How to Retain Customers and Start Doing Loyalty!

1. Great Experience = Loyal Customer

Loyal Customers are your best brand ambassadors! They repeatedly purchase from you, talk about their great experiences with your company, and send their family and friends to you. So, loyalty is pretty much about keeping your acquired customers satisfied, providing them a great experience in every level of interaction, and continuing to offer them value. Define touchpoints of interaction with your customers before, during, and after purchase and make sure to deliver an excellent customer experience.

Regaining your existing customer is seven times cheaper than getting a new one!” - Paul Andreie, Booking Manager Summit 2021 Speaker, "Mailchimp Marketing for Yacht Charter"

2. Do you know your customers?

To offer precisely what your customers need, you need to get to know them first. It's all about diving into existing data on your customers, but also getting as much information from real and live experience you have with them.

How to know them better? Try to get as many important information on your guests while talking to them over the phone, in person: what do they like, what is the purpose of their travel, do they travel with family and kids or friends, are their more into active vacation, what kind of restaurants they like, their habits, interests, and offer them a „custom made” experience accordingly – they will feel appreciated and satisfied.

Customer experience depends on knowing your customers, and knowing your customers depends on data. A CRM system collects customer data points, stores them in a central location so you can develop more-personalized customer experiences.

"Be a great listener, learn about your customers and build a relationship. Don’t assume everyone is like you and adapt to the style of the customer”, Cris Croft, Booking Manager Summit 2021 Speaker, „Persuasive Selling”

3. Customer Retention

There are different ways to achieve customer retention. Once you have a satisfied customer, do as many small things to make them come back throughout all the available channels you have in your company – sales, customer service, social media. For instance, customer feedback is responding to the customer in a meaningful way whenever they leave good or bad feedback. Many customer relationships have been saved and strengthened by simply acknowledging a customer's complaint and working to fix the issue.

Also, people love receiving an unexpected reward or special recognition, some small incentive for being „loyal” customer. So, make sure to send your customers „Happy Birthday” card which can include also an e.g. 10% off on the next reservation or include some extras for free for their next trip. You can connect with some of your partners like restaurants or shops to offer your clients a discount for purchase. 

4. Loyalty Programs

Also, a good way to achieve customer retention is to have loyalty programs – to reward customers who repeatedly interact with your company. But, having a loyalty program means you would need to give away something – discounts (e.g. 6 nights + 1 night free), incentives (e.g. free extras or dinner), upgrades (e.g. to a new or bigger yacht).

You can create different types of Loyalty programs such as „point-based loyalty”, „tiered loyalty,” or „refer a friend” - it all depends on what you think and know would work best for your customers.

Here are a few simple ideas you can do for your customer's loyalty:
- send „post-stay letters” – after their holiday, send them a „Thank You” automated email with a promo code offering 10% early bird discount on their next reservation,
- reward your guests who leave a review on your social media,
- make a „refer a friend” program – give them a special promo code to forward to their friends and incentive them for their next booking. You can add this referred customer info in the „first contact information” with a special code, or you can also use different „tags”.

5. What About B2B Loyalty?

So, all the above mentioned is in regards to your guests! But, what if your clients are Charter Agencies? The good relationship and great experiences also work for your B2B clients.

You Can also use Booking Manager to reward your partner agencies by checking the „Agency Performance Report” to see which agents perform the best. Create a new group with the best performing agencies and send them a reward discount for future bookings!

If you need any assistance and support creating your loyalty activities, you can always contact our team!