8 Tips for Making the Most of Your Customer Retention Campaigns

Sustainable business growth requires brands to prioritize customer retention—and thoughtful, data-driven customer retention campaigns are key to driving long-term engagement, winning back lapsed users, and preventing churn.

Whether your team is looking to integrate retention campaigns into your existing customer messaging flows or searching for insights on how to elevate your current retention efforts, these eight best-in-class tips will help you to increase the effectiveness of your retention strategies.

#1: Combine In-Product and Out-of-Product Messaging to Boost 30-Day Customer Retention by 13%

What's the difference between in-product messages and out-of-product messages? In-product messages (such as in-app messages and Content Cards) keep active users engaged directly in the channels where they're interacting with your brand at any given moment, such as on your website or in your mobile app. Out-of-product messages, such as email campaigns, SMS campaigns, and push notifications, draw customers in. For marketers, this isn't—and shouldn't be—an either/or approach. In fact, our research shows that using both types of messaging can increase 30-day retention by 13%.

#2: Create Campaigns That Demonstrate Your Brand Humanity to Drive Purchase Likelihood by 1.7X

Increasingly, customers are looking to ensure that how they spend their money aligns with their personal values.

That's why incorporating your mission and vision into your customer messaging can help encourage longer-term engagement. Braze insights indicate that customers who describe a company’s brand experiences as "human" are 1.7X more likely to do business with that company.

#3: Increase Loyalty Campaign Conversions by as Much as 55% Using Personalization

Demonstrating the unique value each individual customer gets out of your products and services can transform conversion rates. According to our analysis, using personalization can boost conversions between 11% and 55% for loyalty campaigns. To get started, think about the ways customers have gained an advantage by being a loyal customer of your brand and leverage personalization tools to highlight those upsides to customers in future outreach.

#4: Amplify the Effectiveness of Your Win-Back Campaigns by 63% with Deep Links

Deep links help customers seamlessly navigate from a messaging campaign to the exact right spot in your mobile app or web page. For instance, if you're sending a campaign to a lapsing customer encouraging them to check out products or services they loved in the past, deep links can ensure they find what you're talking about, instead of dumping them on your homepage or home screen with no clear way to find the item mentioned within the campaign.

Our data shows that win-back campaigns using deep links are 66% more effective at encouraging audiences to return to your app or website than messages without deep linking. So if you’re looking to win-back some lapsed users, make sure you have what you need to make deep linking part of that effort.

#5: Maximize Loyalty Sign-Ups Using These Two Powerful Messaging Channels

If you want to see your loyalty enrollment numbers soar, be sure to add SMS marketing and Content Cards to your messaging mix. Text message campaigns are powerful because of their stand-out 98% open rates, while Content Cards are a type of persistent messaging that can be seamlessly integrated within your app or website, without disrupting the UX.

According to our analysis at Braze:

• SMS campaigns boost loyalty enrollment conversions by 2X
• Content Cards boost loyalty enrollment conversions by 5X

#6: Recalibrate Your Recurring Messaging Cadence to Generate 11X Engagement

Looking to drive app engagement? Sending recurring campaigns every three weeks is a sweet spot when it comes to drawing users back in.

Based on our data, campaigns sent every three weeks are:

• 11X more effective than daily recurring campaigns
• 3X more effective than one-off campaigns that do not recur

#7: Capture the Attention of Lapsing Users with Liquid Personalization

An open-source templating language originally introduced by Shopify, Liquid allows brands across industries to tie in relevant personal details—such as a customer's favorite products or services, recent browsing history, or contact details—into campaigns across email, push, and more. According to Braze data, using Liquid personalization is 26% more effective at driving lapsing users back to your app than campaigns sent without Liquid.

#8: Ensure Customers Take Full Advantage of Your Loyalty Program to Prevent Churn

When customers fail to make the most of your loyalty program benefits, that's an early warning sign of customer churn. Savvy brands get ahead of the problem by sending triggered message campaigns at key milestones throughout the loyalty lifecycle, using personalized messaging powered by loyalty program data.

According to our analysis, sending triggered campaigns in the moment after customers take a given action—such as right after they achieve a new loyalty level—can increase conversions by 6.9X compared to traditional scheduled messaging (e.g. campaigns that are sent out at a set time, such as 10 am).

Get Even More Customer Retention Campaign Ideas

Looking for new customer activation, monetization, and retention campaign ideas? Explore our Braze Inspiration Guide to unlock 40+ campaigns designed to support your email, SMS/MMS, mobile push, in-app messages, Content Cards, web push, in-browser messages, and social media ad campaigns and deliver on your goals of activating, monetizing, and retaining your customers.