Keep your customers

Building loyalty with your customers is a multifaceted process that begins with identifying and understanding your most valuable current customers. Kara Nortman, a partner at Upfront Ventures, emphasizes the importance of focusing on customers who consider your brand as one of their top choices. These customers, who turn to your brand as a go-to in their daily lives, are the ones you want to retain and find more of. To engage effectively with these customers, it's crucial to make them feel valued, listen to their feedback, communicate clearly, and involve them in decision-making processes.

Not all loyal customers contribute equally to your business. There are three broad categories: lucrative loyals, who feel a strong connection to your brand and regularly purchase premium offerings; limited loyals, who engage less and are motivated by deals; and lazy loyals, who buy out of habit but are easily swayed by competitors. Ideally, your focus should be on increasing the number of lucrative loyals due to their higher value. These customers are characterized by their frequent purchases of high-value products or services, engagement with your brand on social media and support channels, and their tendency to refer others.

Once you have identified the strategy of focusing on your most lucrative loyal customers, the next step involves implementing the right tactics to foster a vibrant customer relationship with this group. The cornerstone of these tactics is to leverage the customer lifecycle as a roadmap to guide your actions.

Creating a positive first impression is crucial to jumpstarting loyalty. This can be achieved through a well-executed and memorable welcome program. The goal is to make customers feel special and launch a loyalty that sets you apart from competitors. Whether it's a simple thank-you call or an elaborate gift box with bonus items, the welcome experience should forge an emotional connection, going beyond routine discounts.

During onboarding and ongoing interactions, it's important to use high-impact moments to deepen the relationship. Providing new customers with added value quickly, through emails, training, and showing appreciation, can significantly enhance their experience. Identifying and capitalizing on upcoming lifecycle inflection points through proactive outreach is another way to build loyalty.

To drive greater customer loyalty, it's essential to have coordination across the organization and engaged employees. Assigning responsibility for leading loyalty initiatives to a single person who can effectively work across departments is a strategic move. It's crucial to make it clear that this person has full leadership support.

The loyalty leader should aim to embed these initiatives into the organization's culture, ensuring they become lasting habits rather than short-lived fads. A strong culture fosters loyalty through consistent, positive employee engagement, recognizing that culture itself is a habit. Designing habits that make employees feel seen, heard, and valued can inspire them to embrace customer loyalty more fully.

To build a culture of loyalty, it's important to craft an internal message that explains why loyalty matters. This bullseye message should guide all customer interactions and help employees buy into the concept of loyalty. Setting clear goals that orient the company towards loyalty is another critical step. Aligning these goals with rewards can drive adoption, and explaining these goals to new hires during orientation can ensure they understand the company's commitment to loyalty from the start. Breaking down these goals into measurable, actionable steps can enhance loyalty while keeping the process engaging. Communicating why these steps are important helps to maintain focus and enthusiasm.

To secure buy-in from leadership for prioritizing loyalty, it's crucial to present data that illustrates the benefits. This includes increased revenue, lower acquisition costs, and higher lifetime value. Emphasizing the enhancement of customer experience and the development of emotional connections can underscore the value of making loyalty a foundational value and initiative throughout the company.

An assessment of the company's current loyalty standing is necessary. This involves surveying employees at all levels to evaluate how well the company listens to customers, resolves issues, delivers value, communicates, and offers personalized experiences. The results of this assessment will highlight areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. A detailed analysis by department and role will identify specific areas needing attention.

The next step is to create a cross-functional loyalty task force, drawing members from key departments such as marketing, customer service, product, and technology. This team, led by a senior leader, will be tasked with designing and implementing the loyalty program. They will be empowered to make changes across processes, training, and technology to foster loyalty.

The task force should then develop a customer loyalty roadmap. This roadmap will outline phased initiatives to enhance loyalty throughout the customer journey. Initiatives could range from quick wins, like improving the personalization of onboarding and transactional emails, to more significant projects, such as incorporating loyalty into product design and integrating loyalty metrics into employee evaluations. Clear owners and timelines should be specified for each initiative.