According to Bain & Company, it is 6 to 7 times more costly to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. So how do you keep your customers coming back?

Without a doubt, part of the solution is getting to know your customers. Once you’re able to think like your customers, your marketing objectives become clear.

Tips on Getting to Know Your Customers

1.   Know how often they visit and what customers are buying

Fivestars helps identify who your customers really are by tracking their visits and segmenting your customers into relevant categories. Once this is done, you can send pertinent messages to your customers based on how frequently they buy from you, how much they typically spend, and how close they are to a reward. Consider this: How different would your message be to a customer who buys from you four to five times a week and mentions you on Facebook each time versus a customer who hasn’t been in your store in over six months? It’s a completely different message and approach all together! Detailed analysis and segmentation of your customers is the first step in the process of sending messages that are relevant to your customers.

2.   Hyperlocal Marketing

If you have a chain of stores in one city or in 100 cities, knowing your customers is even more important.  Hyperlocal marketing is a relatively new term, but a very powerful concept. Having your marketing message oriented around a well defined geographical area with its primary focus directed towards the interests of the people who live in that area makes a big impact! Your customers will feel like you care about the things that are important to them and their community, which also builds loyalty to your brand. Few companies strive to do this, and those that do often fail due to inadequate or antiquated technology. Fivestars’ ongoing research and analytics of your customers throughout a region or across the nation will help guide you to an optimum hyperlocal marketing strategy for your business.

3.   Have a loyalty program that all of your customers will engage with

People enroll in loyalty programs all the time and never do anything with them. Customer adoption of Fivestars is 40% to 60% higher than industry standards, which is huge! We encourage your customers to opt-in to digital relationships (text, email, and Facebook) with ease, dramatically decreasing your communication costs. Your customers should always be able to track how many points they have at any given time and be reminded when they are approaching a reward. We partner with you in setting automatic messaging and ongoing communications to keep your brand front of mind and drive customers back to your store.

People are inundated with advertising and marketing messages every place they go. So when you take the time to really understand who your customers are and send messages that are important and relative to them, you really stand out.