Most people understand the importance of selling to your existing customers, or monetizers in a free to play environment, but most efforts and features are built around attracting new customers. That despite the fact that the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70 percent while the chance of selling to a new prospect is 5-20 percent, according to Marketing Metrics. A recent online article from Matt Perl called “5 Sexy Rules of Customer Retention,” (better named than any of my posts) discusses five straightforward ways to improve sales to existing users.
Reward your customers
You often give incentives to new users, give repeat customers some reward. As Dan Ariely has written, free is very powerful, so giving your customers something free (with no strings attached) is a very powerful tool. I once wrote how thank you notes can help your business, as they can provide a low cost way to give back something to your customers.
Recognize customers from their online footprint
The goal is to recognize customers automatically when they come into your game or encourage them to register. The less friction involved (if you can identify and track automatically without violating privacy issues), the more customers you can touch in this way. Company or product portals are a strong and deep way to tie together a customer with your brand and if your customer comes to you without any pushing than you are doing a great job. Continue reading “How to develop repeat customers”