Customer Retention versus Customer Development
Updated: Jul 18

What is the Difference between Customer Retention and Customer Development?:
Both customer retention and customer development refer to the efforts businesses take to keep customers happy and engaged. However, these two approaches have different goals and strategies.
Let's dive in to know more.
Customer Retention versus Customer Development:
1. Customer retention refers to the strategy of keeping current customers through promotional campaigns, discounts, and public relations.
Customer development refers to the targeted growth of a product or service by identifying underserved market segments and developing new offerings for those segments.
Do you know? - “Omnichannel personalization is known to show an 89% higher customer retention rate than single channels” - litmus’s personalization lessons report
2. Customer retention focuses on keeping existing customers satisfied and loyal. Businesses can achieve this by offering excellent service, competitive pricing, or a unique product offering.
The goal of customer retention is to keep customers from switching to a competitor's product.
3. While customer development is a more forward-looking approach that focuses on creating new products and services that will appeal to existing customers.
This approach requires businesses to constantly survey customers about their needs and preferences, as well as develop new ideas for products or services that can meet those needs.
The goal of customer development is to ensure that businesses are continually meeting the changing needs of their customers.
“It’s well known that brand loyalty and corporate profits go hand in hand. In fact, early studies on the topic suggested that increasing customer retention rates by just 5% would increase profits by a minimum of 25%” - Wunderkind and Retail Dive Report
Whatever way you look at it, both customer retention and customer development are important parts of the business that can lead to increased profits and growth!
By the way, if you are interested, you may access - 16 Powerful Marketing Strategies To Increase Customer Loyalty
P.S: Visit Digital Marketing Forum that answers [most un-answered] questions.
P.S.S: Please don’t forget to forward this blog post to your network so they can get the best tips, practices, strategies, education, resources, and tools to help their businesses grow.