The higher your rate of customer retention – the greater your chances of gaining a better ROI.
The retention of B2B customers has become more pertinent in the current climate. The importance of keeping and rewarding existing customer loyalty cannot be overstated.
According to B2B International, most companies lose 45-50 per cent of their customers every five years. To place further emphasis on just how imperative customer retention is in the B2B channel, The Business Research company stated that winning new customers can be anywhere up to 20 times more expensive than retaining existing customers.
Gaining new customers requires more time, money and resources deployed into advertising and marketing, which inevitably impacts on expenses. This means the higher your rate of customer retention – keeping their relationship and ideally increasing it – the greater your chances of gaining a better ROI.
In the B2B channel, customer retention will always reap greater rewards as companies and businesses traditionally seek a longer relationship than consumers do. Chasing and winning new clients unquestionably has its benefits, but it can cost and is therefore more effective when activated together with business retention.
“Looking at how customer loyalty has developed over the past two years […] the loyalty industry has never had such strong prospects.”
While maintaining existing customer relationships offers financial growth and incentives for your business, there is also the opportunity to reward customers for improvements in performance or recognise them for their loyalty.
The loyalty landscape is far more complex now than it used to be, yet there is no better time to develop your own B2B customer loyalty strategy than today.
Because of this changing and evolving landscape, the retention of B2B customers needs to be continually focused on. If you aren’t looking at ways to recognise and reward your customers, you may leave that relationship open for a competitor to approach and switch with better deals or terms. With so many avenues of communication and information readily available, loyalty should be harnessed and recognised in as positive a manner as possible.
There has never been more options available to businesses that are looking to match rewards with individuals, demographic or budget. Matching the right reward can go a long way to achieving retention in a cost-effective way.
Merchandise rewards
Merchandise rewards are a proven winner in reward programs, as they give you a wide range of options to play with. Merchandise can be tailored to any demographic, so your target audience gets a reward selection that suits them. It offers the best value for budget and can be customised to meet any budget.
Branded Cash Visa prepaid
Branded Cash (Prepaid Visa) is the natural evolution of store gift cards and cash rewards. Branded Cash gives program participants flexibility to get exactly what they want, whilst delivering a way for program managers to brand their program (and business). Branded Cash offers something no other reward can: your brand in customers’ wallets.
Every time they pull the card out to use it, your brand is staring at them. It’s instant, easy and cost-effective brand awareness for your program and company.
Travel & Events
Travel incentives and events are seen as the pinnacle of reward offers. Events inspire and excite customers to achieve results like no other rewards. Travel celebrates the success of partners who’ve achieved significant results or gone above and beyond expectations. When looking at the retention and loyalty of a customer, spending time with individuals at the destination offers opportunities to enhance relationships further. As we move to open borders, travel incentives should remain in the mix if you want to optimise behaviour change and success.
Targeted communications are another key area to consider when targeting customer retention. B2B has long been viewed as trailing B2C when it comes to strengthening a relationship with communications. But that is a myth. B2B organisations have evolved their CRM and engagement tools to communicate targeted messaging and offer to customers, where personalised, emotion-based outcomes strengthen their advocacy to a brand, product or service.
B2B customers rely on relationships and reputations to a greater degree than consumer-facing companies – offering rewards and personalised messages to your B2B customers keeps you front of mind. By adding benefits and recognising their efforts you remain deeply connected with B2B customers via an incentive or loyalty program, which will directly improve sales.
