Why Customer Retention Management Matters

Christine Foulds • June 1, 2023

This post was first published in 2016.

The phrase Customer Retention Management can mean everything and nothing at all. It is therefore no surprise that I get often asked what does customer retention actually mean?

For me Customer Retention Management is a tool that helps any kind of business to retain their customer base by providing tailored incentives and rewards. These incentives should not only meet the need of the customer but also exceed his or her expectations. By offering a little extra, people tend to become more attached to a brand and are therefore more likely to return. Those incentives do not have to be only of monetary value but can also involve additional services such as

24/7 personal contact
Better table or seats
Longer reservation times
Favourite free newspaper
Advanced notice on new product releases
Anniversary reminder.

These small personalised extras can make a huge impact on the overall perception towards the business.

For me it still seems though that most businesses are focusing too much on acquiring new customers instead of keeping the existing ones happy. This is baffling as it is much more expensive to gain a new customer than to retain one.

I am sure every one of us will have experienced the feeling of being let down by a company with whom you have been dealing with for years. This could be your mobile phone provider who offers new customers additional free services such as hundreds of free texts which was never offered to you. Or it could be your local gym which provides new gym members with a two months free membership while you have been paying for years without any discount ever been offered to you.

Some could of course argue that if I asked for it I might actually get the same or similar offer as those newly acquired customers, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because I have to initiate contact.

By using well developed and managed retention campaigns, businesses avoid neglecting existing customers and making them feel valued and understood. As a consequence, your client base is more likely to stay loyal to you and will continue doing business with you. As far as I am concerned, this is what Customer Retention Management is all about.

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Closures, Launches And Everything In Between

June 7, 2024

To say that the last few weeks have been extremely busy would be an understatement. There has been a lot of change over the last few weeks and we’re still in the midst of it. So, what’s been going on? Some brands were let go. Seven of the bingo brands that I was looking after have been sold to a new owner. This meant a lot of handovers, finishing of campaigns and preparing as well as executing the exit strategy well. It was with mixed feelings seeing these brands go as I’ve been working with them for over eight years. However, feelings aside, it was a very good business decision. Some brands were migrated. On top of handing over existing brands, I also managed to migrate one of our current casino brands to a casino environment that we’re already using with the remaining casino brands. This was actually a very smooth process as most of it was handled by our partner Progress Play. Nevertheless, the CRM journeys had to be updated and we also took this as an opportunity to give the marketing material a bit of a refresh. Two of our bingo brands are being launched at a completely new platform with a company in Manchester called Grace Media. This has been very time consuming as we’re starting completely from scratch. I’m getting to know new systems like XtremPush which I’ve not used in the past. Setting up new CRM journeys, promotions, terms and conditions as well as updating the look and feel of the brands has kept me very, very busy. New brand was taken on. As part of the new partnership with Grace Media , we took on a new bingo brand called BOGOF along side our two brands that we’ve migrated to Grace Media. I had the pleasure of going to Manchester and working with the team for a week. What else? On top of that, I started work with a new Klaviyo customer called Blue Line Abrasives . It’s an industry that I know where little about so it’s great to have their team at hand to assist when I have product related questions. What’s next? Over the next few weeks, things should slow down and settle a bit. Fingers crossed.

ICE London 2024: The Importance of CRM in Online Gaming

By Christine Foulds • February 12, 2024

Introducing ICE London 2024

Google + Yahoo’s New Sender Requirements

By Christine Foulds • January 12, 2024

What You Need To Know

Has it really been three years?

By Christine Foulds • September 22, 2023

On a Friday afternoon, when all the main tasks had been done, I wondered when was the last time that I uploaded content onto my blog? I knew it has been a while, but I would have never thought that it was close to three years. Yikes! It’s one of the key rules of digital marketing to stick to a frequency of posting content online but as everyone can see, I failed. Luckily, the reason puts a smile on my face. I'd always hoped that I would be in this position when I first decided to set up FouldsCRM. I’ve just been incredibly busy. Over the last three years, I’ve increased my client portfolio quite significantly. Here is a quick overview: I started to work with the email marketing platform Klaviyo assisting three of my clients to migrate from Mailchimp to Klaviyo. None of them have regretted their decision and have seen a boost in email marketing sales due to changing the platform. I started to manage the CRM for 8 additional casino brands who use the Progress Play software. This was quite work intensive as we were the first ones to run their own CRM out of all of the Progress Play partners. It’s been an incredible 12 months since we took over the CRM. I welcomed back clients that were lost due to COVID which was really lovely. The travel industry was hit especially hard so being able to work with these businesses again has been really rewarding. I joined Mayple as one of their email marketing experts as part of their partnership with Mailchimp. The project aimed to show existing customers how to use the platform more effectively. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed being part of the Mayple community, I decided a few weeks ago to stop as most of the clients are based the United States. The time difference wasn’t working for me and my family. Family always comes first even though I’d have loved to continue working with the Mayple team. I worked on a few ad-hoc projects. Even though my blog and overall website haven’t been updated as much as they should have been, FouldsCRM is busy and I’m open for business!