Welcome to April, where my weather app tells me it will be 35 degrees warmer today than yesterday and warns that Sunday will be 25 degrees cooler than today. It’s a season of layering. And interestingly enough, that’s what you need to do with your marketing any time of year.
I’d love it if you could forward this email to a friend who's in business and interested in content to help their marketing. I would appreciate it. And if you’re that friend? Subscribe today.
— Ann Gynn
The Hotline
What’s the Retention Secret?
🟩 attract → 🟧 convert → ⬜ RETAIN → ⬛ amplify
Q: What's the secret to keeping clients long-term without constantly discounting or over-delivering?
A: You’ve got the right idea. Retaining customers is a smart, budget-conscious marketing strategy.
Attracting a new client costs five to 25 times more than retaining an existing one, according to oft-cited Bain & Company research. And just a 5% increase in client retention can boost profits between 25% and 95%.
Fortunately, the strategies for keeping clients aren't complicated — and they don't involve discounts. I’ve never found that lowering prices kept the clients who I wanted to continue to work with.
Retaining customers really boils down to three questions:
Do they still need you (or your product) to solve their problem?
Do you provide the service or product in an affordable and easily managed way?
Do they remember your brand and trust your services or products?
You can’t really control the answer to No. 1, so assume they do need you or your service. With No. 2, the answer relies on your business operations. If you offer competitive pricing and make it easy to acquire your product or work with your service, the answer is yes.
No. 3 is the crux of your retention marketing strategy. When they have a need, they need to think of you and believe in the value you provided them earlier. Here are three ideas to achieve that:
Conduct a brief check-in after their purchase in a timeframe relevant to the use/life of your product or service. Outreach like this lets them know you care about them and their business, and want to make sure you delivered what they wanted.
Send an email or, even better, call them to ask how things are going. Did they find your advice useful? What were the outcomes? Did they find the product solved their problem? What suggestions do they have to improve it?
Here’s how I handle it: In my consulting, I add a three-month follow-up call to the original scope of work. It allows me to review their analytics to see whether the strategy is working and offer a few suggestions to make it even better.
Deliver valuable content: Create a newsletter — even a quarterly edition can work. It keeps your brand top of mind (or at least top of their inbox for a moment) and shows you can provide value at no cost to them.
Or if you don’t have the capacity to create new content, curate some. Send a note by snail mail, email or text periodically with an article, podcast episode, or video you think they’d be interested in. Just don’t send a link – include a note about why you thought they would find it helpful.
Set up a Google Alert: With each client, I set up a Google Alert for their name and company. I also follow and connect with them on social media channels.
When they hit the news for an award, a new product, or something else noteworthy, I send a congratulatory note. When they publish an article, episode, or video, I like it and comment about something in the post. If it would be valuable for my audience, I share the content on my social channels.
The tactics for a retention marketing strategy are many, but they all center on one thing: Let your customers and clients feel seen — that you remember them, understand them, and want the best for them. That goes a long way to getting them to retain your services or buy your products again, and, as the research shows, they’ll tend to spend more over time.
Got a question you’d like me to answer in a future edition of The Hotline? Call or text Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.
The Challenge
This week: Map out what a second purchase or engagement looks like with your best clients. Use that to ground your retention marketing strategy.
How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads
The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.
What I Did With AI This Week
I played around with some AI detectors to see what they had to say about my original writing. When I posted The Hotline for this week, it said 20.5% was likely written by AI and highlighted the research paragraph and the first two questions as the culprits.
I hadn’t used AI to write the piece, but did use it to find the research. However, when I wrote about the research, I did it all on my own.
Have any AI tricks of your own? Hit reply, call, or text the Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.
The Marketing Minute
Leave a LinkedIn recommendation for someone you've worked with.
The Shortlist
🧃 Go lo-fi: Low-quality content ads are outperforming high-production ads in some cases. It’s “ugly” content, but it’s not sloppy or thoughtless.
💛 Like a lot: YouTube added Comments to Heart, an option that allows creators to automate liking comments that YouTube deems positive.
🏆 And the winner is: Awards are nice for your ego, but they don’t mean much if you don’t use them in your marketing. This week, I wrote an article for the Content Marketing Institute on how to do that.
Join Us
Not a subscriber? Join the Marketing By One community today. Sign up for the free weekly newsletter!
Got a question you’d like me to answer in The Hotline? Email me or DM me on LinkedIn. Even better: Text or leave a message on the Marketing By One Hotline: +1.440.661.3984.