Repeat Business: 8 Ways to Keep Your Customers Coming Back

What is repeat business?

Repeat business is when a customer shops with your company regularly. Ideally, you’ve fostered customer loyalty and customers trust your brand enough to spend money on your products or services time and again. 

“For practically all businesses, repeat business comes from customers who are satisfied with their experience and return for additional purchases,” explained Ben Graham, vice president of marketing at Joe & Bella. “It helps build long-term relationships with a target audience that chooses to return thanks to that ongoing trust and satisfaction.” 

Benefits of repeat business

Repeat customers are incredibly valuable to a business because they boost your cash flow, improve your marketing return on investment (ROI), and help you amass comprehensive target audience data. 

Here are some of the top benefits of earning repeat business:

• Repeat customers spend more. Returning customers spend more, thereby boosting recurring revenue. This steady revenue stream provides financial stability and supports long-term growth. “Returning customers usually spend more over time and are likelier to refer others,” Graham noted.
• Repeat customers reduce customer acquisition costs. Caroline Crawford, founder and CEO of Cultiveight Communications, pointed out that retaining existing customers costs significantly less than acquiring new ones. “Many businesses sit on untapped revenue potential within their current network,” Crawford said. Graham also emphasized the cost savings repeat customers can bring. “Repeat business matters for a company’s bottom line because it’s often more cost-effective to retain existing customers than to keep looking for new ones,” Graham noted.
• Repeat customers promote your brand. Graham pointed out that loyal customers naturally improve a brand’s reputation through organic promotion. People who regularly purchase your products and services can become brand advocates by sharing word-of-mouth recommendations with friends, family and social media followers. Many also write positive online reviews that help to expand your reach.
• Repeat customers can boost holiday sales. During the holidays, repeat customers often provide a cash influx that enables you to offer discounts and attract even more shoppers. These loyal customers also tend to engage with holiday marketing campaigns, thus helping you maximize profits during the busiest season.
• Repeat customers try new offerings. Returning customers are an excellent resource when you launch new products. Because they already like and trust your brand, they’re more likely to try new offerings. They often welcome upselling and cross-selling opportunities, especially when they involve product families they already use.
• Repeat customers provide actionable insights. Graham explained that loyal patrons often offer valuable customer feedback on how a business can improve, which is essential for staying relevant, especially in oversaturated markets. With firsthand experience using your products or services, they can help you identify issues and make meaningful improvements.

8 simple strategies to nurture repeat business

To earn repeat customers, you must grow customer relationships and nurture consumer trust. Try the following simple strategies to encourage frequent buyers. 

1. Start a customer loyalty program.

Building a customer loyalty program is an excellent way to encourage repeat business. As a bonus, loyalty programs increase the average size of sales transactions. Although you can structure your loyalty program in various ways with differing levels of complexity, a straightforward, easy-to-understand program can be very effective. 

To start your loyalty program, gather your customers’ contact information, provide them with a unique account number or card, and reward them when they make a specific number of purchases or reach a certain dollar amount. 

Consider the following loyalty program ideas and best practices:

• Present special offers exclusively for loyalty program members.
• Offer unique rewards for members who refer customers to your business.
• Use a bonus-point campaign.
• Organize a prize drawing for loyalty program members.
• Ensure loyalty members are given top priority for new-product access, sales notifications and more.

2. Offer personalized service and offers.

Unfortunately, many consumers have become accustomed to being treated like a number. They can walk into a big-box store and go unrecognized, even if they’ve been there numerous times and spent a ton of money.

“Repeat business isn’t just about getting the same customers to buy again — it’s about building a relationship where they want to return,” Crawford explained. “It’s driven by trust, satisfaction, and an ongoing connection to your brand.”

To differentiate your brand and encourage repeat business, treat your customers with personalized service. Excellent customer service can take many forms, depending on your business and industry. 

Here are a few examples: 

• Restaurants: The best restaurant POS systems can help dining establishments gather customer information and make personalized menu suggestions and substitutions. 
• Retailers: Similarly, the best retail POS systems can help you greet customers by name, make tailored suggestions, and set up enticing rewards programs.  

Any business can implement best practices to retain repeat customers by getting to know them and their preferences. Here’s how:

• Communicate consistently. As with any relationship, consistent communication is key. Make sure your customers feel heard and valued. “Businesses should create intentional follow-up touchpoints — whether through well-timed emails, loyalty programs or proactive customer service — so customers feel engaged, not just sold to,” Crawford advised. “Thoughtful communication and genuine appreciation go a long way.”
• Use email to personalize offers. Targeted email marketing campaigns are another way to personalize service. Market segmentation tools in email marketing software allow you to send specific emails that address a unique customer segment’s interests and needs. 
• Gather data to understand customers’ preferences. Chris Galloway, executive vice president of strategy and design at Brandmovers, stressed the importance of using data to understand what customers want. “Utilize repeat purchase offers to collect data and insights that help you get to know your customer better,” Galloway recommended.

Your goal should be to create personalized experiences and offers that go beyond standard discounts. “Avoid making your repeat purchase offers solely transactional,” Galloway advised. “This creates a race-to-the-bottom mentality where your customers will only value your brand based on the discounts.”

