6 Tips To Convert New Customers Into Regulars (And Drive Repeat Sales)

Converting first-time customers into regulars is all about making a great first impression and building long-lasting, profitable customer relationships.

Building brand loyalty is about so much more than just having a loyalty program (that’s just one tactic of many)! It’s about the whole experience customers have with you, your staff, and your brand.

As an independent business, this is your edge. You can know your regulars by name and order, whereas customers going into a chain will rarely interact with the same employee twice. That customer experience is easy to define in person, but taking that experience digital (for example, on social media, emails, or through SMS) takes a bit more consideration.

In this article, we’ll talk about six digital channels you can leverage to build profitable customer relationships and grow your repeat purchase rate.

• Build up your social media presence
• Collect customer data at every opportunity
• Incentivize repeat purchases with a loyalty program
• Send timely, targeted SMS campaigns
• Keep your brand top-of-mind with email campaigns
• Use automated marketing to deliver time-sensitive messages
• Convert first-time customers into regulars with Lightspeed Marketing & Loyalty.

1. Build up your social media presence

Having an active presence on social will keep you top of mind with your customers. If your followers actively engage with you, your promotions, products, and campaigns will get more visibility—leading to more sales.

 

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A post shared by Taco Medic (@taco_medic)

Taco Medic is a great example of a hospitality business leveraging social media to build customer relationships.

So, what will convince someone to connect with you on social, and become an active, engaged follower of your brand?

Here are our top tips for building up your social following:

• Talk about social at point-of-sale, and around your venue
  Set up QR codes, display your social handles on menus, send automated SMS messages or emails to thank customers after a sale, and ask for a social follow.
• Create a really unique, customer-centric experience
  Understand your customer. What gets them excited? What would blow their mind? What would surprise them? Take that insight, and run with it. Every first impression counts, so give first-time customers a reason to learn more about you.
• Run competitions to get customers talking
  This is quickly becoming one of the most popular ways to connect with customers and reach their wider communities

2. Collect customer data at every opportunity

Per the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule, around 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers. That 20% will come back again and again, and they have a much higher average customer lifetime value (ACLV) than the rest of your customers.

We also know that it’s a lot cheaper to market to existing customers than to acquire new customers. Sending emails to your database costs next to nothing, while print media, billboards, and even digital and social media ads are all increasingly expensive.

In sum, if you’re not collecting customer data, you’re missing the opportunity to deliver cost-effective marketing to your most profitable audience—your regulars.

Here are our top tips for collecting customer details:

• Collect details at POS
  When you understand how valuable each email address is, you’ll see how important it is to get front-of-house staff to collect customer details.
• Incentivise sign-ups with offers
  Set up a value exchange. Offer a discount or free gift for customers who sign up for your marketing lists or join your loyalty program.
• Set up QR codes at POS
  Make it super easy for customers to sign-up and enter their details while they wait for their order. QR codes are easy to add to posters, menus, and signs.

3. Incentivize repeat purchases with a loyalty program

Loyalty programs are a way of directing incentives and offers towards your top customers to reward them for their continued business. Rather than running broad-stroke sales and discount campaigns that attract fickle bargain-hunters, you’ll build a database of customers who are much more likely to build a relationship with your brand.

As above, offer an initial incentive for those who sign up to your loyalty program. For example, Taco Medic give away a free taco when customers register to become a Taco Mate. This brings people back for a second purchase, and they’re highly likely to return with a couple of friends too.

4. Send timely, targeted SMS campaigns

Send offers when your customers are most likely to take action. They’re just thinking about what to have for dinner on their commute home? Send an offer for half price delivery, offer 10% off all orders, or give away a two-for-one voucher. If your customers are in the right mindset to transact, conversion rates will be much higher.

Pinjarra Bakery sees incredible results using this tactic. 

Every month or so, they create a wacky new pie filling. Each time, they send out an SMS campaign to loyal customers, giving them first access to come in and try the product before releasing it to the public.

“We conveniently time the blasts that go out around lunchtime so, you know, people are probably getting hungry at that time of the day and so far the results have been great” — Daniel Pantaleo, Pinjarra Bakery.

For example, this SMS campaign had a 50.1% conversion rate:

Here are our top tips for sending SMS campaigns:

• Create urgency
  SMS works best if the offer is time-sensitive, so if your campaign doesn’t drive urgent action you won’t see as much impact.
• Have a clear call-to-action
  SMS has a high delivery rate (98%) but that doesn’t mean people who open it will engage. Your message must be enticing, concise and clear.

5. Keep your brand top-of-mind with email campaigns

Email is the most cost-effective way to drive repeat business from your existing customer base. The most profitable email campaigns use your customer data to deliver tailored offers—you’ll see higher conversion rates and lower unsubscribes if the message is personalized and relevant.

Here are some ideas for email campaigns to get you started:

• Promote new menu items or seasonal offerings
• If you have a loyalty program, run a double-points campaign and send a promotional email to customers who participate
• Promote an event at your venue
• Celebrate a holiday—create a campaign with special holiday offers or discounts
• Let your database know about a monthly special or offer
• Ecnourage cross-channel engagement, for example promote an Instagram competition and drive traffic back to your account

6. Use automated marketing to deliver time-sensitive messages

Most businesses have the usual transactional communications set up to go out automatically, but did you know that you can automate your marketing messages too?

Pinjarra Bakery’s most successful automation aims to win back idle customers. Anyone who hasn’t been back in 3 months is automatically sent a $10 voucher to incentivize another visit.

“That automation itself has almost generated close to $100,000 in extra revenue for us. So I don’t mind giving a $10 voucher away if that’s going to be the result” — Daniel Pantaleo, Pinjarra Bakery.

The sky’s the limit with marketing automation: you can get really creative with triggers, segmentation, and offers. But if you’re new to all this, here are three simple automations you can set up in no time at all:

1. Welcome new customers
   For example, Taco Medic offer a free taco for first-time visitors if they return.
   
2. Birthday emails
   Send an email to customers on their birthday with a free gift or voucher.
3. Win back idle customers
   Like Pinjarra Bakery, you can set up an email with an offer to customers who haven’t visited in a while.

Convert first-time customers into regulars with Lightspeed Marketing & Loyalty.

Lightspeed Marketing & Loyalty gives you all the tools you need to increase repeat business, increase average order value, and drive revenue:

• Build a customer database
• Send email and SMS campaigns to customers
• Create set and forget marketing automations
• Set up loyalty, reward and membership programs
• Capture feedback and generate Google reviews
• Offer loyalty points in-store and online

Don’t have Lightspeed Marketing & Loyalty yet?

Watch what Lightspeed Marketing & Loyalty can do for you in this  5-minute demo video.