How great your B2B SaaS looks will never be of any value if you cannot retain your customers. Although getting new customers is of the essence, successful B2B SaaS brands are good at acquiring and retaining customers to ensure great results.
What is Customer Retention?
Customer retention covers workflows, tactics, and strategies firms put in place to help reduce the rate at which they lose their customers. A B2B SaaS marketing policy for a B2B SaaS firm entails keeping customers engaged and up-to-date about features and products in development. It also comprises improving the overall NPS score by using excellent support and products and optimizing the cross-selling or upselling of extra software/subscriptions.
Customer retention for eCommerce businesses entails repeat sales-driving for existing or similar products over a certain period and using an offer that is personalized, together with other tactics.
Getting new customers can at times be an expensive and drawn-out process for most businesses with the cost of advertising being slightly a bit higher. According to recent research findings, increasing the rates of customer’s retention by 5 percent will increase your profits by 25-95 percent.
Here are 10 strategies to take your B2B customer retention to the next level:
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Choose Customer Retention Metrics
Every brand has a way of tracking its success. The secret is locking down the important performance indicators and success metrics.
If you know about what you will be tracking, you will be in a position to come up with campaigns and strategies surrounding your baselines and proceed from there. It needs to be more than just the profit.
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Improve Engagement of the B2B Customer
Customers will always have questions concerning your product, especially in the SaaS world. Whenever problems come up, customers will want you to solve them immediately. To help increase the customer retention rate, you should give them resources that can help solve their problems without your support. You can craft high-quality inbound content that will provide answers to their potential questions. Ensure they have access to the resources on a 24/7 basis.
When you have a knowledge base full of white papers, eBooks, webinars, and other important content, your customers will be able to find their own solutions. The bond with your brand will continue solidifying as they learn more about your product.
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Always Educate the Customers
Customers’ experience does not end after the sale of a product. When the customer starts using your product without extensive knowledge of it, it will lead to churn and frustration. It explains why education takes a center stage when it comes to B2B customer retention.
Avail video guidelines to your customers, email them newsletters and welcome messages to keep them engaged. The tutorials and guidelines will help them get most of your product and they will in return, reward you with loyalty.
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Value Customer Feedback
It’s easy to get defensive whenever customers’ feedback is constructive criticism. However, when you want to retain your customers, treat the feedback like gold. Learn everything from your customers’ feedback by accepting the negative comments positively and using them to improve on your weaknesses.
Ensure that you always let your customers know that you are noting their grievances, and show them you are working towards improving the weaknesses they pointed out. The give and take relationship will help in making your partnership stronger by encouraging them to continue working with you.
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Frequently Check the Customers’ Pulse
The churn of your customers should never surprise you. However, when you keep an eye on red flags, you can always fix issues before your customers abandon you.
Below are important things you need to keep an eye on:
- Failing to log in to your platform for an extended period of time
- Searching your website for cancel information
- Rarely using your product
Ensure that you always get in touch with a client who raises a red flag and determine what type of help you can offer. Sending a simple email or follow-up will be enough to change their mind.
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Offer Customers Gifts and Incentives
Emotions are always on high alert in B2B relationships. No one is willing to watch their business go down. They have high expectations for firms they are collaborating with.
All businesses aspire to impress, delight, and offer great service. By surprising your customers with a small gift, thank you card, or a free upgrade, they will know you truly value them and will reward you with their loyalty.
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Customer Experience is the Future of Design
Using practices that help elevate the experience of your customers will ensure that a return on investment is produced and offers a steady brand foundation. Businesses need to depend on their product’s quality to retain customers. B2B customer retention will increase when the company focuses on delivering highly functional and dependable services or products in the market.
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Develop Trust by Using Social Proof
Trust is an important factor in any type of relationship including B2B partnerships. It explains why most of the top-performing B2B retention marketing strategies depend on social proof.
Sharing customer stories, case studies, and testimonials with your customers is of great importance. It shows them new ways your product will help them. Never shy away from reaching out to happy customers for an interview or quote concerning their experience with your firm. By doing this, you will be reminding them of all you are doing for them and they will see that you value them.
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Improve Customer Experience by Offering Great Customer Service and UX
B2B customers won’t stick around when subjected to poor experiences. When they are not getting a solution or a product that meets their satisfaction, they will most likely move somewhere else. According to a recent survey, poor experiences will always force one in two customers to stop visiting a company’s website. That explains why it is important to invest in great customer service together with the user experience of your website.
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Carry out Exit Interviews
It is always sad seeing a customer go. Your customer leaving is a great opportunity to conduct an exit interview. Conducting an exit interview will offer an opportunity to know the reasons why a customer is leaving and know what areas you need to work on to prevent similar customers from cutting the cord.
Conclusion
Getting new customers is always an obvious choice for any business that is aspiring to grow. Digital platforms will make it easy to reach a large audience within a short time. Access to unlimited data has made it easier to customize your messages and optimize your ads.
Improving customer retention rates will be of greater value as it will help generate more revenue and profit.
With the guide above, be sure to successfully tackle customer retention issues within your business.