3. Provide future-use coupons.

Future-use coupons are an excellent tool for encouraging repeat business. Coupons drive engagement and retention by giving customers a reason to frequent your business after making an initial purchase. 

For example, for every $50 purchase in your store, you could offer a coupon for 10 percent off a future purchase. This enticement gives customers a reason to return, especially if their first purchase wowed them.

4. Get customers’ contact info.

When customers walk into your store or visit your e-commerce website, one of your top priorities should be to collect their contact information. Once you have their names, phone numbers, email addresses and mailing addresses, you have numerous opportunities to reach out and build relationships. 

For example, when customers opt in to your email marketing list, they give you express permission to send newsletters, updates about sales and discounts, new product announcements and more. 

5. Give customers freebies.

The key to driving repeat business is staying on your customers’ radar. Once they leave your store or exit your website, you want them to remember you. Free promotional materials are an excellent way to stay top of mind. 

Whether you opt for pens, calendars, stuffed animals or other freebies that fit with your brand, handing out promotional materials to select customers can show that you value their business and help them feel like VIPs. 

6. Offer customers the opportunity to provide feedback.

Providing feedback opportunities shows your customers that you care about their opinions. They will feel heard, understand they’re more than just a number, and be more likely to return. 

You can collect customer feedback via surveys in numerous ways, including email, text, live chat and social media. Survey data can yield valuable insights and help you improve your offerings. 

“Ensuring customer feedback is listened to and implemented fosters trust, making them more likely to return,” Graham said.

It is essential to collect customer feedback regularly. Provide ample opportunities for customers to share their experiences, and be sure to acknowledge and thank them, even if they provide constructive criticism. 

7. Maintain an active social media presence.

Social media marketing is uniquely valuable when you’re developing your brand’s personality. It keeps your business top of mind and makes people feel like they know and understand your company personally.

Creative, eye-catching social media posts also give current customers content they can share when recommending your business to others.

8. Offer product trials.

It doesn’t matter how much you market or tout your products and services — until customers have a positive experience with your brand, they’re unlikely to return. In other words, you need to prove that your company can deliver on its promises.

“Customers create a preference for a brand through consistent positive experiences with that brand,” Galloway said. 

Of course, this starts with a memorable first impression. You can often achieve this by offering a product trial, which allows your products to speak for themselves.

“Following strong acquisition efforts, the first experience is typically a product trial and a feeling of whether that trial was ‘worth it,'” Galloway explained. “At the trial phase, brands create offers to encourage repeat purchases — in the form of coupons, rebates or even reward points if the customer chooses to join their brand loyalty program.”

From there, Galloway advises focusing on deepening your relationship with that customer by transitioning them from a trial user to a brand advocate.

Tools and software to help earn repeat business 

Gathering customer data is crucial to earning repeat business. Understanding your target audience helps you focus your marketing efforts and filter out low-quality leads. “The trick is leveraging smart tools and strategies to keep customers engaged without feeling overwhelmed or constantly ‘sold to,'” Crawford noted.

Consider the following essential software tools that can help you nurture repeat sales and create great customer relationships.

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems

The best CRM software provides essential tools for organizing data, tracking prospects and catering to customers. The data you gather in a CRM system will help you segment your contacts and provide personalized offers to specific customer and prospect groups. 

“[CRM systems] help businesses maintain consistent, personalized outreach without the heavy manual workload,” Crawford noted.

The right CRM platform can increase sales and foster repeat business through personalized customer communications and targeted offers.

Email marketing software

The best email marketing software streamlines customer communications and allows you to share targeted information with specific audience segments. These platforms offer a variety of features that help you build customer relationships, foster trust, increase sales, boost website traffic and more. 

Email marketing software and services can provide customizable templates, A/B testing, HTML-ready landing pages, campaign management tools, automation functions, lead generation options, and advanced reporting and analytics to guide future campaigns.

Email marketing software can also help you do the following:

• Personalize messages
• Boost customer loyalty and engagement
• Foster brand awareness
• Increase customer retention
• Automate tasks

Text message marketing software

If you haven’t ventured into text message marketing yet, now may be the time to consider this highly effective way to connect with customers and boost sales. The best text message marketing services take the guesswork out of texting customers and prospects while helping you comply with laws, best practices and regulations. They let you effortlessly automate personalized messages and connect with your target audience in real time.

Text message marketing can cut through the clutter and deliver immediate results. You can engage customers by sending time-sensitive updates, customized product recommendations and follow-up customer service messages.

Analytics tools

Understanding your customers is crucial to retaining them, and that means studying analytics to identify patterns in customer activity. By using the right tools, such as Google Analytics and platform-specific reporting dashboards, you can gain important insights without doing any manual work.

“Analytics tools like Google Analytics and Shopify’s built-in reports help track purchasing patterns and customer behavior, which can help with building strategies for fostering repeat business,” Graham said.

Keep them coming back for more

The more often a customer returns and has a positive experience when purchasing from you, the more likely they are to come back again — and tell their friends. To earn repeat business, you must ensure you’re doing the right things to respect your customers, meet their needs and build trust over time.

The strategies we’ve outlined — such as personalizing customer experiences and connecting with your audience on social media — are a great place to start. As you continue retaining customers, you’ll notice that those loyal buyers often begin doing much of the promotional heavy lifting for you.

Sammi Caramela contributed to this article.