Is retention marketing on your list of priorities? It’s certainly on ours! Keeping your existing customers happy not only helps secure more referrals but also paves the way for more cross-sells and upsells.
In 2022, we decided to relaunch our Power-Up Series, which is a customer success program we paused during the pandemic. The relaunch transformed what was previously a basic webinar series into custom landing pages, office hours, and hands-on workshops.
During the first year, 286 different accounts attended, and that attendance number jumped to 400 in 2023, which is a 140% increase. Customers who participated were more likely to stay with us – their retention rate went up by 25%.
So, if you’re looking for creative ways to improve your retention marketing, we’ve shared our framework for reaching more customers and keeping them happy.
Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy: The Three Parts
Have you ever attended an event that provided high-level information only to find that once you got into actually doing the work, you were a little lost? Our refreshed Power-Up Series decided to tackle this challenge through a three-part framework:
The high-level webinar. The webinar is our “main event” and focuses on a topic we think our audience will love (more on that shortly). For example, if the topic is email deliverability, our experts provide a high-level overview.
The workshop. The workshop takes that high-level information and helps our customers apply it to their exact situation. Think about it like college: You attend the lecture and then attend labs to actually do the work.
Office hours. Speaking of college, we designed regular office hours to meet the customers where they’re at on any issue they need help with (not necessarily related to the current topic). Customers can bring their questions to our experts and work one-on-one to solve them.
We also created dedicated landing pages for each topic with additional resources, such as articles or guides. These pages receive a significant amount of traffic. In 2022, we had 1,985 views on the landing pages. In 2023, views jumped to 4,311, marking a 217% increase.
How We Find Topics Our Customers Love
How do you know what topics your customers will love? Of course, we started by partnering with Support about frequently asked questions. We use data and anecdotal feedback to guide our decisions, and we also look at:
Industry trends. What trends are happening in your industry right now? This is often a great starting point. For example, Google and Yahoo launched new requirements to help improve email security and user experience earlier this year. Our internal data showed deliverability is a popular topic with our customers, so we decided to do a Power-Up on the topic. Attendance broke our records for a single event, with 430 registrants.
Traffic data. One of the great benefits of building a landing page for each Power-Up is that we can track traffic data to gauge customer interest. We use this data to determine what topics our audience needs help with and to guide future content creation.
Webinar participant surveys. Asking your attendees to fill out a survey is a great way to understand how to improve on an existing topic and develop future retention marketing content. First party data is an underused intelligence source for marketers. Before relaunching the series, we sent an email survey post-webinar to gather feedback, but the response rate was low. With the relaunch, we took a new approach: survey attendees directly on the Zoom platform. The response rate increased to 25%.
Here are some of the questions we asked:
- Did you find this session beneficial?
- What percentage of today’s webinar was new information to you?
- Would you like more information about {X} topic?
- Are there any other topics that would be helpful to you?
With this data, we could follow up with customers who want to learn more about a specific topic and use their feedback to guide future customer marketing efforts.
Tracking Attendance Rates and Planning
When sending promotional emails for customer retention marketing webinars, the last thing you want is a poor response. That’s why we look at historical data to plan future events.
Here’s what our internal data says:
- Avoid July and August. Many of our customers are out for summer vacations.
- Skip March. It’s often a time for spring break travel.
- Pause during December. Everyone has checked out for the holidays, so we may as well wait until Q1.
Also, our internal webinar expert Kelsey Yen, has another tip for sending promotional emails.
“I send my webinar promotional emails the same day of the week and time of day I plan to hold the event,” says Kelsey. “If engagement is high, it’s an early indicator that the time might work well for the audience.”
When thinking about webinar marketing, you can also look at past email open rates to determine the day and time that typically works best for your customers.
Customer Retention Marketing and Adding Value
From the moment customers decide to purchase our product, there’s a value exchange. We always want to be on the right side of that value exchange because once customers feel like they’re not getting enough, we’re at risk for retention problems.
To that point, I’ll share something we learned early in the Power-Up Series: Don’t sell. Whatever you create should be focused on helping your customers get the most from their existing products without any sales pitches. That idea alone could help improve any customer retention program.
And if you need help generating higher customer lifetime value and improving retention marketing, we have a webinar for you! Check out our favorite tips from our resident experts in the on-demand resource The Spice of Lifecycle Marketing: How to Add More Flavor to the Customer Journey.