7 Effective Ways to Use Salesforce for Customer Retention

According to a study by Bain & Company, increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%. That’s why companies are always on the lookout for effective strategies to boost customer retention.

More than 80% of the expenses for e-commerce start-ups are spent in marketing to acquire new customers. The cost of acquiring a new customer will vary depending on the competition and this will be an ongoing process. Instead of spending all the budget in acquiring new customers, the most successful companies invest in enhancing existing customer experience that will in turn increase the customer retention ratio.

It is a well-known fact that happy and satisfied customers are likely to purchase from the same company and the cost involved in enabling that sale is zero. For long term revenue generation, an e-commerce company should focus on increasing customer retention and reap the benefits of customer loyalty.

One tool that has proved to be highly effective in this regard is Salesforce. This cloud-based CRM platform offers a wide range of features and functionalities that can help businesses engage with their customers better, understand their needs and preferences, and provide personalized experiences that keep them coming back for more.

Understanding Your Customer Retention Rate (CRR)

Customer Retention Rate(CRR) is a popular metric used by e-commerce companies to measure the percentage of customers who come back to the website and make a second purchase. A higher CRR indicates that your customers are highly satisfied with your service and are less likely to try out other competitors and more likely stay loyal for a long period of time. A simple example to illustrate the CRR is the Apple iPhone. According to well established stats, 90% of Apple customers are likely to purchase an iPhone again without any extra marketing. Once they have used the phone and are happy with the experience, they will stick with the same company and keep buying the same. A market study by KPMG shows that 86% of your happy and satisfied customers are likely to refer your brand to their family or friends. 

Here is the formula to calculate CRR

[(Number of customers at the end of a period) – (number of customers acquired over that period) / (number of customers at the beginning of the period)] x 100 = CRR

Innovative strategies to retain your customers using Salesforce

In this article, we’ll explore the top 7 ways to use Salesforce for customer retention. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, these strategies can help you build long-lasting relationships with your customers and drive growth.

Personalize Customer Interactions

Customer experience can be vastly increased when they realize how much a business cares about them, this can be easily achieved with a deep level of personalization in every aspect of the business. Using Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the business can leverage the benefits of AI to send out personalized communications to the customers which will make them feel special. When such AI tools are streamlined, the customer will feel human-touching experience in emails, landing pages, forms, chatbots and even direct customer support conversations. 

Salesforce offers several tools that can help you achieve this goal, such as:

• Salesforce Personalization Builder: This tool lets you create personalized messages, recommendations, and promotions based on customer data, such as their purchase history, browsing behavior, and demographics.
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud: This platform allows you to send targeted emails, SMS messages, and social media ads to customers based on their interests and behaviors.
• Salesforce Service Cloud: This tool enables you to provide personalized support to customers through multiple channels, such as phone, email, and social media.

Use case example: Spotify uses Salesforce Marketing Cloud to personalize its email marketing campaigns based on the user’s listening history and preferences. This has helped the company increase customer engagement and retention rates significantly.
Using Salesforce Marketing and Sales Cloud, AXA business insurance broker was able to deliver highly personalized marketing campaigns that enabled them to sell additional insurance products to their customers without middlemen.

Create outstanding customer loyalty programs  

Loyalty programs can be an effective way to incentivize customers to stay loyal to your brand. Just by offering standard loyalty rewards, a business cannot please all the customers. It is important to analyse each customer and offer them personalized reward programs that are likely to please them the most. Such a reward program can be possible with the Salesforce Loyalty Management. This was first introduced in 2021 and since then many companies worldwide have embraced the program and have been successful in increasing customer retention. Multiple reward options are available under Salesforce like brand interactions, promotions, points accumulation, real-time offers, etc.

Salesforce offers several tools that can help you create and manage loyalty programs, such as:

• Salesforce Loyalty Management: This platform lets you create customized loyalty programs, such as points-based systems, tiered rewards, and VIP programs.
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud: This tool enables you to send targeted promotions and discounts to loyal customers.
• Salesforce Sales Cloud: This platform allows you to track customer purchases and reward them for their loyalty.

Use case example: Starbucks uses Salesforce Loyalty Management to manage its popular rewards program, which offers free drinks, food, and other perks to loyal customers. This has helped the company build a loyal customer base and increase sales.

