What does a happy customer do once their purchase is over? Well, for starters, they stay. And that is what customer retention is all about: customer loyalty.
Customer retention not only saves your team’s time and effort, but also attracts a wider audience. Retaining customers can be tricky, but we do have one secret ingredient that spruces up that customer journey for sure – interactive content. Interactive content like calculators and quizzes can add real value to the customer and increase customer engagement. Thus, increasing the chances of gaining loyal customers. Today, a lot of companies use quiz makers and calculator builder tools to build these experiences within minutes. Let’s have a look at how you can increase customer retention through interactive content.
What is customer retention?
Customer retention refers to the ability of a company to retain its customers over a specified period of time. It’s about engaging the customer and providing them with an experience that makes them come back to you. Your probability of selling to a customer who has already bought from you is 40% more than someone who has never bought from you.
How can you retain your customers using interactive content?
Interactive content adds value to a user. That’s why users don’t only engage with it, but also offer lead information more readily. Here are the different ways in which you can use different kinds of content to hold on to your customers better.
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Send relevant content based on the funnel stage with quizzes
Everybody loves quizzes! They can be fun and entertaining and also educational and informative. Now every buyer goes through a journey, something we like to call the ‘sales funnel’. You can send them content depending upon the stage of the funnel they’re in (Awareness, Consideration, and Decision). It’s important to keep your content relevant, otherwise, it makes the user lose interest.
For example, consider Pottermore. It’s an online platform for Harry Potter fans where they can live a virtual magical life. As soon as you begin the process, you get a quiz for ‘Which House Do You Belong To?’. Now if you know the Potter world even a little bit, you’d know how important it is for a fresh visitor to take that quiz. The quiz tells them something personalised and encourages them to explore the game further. It is this kind of information that improves their experience and makes sure that they’d come back to engage with you further.
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Add value using calculators
Calculators are always useful, whether in a mathematics exam or in a marketing strategy! They can be used to add value to a customer even after they’ve purchased from you. You can target them with customised calculators based on their needs and preferences. This will enhance their customer journey and develop trust with your brand.
Suppose you are a B2B company that develops marketing strategies for other brands. You are aware that your customers have been having issues with customer retention. Now, what you can do is create a calculator for calculating the customer retention rate. once they have input their data and calculated their rate, you can direct them to your services that can help them increase it. You can also direct them to a blog or an eBook, whichever resources are available to you! This will help them improve their business as well as help you market your services.
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Aid customer education with assessments
You can’t ensure a good user experience unless your user knows your product well. Assessments are the best way to help them around it. Assessments are also useful in assessing your customers’ needs and providing information of value. Moreover, you can also customise your assessments based on the service that your customer is interested in.
Let’s have a look at this interactive quiz case study. Inventrom is a fully integrated platform that provides cloud-based solutions. They created an assessment in order to promote their IoT and machine learning (ML) training programme. It was a test that determined whether a user was eligible for the training scholarship or not. This was a way to enhance their brand awareness as well as gain more participants. They used the assessment to gain an idea of their potential users which ultimately helped them deliver a more personalised experience to them. They also included a tutorial video at the end of the assessment in order to explain their product better. They fully utilised interactive content in order to offer the best to their potential participants and customers.
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Ask for feedback with surveys
No conversion is one-sided. Feedback allows your customer to feel that they have a voice. And what better way to ask for feedback than a fun, interactive survey. Surveys help you gain information about your customers, work on your service, and improve their experience. 96% of customers say that customer service is an important factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand. No matter which industry and what business, you can create a survey to find out what your customers think of you! It also makes them feel valued, and thus increases the likelihood of them purchasing from you again.
Uber asks its customers to give feedback after every ride, no matter how short or long. This allows customers to voice appreciation as well as their concerns regarding the trip. This is what makes customers feel that their problems will be taken care of and they will have an even better experience next time. Feedback is a great way to hold on to customers. It lets them help a business in improving itself! What could be better?
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Provide good customer support with live chats
Live chats are the little popups you see on websites where you can ask any query or raise any concern at any point of the day. They’re really helpful because they allow you to avoid losing customers due to technical problems, comprehension issues, and so on. Now, you can use all kinds of interactive content to spruce up your live chats too!
For example, take Sephora, the make-up brand. They use live chat to help users with their queries. They stay with them from their first onboarding till their purchase using live chat. Sephora can use various types of interactive content to enhance their live chat even further. They may create an outcome quiz for ‘Which Lipstick Shade Suits Your Face The Best?’. They can also create polls in order to find out the colours they prefer more. Sephora doesn’t only make their customers more brand-aware but also helps them understand their needs better. Thus, they are one step closer to customer retention!
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Collect customer information with chatbots
Just like surveys, you can use engaging chatbots to collect data about your customers too! Chatbots are more interactive and go beyond feedback. You can use them to understand what your customer actually wants from you in order to make their buyer’s journey more personalised. As opposed to the live chats, chatbots respond with pre-determined answers with the objective of gathering specific data. And most importantly, these chatbots are available 24/7 to help out customers!
Take the example of a wedding planning company. Before they even take on the client, they can get the entire information on the whens and whats of the event. This will help them assess their potential customer and even streamline their process better once they start working with them. Have a look at this wedding planning chatbot created by Outgrow:
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Reward your customers with contests and giveaways
Nobody says no to a nice treat. (You can ask your pet to see if we’re wrong!) And your customers won’t either. Contests and giveaways are the perfect way to engage your customers and encourage them to come back to you. In fact, statistics show that contests and giveaways have a conversion rate of almost 34%, which is higher than other content types. It develops a positive image towards your brand and gets you a good amount of promotion. If that’s not a great deal, we don’t know what is!
Contests and giveaways are extremely cost-effective and help you establish a strong online presence. You can ask your online audience to post a picture with your product, write the most creative review, or even share a personal anecdote. You can also make it customer exclusive to make them feel special! Here’s an example of a giveaway held by Sticky Brand Studio. They hosted a St. Patrick’s Day special giveaway to gain more traction and popularity. You can offer an extended free trial or a discount coupon in order to increase purchase intent and encourage customer retention.
Conclusion
Customer retention is the perfect way to reduce your efforts while increasing results. Working towards increasing customer retention produces loyal customers and also helps you improve your brand image. Nothing beats word of mouth after all. Interactive content is your one-stop strategy to achieve that. We hope we’ve helped you gain an understanding of how you can use it to boost your business. If you have any new ideas, you know where to find us.
Originally published Sep 01, 2020, updated Jan 16, 2023
