Driving Revenue with Cross-sell Retention and Win-back Strategies

When developing your marketing plan, keep in mind that the old adage is true – your current and lapsed customers are your best prospects. Marketers have a 60-70% chance of selling new services to active customers, and a 20-40% chance of retrieving business from lost customers, but only a 5-20% chance of making a sale to a cold prospect. Integrating programs to address customer retention and win-back is one of the surest ways to deliver marketing ROI.

Building Long-lasting Relationships
The average firm loses over 20% of its customers every year. This may not be a surprise to you, but left unchecked, attrition can directly affect profits and growth while hindering new customer acquisition strategies. In a recent report by the International Customer Management Institute, their B to B survey showed that customer satisfaction rates increased by 34.5% with the implementation of a cross-sell retention program. Continuing to enhance the overall value proposition of your product or service to your current customer base will motivate them to maintain the business relationship.

A Proactive, Targeted Process
The good news is that while retention and win-back marketing programs are among the most profitable endeavors a company can undertake, the bad news is that you run the risk of turning your message into spam if it isn’t relevant. It is critically important that you begin with a thorough understanding of your current customer, or in the case of a win-back program, your past customer. Bombarded with multiple irrelevant offers, you’ll create the opposite effect of the target ignoring the message. Whether it is through analysis of responses within your CRM system, working with sales to understand current and past behavior patterns, or studying the usage of your products or services, delivering personalized, timely and on-target offers through the right channel will be the key to your success.

Win-back
Before you implement a win-back campaign, take a good look at any available defection reports that explain why the customers left. Ideally, your win-back campaign should match your customer’s reason for leaving. Customer defection falls into four main categories:

• Intentionally pushed away – unprofitable to serve, not worth pursuing unless converted to a more profitable product or service.
• Unintentionally pushed away – profitable customers lost due to a service issue such as improper handling of a complaint, service or product dissatisfaction.
• Pulled away – a competitor gave them a better deal.
• Bought away – a competitor made a financially compelling offer to switch.

Optimize your marketing efforts by integrating campaigns not only designed to focus on new prospects, but integrated to retain current customers and win back old ones.

*The Kern Organization
* Customer Winback, Jill Griffen and Michael Lowenstein