When it comes to generating a steady stream of revenue, lead generation and lead nurturing are not the only things that should be on top of your list.
Customer nurturing is just as, if not more, important.
Multiple studies show that acquiring a new customer costs 5 to 7 times more than retaining an old one.
What’s more, increasing the customer retention rate by just 5% can increase your profits by at least 25% (Bain & Company).
This article will cover everything you need about customer nurturing.
What is Customer Nurturing?
Customer nurturing is a strategic approach to building and maintaining strong relationships with existing customers (converted leads).
It involves using a variety of tactics, such as email marketing, social media, and personalized content.
By engaging and educating customers throughout their buyer’s journey, you build trust, loyalty, and advocacy.
What Are the Benefits of Customer Nurturing?
Nurturing your paying customers gives multiple benefits, including:
- increased customer satisfaction
- increased customer lifetime value
- reduced churn and boosted retention
- generated more referrals
- increased brand recognition and authority
- increased spending on cross-selling and upselling products
- more frequent purchases
- gathered customer feedback
Nurtured customers lead to happy customers, which is the backbone of a sustainably profitable business.
How Does Customer Nurturing Increase Customer Lifetime Value?
Customer lifetime value is important because it’s the most cost-effective sales strategy.
Retaining existing customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones, so investing in your lead nurturing efforts is a no-brainer.
Moreover, loyal customers tend to spend more on your products, new features, add-ons, and so on.
After spending more on your product and having had a positive experience for a while, your customers become brand advocates who organically drive new customers.
Customer Nurturing vs Lead Nurturing: What’s the difference?
| Customer Nurturing | Lead Nurturing | |
| Target | Existing customers | Potential customers (leads) |
| Goal | Repeat purchases and loyalty | Move through the sales funnel towards conversion |
| Tactics | Personalized outreach based on past purchases, customer service interactions, and feedback | Timed emails, educational content, follow-ups based on lead behavior |
| Content | Upgrades, cross-sells, loyalty programs, and personalized recommendations | Educational material, the value of products, benefits, case studies, free trials, demos |
| Result | Higher customer lifetime value | Converts lead into first-time customer |
How to Nurture Your Customers? 7 Best Customer Nurturing Strategies
1. Segment your customer base.
Similarly to lead segmentation, divide your existing customers into groups based on their behaviors, purchase history, and preferences.
Use data from past interactions to categorize them accurately.
This targeted approach ensures messages resonate personally with each segment.
For acquiring relevant customer data, it’s best to use a dedicated tool like sales CRM or lead nurturing tool.
Result: Increases relevance of communications and enhances engagement and customer satisfaction.
2. Personalize your communications.
When you’re nurturing your existing customers, you can’t send out generic emails because it looks lazy and unprofessional.
Tailor emails, offers, and support to individual customer needs and past interactions. Always refer to the customer by their name and reference specific details relevant to them.
If done manually, personalized emails can take up a lot of time and effort. That’s why we suggest relying on lemlist, the sales engagement platform with advanced personalization capabilities.
Result: Customers feel valued, increasing loyalty and the likelihood of repeated purchases.
3. Implement a reward program.
Another good strategy for nurturing your customers is creating a reward program for them.
It can offer points, discounts, or perks for frequent purchases or referrals. It’s important to design it in a way that’s simple and compelling.
The reward program is a way to give your customers back after they’ve chosen your solution.
Result: Encourages continued business and turns regular customers into brand advocates.
4. Use regular feedback loops.
Existing customers are the most valuable sources of genuine feedback. They have already purchased, tried, and used your product, and they know what they like and don’t like about it. Your task is just to ask!
Ask for customer feedback regularly through surveys or direct contact. Don’t just ignore this information; analyze it and make informed decisions.
This way, you can genuinely improve your product to fit your ICP and better prioritize your focus when working on new features and software updates.
The last step is to actually show and inform your customers that their opinions have led to real changes.
Result: Demonstrates commitment to customer needs and massively improves retention.
5. Educate your customers with great content.
We repeat time and again that content is king, and it sounds somewhat of a cliche at this point.
