Milica Predolac

In the ever-changing and relentless world of e-commerce, it seems like each new customer is a blessing. However, getting them to love your brand and come back to it frequently requires not only impeccable service and integrity, but a set of certain promotional skills and a lot of patience. This is why once this trust is earned, it should be greatly appreciated and rewarded whenever possible.

Customer retention is defined as a company’s capability to retain a certain customer for a certain period. Unfortunately, reading peoples’ minds is still not an option, but you can successfully evaluate the level of their satisfaction by the actions they take within your business‘ digital environment. This is precisely how customer retention works, and if its strategies are well-constructed, it is an utterly powerful tool that can improve brand awareness, loyalty, and of course, revenue.

Having a community of loyal customers who identify with a brand and come back to it regularly is the backbone of any successful business. However, that would be difficult without constructing a clear plan to keep them for as long as possible.

Being able to understand your customers’ level of satisfaction and behavior at a deeper level is precisely what can bring your business better customer retention, and increase brand loyalty and revenue. Customer retention analysis can help you achieve that, but first, you need to know how to properly conduct the given process, which are the most important metrics that should be analyzed, and what data from the numerous spreadsheets should be taken into consideration.

Silly question, right? Customer retention simply means holding onto your existing customers. The problem is, however,  it’s not always a simple process to identify, understand, measure and improve the rate at which you retain customers. 

In the SaaS and subscription business (our focus here at Akita), your rate of customer retention can be the difference between failing completely and being wildly successful. In traumatic economic times, when acquiring new business is hard, companies that hold onto their customers and even grow their customer revenues, are the ones that survive and thrive.

So, if you want to learn how to improve your retention rates and (by implication) reduce your rates of customer churn and, even better, start to grow the revenues you earn from existing customers … read on!

First impressions are powerful in business. They can easily deter an interested party or can create a strong bond that will last for years.

Having a great onboarding process goes beyond providing new customers with guidelines on how to use your product or service. It is a way to develop long-term relationships where customers feel valued, listened to and part of a collaborative process.

Imagine your customers all had the same profile, the same goals with your solution, used your software in exactly the same way, bought the same number of licenses and engaged with your sales, support and customer success teams identically. 

Imagination is required for this exercise because in the real world, no SaaS company has a completely homogeneous customer base. In the real world we need to apply different engagement strategies to differing groups of customers to ensure that (as much as possible), we maximize customer health, engagement, retention and ultimately the lifetime value of each and every customer.

Having a solid customer acquisition strategy is a must for any business, yet what counts the most is the business’s ability to keep the current customers satisfied and ready for recurring and bigger purchases. This process is called customer retention.

Establishing a long-term relationship with the customers increases brand loyalty, gives sufficient evidence that the product the business offers is of high-quality, and finally, improves sales and revenue. Since all these segments are crucial for any company, it is important to be prepared to act effectively if there is a possibility that a customer may lose interest in your brand.