Year End Client Retention Activities

This continues our 3-part series on year-end activities that improve next year’s business

Retaining clients costs less than acquiring new ones. This post assumes you already possess clients to retain. You will have more clients the longer your business operates if you retain them properly. You should take advantage of the generous season to sincerely reach out to your clients. Remembering clients in December can enhance repeat business during the next year. However, your efforts must be sincere, rather than calculated for more business.

Purposes and Practices of Client Retention

We discussed several steps to client retention in Bryan Pope’s The 7 Pillars of Successful Marketing. Some of these activities lend themselves to year-end efforts. This post builds on the concepts share in those posts.

Building the personal relationship with the client so they continue to do business with you remains the secondary purpose of client retention. Building the personal relationship so that you may learn more about the person, so that you may serve them more effectively and efficiently remains the prime purpose.

You must capture information about your clients and put it in a useful data system. The right information enhances your connection with the client. For example, knowing that someone prefers reading historical biographies, See’s chocolate, or dinning out allows you to give them a more personal remembrance.

The end of the year provides an opportunity to reevaluate your client retention methods. You may

• Examine the effectiveness of your client management system. Perhaps you should modify or upgrade your system
• Analyze the fields of information you gather about clients to verify you gather the right information.
• Review the information you have gathered to see what you lack and gather it
• Install flags in your system to trigger both personal and business important dates

Reach Out to Your Clients at Year’s End

The holiday season provides an excellent opportunity to reconnect with your current clients. People generally share gifts, cards, meals, and other remembrances during the season. Common business practices also accept the same activities. You need to remember the IRS limit on taxable vs. non-taxable gifts. Examples of year-end methods to reach out to your clients include:

• Send a special email with graphics, your logo, or other methods to make it stand out
• Call to wish them the best and thank them for their association throughout the year
• Send them a card for the holidays perhaps including a gift card for your business or something they value (remember the See’s or dining gift card)
• Arrange for a company to send a gift (Amazon sending the historical biography)
• Hand deliver a gift with a card
• Take the client to lunch or dinner
• Invite them to a special client appreciation party or event (one company I knew invited us to a special screening of newly released movie, they rented the entire theater just for their clients)
• Give them tickets to a sporting event, theater, or other cultural event. Better yet, have them accompany you.

In addition, you may establish a branded method of remembering clients. For example, a friend of mine, a corporate landscape architect, gives a large poinsettia to clients every Christmas. Another friend rewards his clients with an assortment pack from Harry and David’s. In both cases, the gift immediately triggers the thought of the giver. You can accomplish the same result by consistently giving the same gift every year.

Join us on Saturday when we explore year-end goal and action plan setting