December 6, 2011

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Do your customers adore you? If so, you must be doing something right.

Do you have a customer retention strategy in place or goals to improve customer loyalty? It’s one thing to acquire new customers, but it’s entirely another thing to keep them coming back for more.

We’ve asked some of the nation’s leading entrepreneurs to share proven tips to help you nurture customer relationships and leverage proven customer relationship management (CRM) tactics. Here are seven CRM tips that can help you ‘woo’ your customers and turn them into your biggest fans.

1. Keep it simple.

The mistake that most small businesses make is that they try to find a CRM application that does too much. Remember: When you integrate CRM into a company’s daily life, the CRM tool is only as good as the people using it. Take the time to find out what your internal needs are and who will utilize CRM on a daily basis. Once you have that, then you stand a fighting chance to improve your client relationships and build loyalty.

Kevin Smith, Founder and Managing Partner at Open Connection Media: @Open_Connection

2. Stay in contact.

Don’t spam existing customers, but also be careful not to email them too infrequently.  We’ve found that spacing email campaigns out by more than 2-3 weeks significantly cuts into our open rate and click-thru rate, and leads to unnecessary email newsletter unsubscribes. We’ve observed the same impact on conversions; the longer we wait between email campaigns, the lower the conversion rate.  So be sure to communicate frequently enough with your existing customers to keep the relationship top of mind.

Lauren Elward, CEO at Castle Ink: @Castle_Ink

3. Follow the Golden Rule.

Your front-line staff will treat your clients the way you treat them; treat your team the way you want your clients treated. Train your staff to use every client contact as an information gathering exercise and to diligently record data in your CRM system in searchable and filterable fields for marketing and mail campaigns.

Eric Edmeades, Entrepreneur at Kernerworks: @EricEdmeades

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