Whether you are an online or brick-and-mortar business, there will be a time when you need to discuss the renewal of your service with them (most often annual renewals).
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking, “Well, if I don’t tell them, they might not notice the charge!” That’s faulty thinking, because even if they don’t notice, do you really want a customer who doesn’t want to be a customer?
If they DO notice and they don’t want to renew, they’ll contact you, they’ll probably be angry, there will be a refund or even a chargeback to deal with, plus the time spent on customer service, and it all could have been avoided.
The two most common mistakes business owners often make are:
- NOT notifying your customer that their renewal is due
- ASSUMING the customer WANTS to renew
To increase your renewal success rate, you should NEVER take it for granted that they’ll renew. In other words, you HAVE to strategically convince and persuade them. In this strategy, you’ll learn how to increase your annual renewal.
How To Implement This Strategy
- Tease the customer about what’s coming up in the coming months
- Give them a taste of what they’ll be missing out on, if they fail to renew.
- Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a VERY powerful psychological principle you can leverage here to hook them into the benefits of using your product/service.
- Remind them about the BENEFITS of being a member or subscriber
- Focus on the end-result BENEFITS, rather than the features. This is harder than you thought because most of the time, you are so familiar with your product/service and easily fall into the trap of highlighting the features rather than the benefits.
- Remember, features TELL, benefits SELL.
- Share transformational success stories
- Testimonials are FAR more powerful than anything you could possibly say about your own product or service.
- Always on the lookout for opportunities to build a vault of testimonials, and success stories so that you can use them in the future.
- ALWAYS include an incentive for renewing on time, or early
- For example, you could include a free bonus guide or training. You could offer a free webinar on a relevant niche topic, a consultation, a review, a free tool, or even a physical gift that’s mailed out.
- Whatever it is, make the member think to themselves, “oh I really want that! That alone is worth the price of me staying another year!”
- The incentive should be irresistible, the customer should be EAGER to renew to get that bonus!
Recommended Resources
- Loom for video (for collecting video testimonials)
- Giftology book – John Ruhlin – on ideas to pick gifts incentivizing customers to renew on time and early.
