Tips for Transitioning Customer Acquisition Into Customer Retention

This process of taking new prospects through a carefully planned introduction to your company is called transition marketing. A well-executed transition marketing program increases the conversion rate of prospects to buyers 15 percent to 25 percent vs. programs that simply add new subscribers to a regularly scheduled email program.

So that's how it all starts. What happens in part two? This is the second milestone, the one in which you're converting buyers to frequent buyers. If you're using transition marketing, you're converting prospects to buyers at higher rates than ever before. That's a great start, but long-term profitability means you need to get first-time buyers to become frequent buyers.

First off, targeting helps. By segmenting lists according to customer preferences, then designing campaigns around those preferences, you can boost performance five percent or more. Great creative concepts and frequent testing also help. But the lift generated from this kind of optimization pales in comparison to what a website re-engagement tool can do.

The best website re-engagement tools specifically identify your opt-in email subscribers when they visit your website. If they don't make a purchase while visiting the site, after leaving they'll receive an email based on the specific pages they visited. This creates a second chance for those subscribers to go back to the site and make a purchase.

They don't even have to go to the shopping cart to get an email! The email can relate to any page on the site they visited. Why is this important? Because studies show that only about five percent of your site visitors ever get to the shopping cart.

Re-engagement campaigns reinforce current sales or events. When those events are about to end, these campaigns can generate added urgency to buy — without having to offer additional incentives that end up costing you margin.