, and what drives them. Which pages are most popular on your website, and which search terms are generating the most traffic? Which blog posts are most popular? Analyzing your own metrics will help reveal what’s most important to your existing customer base. From here, you can identify ways to push value-adding changes.
Attracting High-Value Customers
There are also ways you can attract customers that are inherently high-value, and come to you as such. For example, think about the arsenal of influencers you already have at your disposal: your staff. When your staff encourages other people to come on board, it puts a name to the brand, and encourages their referrals to be more loyal by default. Therefore, in addition to having a referral system in place for your core customer base, consider offering a tailored referral program to your employees.
As the owner of the business, you can also put yourself in additional networking spaces to further expand your reach. In addition to attending conferences and events in your industry, you should also attend local events and get involved with the community.