But it’s true. Valuable content helps your customers to maximize the use of your products. Essentially, the valuable content you share with your customers packs value on top of their purchase.
The best way to nurture customers through content is by:
- video tutorials
- blogs
- webinars
- podcasts
- user guides
Result: Add value beyond the purchase and enhance customer experience and satisfaction.
6. Focus on exceptional customer service.
Poor customer service can ruin the best product. We all know how much we wanted to like that one solution we opted for, only to realize their customer support is frequently unavailable, slow to respond, or just useless.
To nurture your customers, make sure your customer service team is top-notch. Make sure your customer service is:
- accessible at all times
- very responsive
- empowered to solve problems fast
- prepared to solve complex issues
- ready to handle inquiries with empathy
To do so, your customer service must be trained to understand the product from the inside out.
Result: Builds trust and satisfaction, which is crucial for long-term relationships.
7. Offer your customers more of the good thing
Your existing customers are the hottest leads possible. Except they already purchased your product, which turned them into converted leads.
Every existing customer is an excellent opportunity to upsell and offer them a higher-tier plan, feature add-ons, and so on.
This sales strategy is very efficient because customers who have already bought from you are more likely to buy from you again than those who have never bought anything.
Offer these upgrades or enhancements at strategic moments, such as after a positive service interaction or during a relevant personal milestone.
Result: Increases the average transaction value.
More Customer Nurturing Strategies to Try Out
More customer nurturing strategies for you to implement are:
- Actively engage in onboarding campaigns (involve your best reps)
- Set up an automatic renewal program
- Run a renewal campaign (before an actual renewal date)
- Use incentives (special offers, discounts, gifts, free trials, sneak peeks to reward customer loyalty)
- Don’t underestimate a Thank-You note
- Organize live events for your existing customers
How do you Calculate your Customer Nurturing ROI?
Start by tracking basic email metrics like sent, delivered, bounced, open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribed, and marked as spam.
You should use a reliable customer management tool and software for accurate data tracking.
For example, lemlist allows you to track all the relevant data and craft campaigns based on contact (in this case, your customer) behavior and activity.
Did your customer not open your email from a nurturing campaign? No worries. You can set personalized and automated follow-ups with advanced conditions that will follow up on them with a LinkedIn message, for example.
Calculate the return on investment for individual customer nurturing campaigns by dividing the profit generated by the campaign by its cost.
A high ROI signifies that the specific nurturing tactics used were effective.
Make sure to A/B test your nurturing campaigns to determine which steps work best for which customer segments.
6 Key Customer Nurturing Metrics To Track
1. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
Calculate the average CLV before and after implementing customer nurturing programs. Compare these figures to see the increase in revenue attributable to nurturing.
2. Retention Rate Improvement.
Track the retention rates before and after introducing your customer nurturing strategy. Improved retention often translates directly into higher ROI due to increased customer longevity.
3. Average Order Value (AOV).
Measure changes in the average order value per customer after customer nurturing efforts have been escalated. An increase in AOV may indicate that your nurturing efforts encourage customers to purchase more expensive products.
4. Conversion Rates (from targeted campaigns).
Monitor conversion rates specifically for campaigns intended for customer nurturing compared to general campaigns. Higher conversion rates in the nurturing campaigns imply effective targeting and personalization.
5. Reduction in Customer Churn.
Calculate the churn rate since the implementation of customer nurturing strategies. Lower churn rates can translate directly into higher ROI as retained customers continue contributing revenue without the additional acquisition costs.
6. Revenue Attribution Modeling.
Use marketing attribution models to trace specified amounts of revenue directly back to customer nurturing interactions.
Is it Better to Invest in Lead Nurturing or Customer Nurturing?
Investing in customer nurturing often yields a higher ROI because retaining and growing existing customers is generally less costly than acquiring new ones.
Customer nurturing builds loyalty and increases customer lifetime value through repeat business and referrals.
However, if your business is new or entering a new market, investing more in lead generation is essential to establish a customer base and stimulate initial growth.
