5 New Ways to Increase Your Customer Retention Rate in 2021

5. Improve your customer retention rate by creating a community

Another way to increase loyalty in 2021? Foster a community of your prospects and current customers.

Even if you don’t have a ton of superfans, the fans you have need a place to gather and geek out together.

This way, they can…

• experience the emotions you want them to feel
• affirm each other’s love of your product or service
• share tips and learn how to better use the product or service
• multiply

The Mayo Clinic implemented a community called Connect with five customer retention goals in mind.

Source: Community Consultants at FeverBee

The program has been massively successful:

Source: FeverBee

But you don’t have to be a mammoth publicly traded company to start, nurture, and profit from a branded community.

Aaptiv, an audio fitness instruction app, is a great example of a small business that uses an in-app community to improve its customer retention rate. Zach Beatty, the brand’s former VP of marketing, says that the whole fitness industry has a loyalty problem, and his team is out to develop casual signups into exercise addicts via the Aaptiv community. To participate, users simply share their post-workout feelings (and, if desired, a sweaty selfie) to the “team” tab of their app. A chorus of fellow exercisers congratulates them with affirmations, applause, and virtual confetti, further boosting their hard-won endorphin high.

Source: Aaptiv

“Both Aaptiv and its members succeed, in part, because they’ve given up their addiction to quick fixes, and recognized that nothing can replace hard work,” write the web analytics experts at Mixpanel. “Aaptiv members know that meal-replacement shakes can support an active lifestyle, but not substitute for one. Similarly, Zach knows that growth marketing tactics can supplement a customer strategy, but they cannot be the strategy—not if he wants customers to stick around.”

Keep the customers you’ve worked hard to acquire

You may have heard the saying, “What got you here won’t get you there.” In light of 2020’s curveballs and 2021’s opportunities, the expression is more true than ever: businesses need new takes on old customer retention tactics to develop loyalty that lasts.

Each idea above costs you precious time, energy, and money to implement. Decide which methods will work best to increase your customer retention rate by calling an Ignite Spot accountant now. We’ll spend 30 minutes with you, free of charge, to help you discover how to fix your leaky bucket and get more mileage out of your customer acquisition dollars.