I have a weakness. Just to reassure you, I’m not after sympathy, help or anything that requires assistance from a reader. It’s a confession, a sort of explanation for something which I should, at my age, be able to control.
I am a sucker for State of Marketing Reports, especially those regarding email marketing.
I download relevant .pdfs, put them in a folder, and when I have the time, I gorge myself on them in the same way chocoholics do with their choice of indulgence. The problem is, they occasionally show some odd behaviour of certain companies, and it’s all but impossible to work out why.
I read one this morning, in the foggy-brain period when I’ve just switched on the computer and am trying to sort my head out. I ended up a little bewildered. One set of statistics showed what the companies reported as their top marketing priorities, and under 10% suggested theirs was Increasing Customer Retention, putting it below Closing More Deals and only above Other. It seems an odd way to go email marketing.
Customer retention should be the number one priority for anyone in email marketing. I’ve no wish to expose my fetish more than is necessary, but the stats on all the reports I’ve read show that it is much cheaper to retain a customer than gain another. There’s no counter-argument.
The stats vary, as you would expect, generally dependant on what type of product the company is produciong, but the general consensus would appear to be that it is around seven times more expensive to gain a new customer than keep a current one. If that isn’t enough to convince you, I’ve got lots more reports to support it.
There’s a 60-70% chance of selling to an existing customer, whereas it is down to 5-20% for a new one. That convinces me. And for the waverers, increasing customer retention by 5% increases profits by, wait for it, 25–95%.
All these figures are freely available online which makes it bewildering as to why anyone engaged in email marketing should not be concentrating on customer retention. That should convince you.