Leverage AI-Driven insights & reports 

If you want to make the best out of Salesforce, then it’s high time that your sales team starts leveraging the immense potential of Salesforce Einstein. It will make use of machine learning and deep learning to deeply study and segment your customers on various aspects. Using such insights, the sales team will be able to segment the list of customers who are either more valuable or who are highly likely to make a second purchase. The sales teams can then send them a personalized marketing campaign using Salesforce and increase customer retention. Salesforce Einstein not only helps in marketing, but also the business can make use of their AI strength to handle customer requests automatically using chatbots. 

To retain customers, you need to understand their needs, preferences, and behavior patterns. Salesforce offers powerful analytics tools that can help you gain valuable insights into customer data, such as:

• Salesforce Einstein Analytics: This AI-powered platform provides real-time insights into customer behavior, such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and social media activity.
• Salesforce Sales Cloud: This tool lets you track customer interactions throughout the sales cycle, from lead generation to post-sales support.
• Salesforce Service Cloud: This platform allows you to monitor customer feedback and complaints, and identify areas for improvement.

Use case example: Coca-Cola uses Salesforce Einstein Analytics to analyze social media data and understand customer sentiment. By identifying key trends and insights, the company has been able to improve its marketing campaigns and enhance customer experiences.

Re-engage inactive customers with Marketing Automation  

Not all customers are going to be actively involved in your brand, every business will have a set of dormant customers who make the first purchase and never become active again.

With the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, a business can identify such dormant customers and create highly targeted and automated marketing campaigns that will create a highly personalized experience for these customers. Such personalized experiences are likely to re-engage with dormant customers and increase the chance of repurchase.

Use Integrations to get all your customer data in one place  

One of the most crucial steps in increasing customer retention is to identify problems faced by your customers and fixing them. This can be achieved by analysing customer data that is being collected at various channels on a daily basis. Salesforce allows the business to streamline all data and collate them in a single platform.

Since they have pre-built integrations with multiple data sources, the CRM enables the business to receive and process customer data seamlessly. Since all the customer experiences are managed in a single platform, Salesforce makes it easy for the business to offer a superior customer experience.

Analyze your customers’ reactions & recognize the reason why customers are leaving 

The first step in stopping the leakage is to identify the source of the problem. A customer is likely to abandon a brand if the purchase procedure is complicated or if the customer service experience is bad. Using Salesforce Wave Analytics, a business can easily identify all the pitfalls that are causing a customer to leave and then it can be plugged with a plausible solution. Once the business knows various factors that are causing the customers to leave, then it can leverage the AI features of Salesforce to fix the problem.

Collecting customer feedback is crucial for understanding their needs and preferences. Salesforce offers several tools that can help you automate feedback collection, such as:

• Salesforce Surveys: This tool lets you create customized surveys and collect feedback from customers through multiple channels, such as email, web, and mobile.
• Salesforce Service Cloud: This platform allows you to collect feedback from customers after every support interaction.
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud: This tool enables you to collect feedback from customers after every purchase or interaction.

Use case example: Amazon uses Salesforce Surveys to collect customer feedback and improve its products and services. By analysing feedback data, the company has been able to identify key areas for improvement and enhance customer experiences.

Be realistic and identify customers likely to churn  

Churn rate is the exact opposite of CRR. Churn ratio is the percentage of customers that are likely to stop using your product or service in the near future. Using Salesforce’s Einstein Discovery, a business can identify potential customers that are likely to churn and set up streamlined automated marketing campaigns to get them back. No matter how good your product or service is, each and every business will have some kind of churn rate. Those customers who are not using your product in recent times are more likely to drop out and you can create personalized communications with them to make them start using products again. 

Accelerate your Customer Satisfaction rates with Salesforce

Customer retention is a critical metric for any business looking to grow and succeed in today’s competitive market. By leveraging the power of Salesforce, businesses can engage with their customers better, provide personalized experiences, collect valuable insights, and build long-lasting relationships that drive growth.

Salesforce provides a comprehensive suite of tools and services designed to help businesses strengthen their customer relationships and drive loyalty. With Salesforce, you can easily track customer interactions, personalize your communications, and deliver exceptional customer experiences across every touchpoint.

In this article, we explored the top 7 ways to use Salesforce for customer retention, along with real-life use case examples. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, these strategies can help you boost customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy, and achieve your business goals.

Ready to take your customer retention strategy to the next level? Contact us today to learn more about how Salesforce can help you build stronger relationships with your customers.

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