Marketers search for a strategy that can provide long-term results. For this, focusing on every metric is essential. Prioritizing brand awareness and attracting users, we need to have an eye on the retention rate.
In the digital world, users can always find alternatives for your service, and you may lose customers. Marketers should widen their view and upgrade their strategy to convert customers to brand advocates–loyal customers.
If you are interested in converting your new customers to returning customers, continue reading this article for tips to increase your retention rate.
What is Retention Rate?
Retention rate is the percentage of customers who returns to your website or app to make a conversion. It is an important marketing metric for all niche industries. The increase in retention rate means your customers value your product or service. And customers continue with the brand, which produces a stable revenue.
How to Calculate Retention Rate?
The retention rate is the percentage of the number of new customers to customers who returned to the website in a given period.
No. of returning visitors (given period)
Retention Rate Formula = ———————————————- X100
No. of new customers (given period)
Websites can check their retention rate using website analytic tools. Use the Google Analytics tool to look over the new and returning visitors in the audience overview section.
Why Increase Retention Rate for Your Website?
Imagine a user visits the website once and never returns. In this scenario, all the efforts and funds spent by the marketer on driving traffic give only one shot from the visitor.
For any niche industry website, returning users are important as they are loyal customers and brand advocates. Also, acquiring new customers costs 5X more than returning customers. Improving the retention rate by 5% increases the conversion rate by 25%-95%. So, for these reasons, it is required to increase the retention rate of your website.
For example, users visit your website through search engines or display ads. It is the stage of brand awareness where the visitor explores your service or products. At this point, you are not sure whether the visitor makes a meaningful action. They may search for alternatives to compare prices, quality and service.
On the other hand, the returning visitors have crossed the awareness stage. And they are convinced with your product or service quality and are thinking about conversion. And if they keep coming back, they will talk about your website, interact with you over social media, give positive reviews and increase your new visitors’ rate.
Driving new visitors is necessary but repeat customers are dominant as they are more likely to make a purchase.
Now, the question is how to retain customers. Here are tips to increase the retention rate of your website.
How to Increase the Retention Rate of Your Website?
Get Visitors to Follow Your Social Media
Social media is an integral part of marketing in the present digital world. We can utilize these platforms to gain traffic and retain users.
You can stay in touch with your users through these platforms and improve brand awareness. Post regularly about new launches, app updates, offers, and discounts with engaging content. It reminds users about your website, and you can stay top of mind when they think about a product or service.
Join relevant groups and communities on social media platforms. Try to be active with regular interactions using posts, contests, giveaways and cross-promotions. Add your social media icons to the websites to increase attraction and followers.
Publish New Content Regularly
Quality content will always grab the visitor’s interest. If the visitor is interested in consuming your content, there is a high chance of a return. So, keep writing new blogs and discussions on trending topics to get back your visitors. Utilizing content is one of the best ways to increase the retention rate of the website.
You can publish 3 to 4 blogs per week to increase brand awareness and organic traffic. This strategy is very effective for content-based websites like blogging, news & entertainment websites and more. In these types of websites, content is the centre of everything. If you are not posting regularly, the visitor loses interest and may not return to the website.
Research your users and choose the topic based on their interests. Build content to provide solutions and information according to the trends, seasons and celebrations. You can also spy on your competitors to generate new content ideas and never let your visitors leave because of not finding the topic.
Once you have created content, start promoting through social media channels and push notifications. Also, use content marketing strategies to reach more readers.
Plan Push Notifications
Do you know about push notifications? And how can they increase the website retention rate?
Push notifications are an effective way to increase engagement and retention rates in digital marketing. These small pop-up messages provide every update about the website even when the user is not on the webpage. As these are permission-based notifications, you have high engaging users list who will return to the website.
For example, a new user is on your website and is requested to click Allow on the opt-in to receive updates. Now, they become your push subscribers, and you can send push notifications to their desktops or mobiles.
To integrate a push notification service into your website, check Truepush. It is an effective free push service that provides all advanced features to send messages. It has a WordPress plugin and code integration with a simple process. So, start using push notifications and turn your visitors into returning users.
Reward Returning Users
Reward your loyal customers and keep them revisiting your website. You can start a loyalty program by adding coins or rewards to a wallet whenever they purchase or use a service. Content websites can provide download options or early access to articles to returning customers. This practice will captivate your customers and make them return to your website.
For example, a service provider can start a referral program where users can access additional features when they refer a friend. It will increase your traffic, mouth marketing and positive responses.
Including loyalty and reward programs is a way to thank your customers for their support. It will improve your relationship with users.
Retargeting Display Ads
Retargeting display ads is a strategy to send reminders to your visitors about the brand or website.
You can send display ads to the visitors when they visit your website or interacts with social media platforms. This trick will remind your visitors, and you can send relevant display ads as per their search. As they have looked over your products or services, there are high chances to click and revisit the website.
Websites can run these ads using Google AdSense, Facebook Ads, and Instagram Ads with cookies tracking. When a new user visits the website, you can place a cookie in their browser. Based on their search behaviour, the ads are displayed. This practice works well for eCommerce websites.
For instance, a visitor explored your jewellery website and checkout without a conversion. With an ads network, you can send display ads to remind users about any offers or any latest designs of the products. It will aid users in considering your website and making a purchase.
Start Email Campaign
Strategies to increase retention rate are incomplete without including email marketing. Emails are an older and great way of communicating with users. You can start by sending newsletters to first-time visitors to remind them about your brand.
Plan email campaigns with engaging and personalized content. Highlight your newsletters with new content and discounts on seasonal events. Maintain a frequency and timing for the emails so the users can know when to expect them. Make sure you send valued emails to reduce the unsubscription rate and spamming.
For all this, you need to have an email subscribers list first. Customize your email pop-up that attracts users but does not disturb them. E-commerce websites can plan rewards or discount coupons for subscribing to emails. Content websites can provide upgrades like download options, videos, resources list, reports, etc.
Check the difference between push notifications Vs. emails.
Repurpose Existing Content
Repurpose your content into micro-content across different platforms and increase retention rate and organic traffic.
We create content after deep research. Then why publish only on one blog website? So, convert this content into micro-content and promote it in various channels like social media, forums, backlink directories, etc. This strategy will help you to drive traffic from different channels, and no need to find a content idea each time.
The first step for repurposing content is choosing an article. Use the Google search console and pick an article with good impressions and clicks in a period. Now, you can break this article into small-length content and give a link to the original blog page. Or else you can also change the content format like turning it into videos, infographics, audio podcasts and others.
Improve User Experience
Imagine a user visiting your website for the first time and facing issues with loading time while exploring. There are high chances of leaving the website and not considering returning.
The user experience is important to hold the visitor and come back. Design your website with less page loading time, easy navigation, mobile responsive and attractive interface.
Conclusion
The key to increasing the retention rate is building relationships with your users. These people are important because they are close to conversions and require less effort and money to turn them into loyal customers.
Implementing these strategies will improve your website retention rate. Do good research about your visitors and try different strategies to find the best one for your business.
