Communicating Retention Campaigns

When developing a retention campaign, it needs to be decided very early on how you would like to communicate the message to your client base. Based on that decision, many different elements of the campaign will be impacted such as budget, recipients, marketing material and even the incentive itself. So what are your choices?

The most commonly used communication channel is email marketing. A well designed and written newsletter is very effective and can create a real buzz around your brand. It is also one of the less expensive communication tools as the design costs are rather low in comparison to the amount of people you can communicate to. It is therefore the most widely used method for retention campaigns.

An old time favourite is direct mailing which I suggest should be chosen when communicating a very special incentive to a smaller segment of your client base. Nowadays, it can sometimes have a bad reputation as people tend to think of badly printed flyers when talking about direct mailing. I still think direct mailing is a great tool to keep customers attached to your brand but for that the offer needs to be tailor made and packaged in a way that surprises the recipients. The longer the recipient can engage with the direct mail item, the better he or she will remember your offer.

Text messaging is another form of communicating retention campaigns. In this case, the offer needs to be very precise and catchy because you need to convince your customer with very little text and no visual support that your incentive is worth coming back for.  Usually, I recommend using text campaigns as a follow up.

Another approach of communicating your campaign is by using social media. Talking directly to your clients via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc is a great way of offering personalised incentives and it gives your clients the chance to provide immediate feedback. On top of that, clients can share your offers and their positive experience with others, instantly. It is therefore a communication channel that should not be ignored.

Calling your customers is another way of retaining them. Marketing calls are very tricky and can sometimes do more harm than good. Therefore a phone campaign needs to be well thought through and should not only consist of the marketing message but primarily give the customer the chance to voice his or her opinion. If the client feels that the input given matters and is taking into consideration then the chance of him or her staying with your brand is a lot higher.

These five communication channels have the best track record in enhancing retention campaigns.