In this article we’ll explain how telemarketing reactivation campaigns can be used to reactivate lapsed customers and gather valuable insight to improve customer retention.
Benefits of Reactivating Lapsed Customers
It’s quite common for businesses to invest marketing budget in new customer acquisition often overlooking how their existing lapsed customer databases can be utilised.
In my experience, reactivating lapsed customers is far cheaper than finding a new one. That’s not to say investing in new customer acquisition isn’t important but there should always be a focus on reactivation alongside new customer acquisition.
Cheaper CPA
Lapsed customers are low hanging fruit. They have already shown an interest in your product / service and gone through the customer acquisition journey. If you can find out why they have cancelled and fix any issues they might have had, overcome objections, you can quickly get them on side and work with them so that they can start making the most of what your business has to offer.
Customer Feedback
Customers leave for a variety of reasons. Maybe it was cost, maybe they just didn’t have a good understanding of how your product worked (Common in SaaS), perhaps they were let down by customer service. The list goes on. By calling customers and asking questions you can gain a better understanding and make changes to your service to increase retention. Running reactivation campaigns isn’t just about getting more paying customers, valuable feedback can act as market research which can help with retention, reduce your cancellation rates and increase your number of paying clients.
You’ve already invested in acquiring these customers, don’t let them go to waste.
High performing data
In telemarketing lapsed customer lists are warm leads. In my experience it’s common to see reactivation campaigns perform at a 30% conversion rate. 30% of conversations with decision making contacts reactivating their accounts. It’s important to note this figure as an average. Variables will have an impact on performance. Recently lapsed customers will convert at a better rate than deeper lapsed customers. Campaign conversion may be higher or lower than 30% so it’s always best to run a small test and measure results in order to predict how a larger campaign might perform.
Data Segmentation
In order to get the best results from your lapsed data lists it’s important to segment data. Splitting lists into recently lapsed, lapsed and deep lapsed will help adjust scripts and have the right conversation based on when the customers cancelled.
The way you speak to a customer who has cancelled within the last few months will be different from how you speak to a customer who cancelled a few years ago.
With deeper lapsed customers you’ll need to have a longer conversation to re-engage the customer. Recently lapsed will still be familiar with your brand so you won’t need to go into as much detail at the start of your call.
This is just one way of splitting your data, you could also split by sector or if you offer multiple products you could segment based on the products or services customers have used in the past.
Gather Feedback
When speaking to lapsed customers it’s important to ask questions and learn as much as you can about the clients needs and why they cancelled. Not only will this help you gather feedback which can be passed onto other teams within your business to improve products and services but it will also help you to understand and try to solve any issues a customer has before inviting them to sign up again.
CRM / Dialler Setup
If you have large lists you’ll benefit from setting the campaign up to be run from a dialler / CRM system. Within your CRM you should be able to set custom fields to make it faster and easier for agents to collect information on the call. For example if there are certain questions your going to ask on calls create a short form on your dialler. This data can then easily be exported into a spreadsheet.
You can analyse data to work out common issues lapsed customers have faced so you know how to improve your service. Data can be shared with the relevant teams or contacts within your business.
If you don’t have your own internal telemarketers or dialler system you could look at outsourcing the telemarketing to an agency with experience. If you’d like to get proposals from telemarketing companies visit our home page, fill in a short form and we can find suitable telemarketing companies for your requirements.
Offers to Help Increase Conversions
Depending on your product / service sometimes and offer can help with conversion rates, especially with deeper lapsed customers. A free period or service ad-on can help to entice a customer to sign up again.
Conclusion
If you have lists of previous customers who have cancelled and they have not yet been contacted it’s definitely worth running a test campaign to see if a reactivation campaign could help with growth and retention. If you’re already running a reactivation campaign perhaps you can look at ways to improve performance. Maybe test new scripts, offers or data segmentation to further optimise performance.
Don’t let your lapsed customers go to waste!
