Elissa Giroux
on

My career began in the editorial department at a large publishing house in New York in the mid-90s. The web was so new that only the high-level managers at my company were allowed access. It would be a while before I could afford a modem of my own, but my interest in the web was born! Within a couple of years, I landed a job as a content editor with a well-known print and web publisher. Watching the web industry grow - and collapse - and continue to evolve over the past 15 years has been an adventure. My own web career has evolved, as well. My early exposure to search engine optimization piqued my interest in online marketing and discovering ways to use the web to serve business needs. Today I am still excited by the changing nature of my industry. Social media, mobile devices.... What will come next?

The Lifetime Customer: Your Golden Egg

With the busy Spring season fast approaching, it may be time to reconsider your current retention strategy. We all are guilty of it – when things get busy, it suddenly becomes impossible to remember to follow up with your current customers. Rather than adding more to your plate, you end up deciding, ‘eh, what’s one old customer compared to two new ones’.

Here is what you may not realize: at the end of the day, that customer you so quickly forget about may in fact be saving your business money.

It’s time to meet your lifetime customers.
 

What is a lifetime customer?

A lifetime customer is someone with whom you have an ongoing business relationship (he or she transacts with you on multiple occasions and is typically brand loyal). Lifetime customer value (LCV), also called lifetime value (LTV), is the total profit estimated to result from an ongoing customer business relationship.

Attracting new customers and retaining existing customers are both important. However, when acquiring new customers the focus should be on converting new customers to lifetime customers in order to increase the lifetime value of your overall customer base.
 

It’s cheaper to keep a customer.

According to TARP Worldwide, it’s five times cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one. Now that you know that, it may be hard to wrap your head around this next fact:

  • According to the Census Bureau, 83% of homeowners did not rehire their last real estate agent because they couldn’t remember their agent’s name

Yep, you read that right. Most homeowners did not remember their agent’s name. What is even worse is that the Census Bureau has also reported that the typical American will move an average of 11 times in their lives.

Now before you jump to pick up the phone or shoot off that email, take a minute to think about your long-term retention strategy. Nurturing your customers takes more than a single call or email; being able to stay top of mind requires comprehensive planning and consistency.

Luckily, we have a solution.
 

Personalize your retention strategy

Retargeting is the process of using online display advertising to target personalized messages to your customers based on their past behavior. These behaviors are typically captured through a website cookie, email address, or similar identifiers (such as social registration). By leveraging this data, you can successfully re-engage past buyers through automated custom messaging.

With 84% of customers saying personalization impacts their retention and loyalty (Exact Target), retargeting should be a pillar of any digital marketing strategy that is focused on customer acquisition and retention. With retargeting, customers remember who you are, come to you excited about your product and ready to continue the conversation.

The result: your clients remember your name year round – even when you don’t have a spare second to pick up the phone.

Want to know the best part?

There is plenty of data out there to show how effective retargeting actually is. Take a look at the highlights from a recent AdRoll State of the Industry Report:

  • 92% of marketers report retargeting performs equal to or better than search
  • 91% report it performs equal to or better than email
  • 92% report it performs equal to or better than other display.

…also note its influence all the way up the purchase funnel:

  • 70% of marketers use it to generate brand awareness
  • 60% of marketers use it to encourage social engagement
  • 58% of marketers use it to manage customer retention

This data certainly shows that retargeting not only performs well, but is quickly being adopted by marketers to serve a variety of business needs. For the real estate industry, retargeting allows agents and offices to stay top of mind, build deeper customer relationships, and ultimately sell more products and services. Thus, the true value of the lifetime customer.
 

We can help!

Interested in implementing a retargeting strategy but don’t know where to start? At Union Street Media, our expert Digital Marketing team is here to help. We understand that your time and money are precious – we do all the heavy lifting, without breaking the bank. All you have to do is focus on doing what you do best, selling homes.