The 4 Best Ways to Boost Customer Retention | All Business

We’ve all been in situations where we’ve felt like we were “taking two steps forward and one step back.” That’s exactly what’s happening when you work hard to optimize your advertising and marketing programs, but then realize your customer lifetime value isn’t what it should be.

Your hope is that your great product or service will create loyalty and devotion. While this is sometimes the case, the truth is that it’s not always an effective strategy. If you don’t focus on your customers and make them feel valued, they’ll eventually leave—and the cost is high. According to Bain & Company, attracting a new customer costs your business six to seven times more than retaining an existing one. You need to do what you can to continuously earn your customers’ loyalty—never underestimate the value of retention. Here are four keys to achieving the level of customer retention you need to boost your top line:

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Find out what your buyers are thinking | money.cnn.com

It’s business owner’s worst nightmare: Customers walk in the door and walk right back out.

For Twiddy & Company, a 95-person firm that connects vacation renters with beach houses in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, that meant customers clicking on their Web site and promptly abandoning it. “One day we said, ‘Our bounce rates are high. People are exiting our site, and that’s a metric expression of frustration,'” says Ross Twiddy, the company’s marketing director. “Wouldn’t it be nice to know what they were thinking?”

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