IndieHackers - 🗞 What's New: Reducing customer churn

Weave personalization into your customer relationships to reduce churn:

• Don't be afraid to automate. Automation can actually help you craft more personalized messages and experiences at scale.
• Create visual posts specifically for X, then get them seen by leveraging the audiences of well-known indie hackers.
• Hitting 3K users in 3 weeks helped Tony validate his side project quickly. The key? Being intentional about asking for feedback.

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by Syed Balkhi

Customer churn refers to the percentage of people who stop using your product, compared to new customers coming in, during a specific timeframe. Most businesses calculate their churn quarterly or annually.

The formula

(Customers who left / Total new customers) x 100 = Churn rate.

So, if you lost 250 customers and gained 1K customers over a year, you'd have a churn rate of 25%. This is an extremely high rate. In the SaaS world, a "good" churn rate is between 5-7% annually. Here's how to get there.

Use customer data to build audience segments

Understanding your customers is vital for personalization. Once you gather enough data, you can start putting customers into groups based on what they have in common.

For instance, if you run a pet store, your cat owners will want something different than dog owners. By grouping your customers based on their needs (like what pet they have!), you can tailor your messages and offers to suit each group.

Compile this data into buyer personas, then divide your audience into segments based on the different personas.

Personalize the way you communicate

Emails that address the recipient by name can see up to 14% more opens. That's a significant boost just from personalizing the greeting! Similarly, when you create segmented alerts tailored to specific customer groups, those messages get ~1.5x more clicks than generic ones.

Share custom offers

83% of consumers actually don't mind sharing their details if it means they get offers made just for them. Use that to your advantage!

If a customer buys a coffeemaker from you, next time, offer them a discount on specialty coffee grounds. It's thoughtful, and it shows you're looking out for what they might like or need next.

Invest in a flexible rewards program

All of your customers are unique, with different goals and needs. So, it makes sense to have a flexible rewards program that adjusts to what people like. Rewards and loyalty programs are excellent ways to boost your retention rate and reduce churn.

The key is to find a balance between rewards and spending.

Use automation to personalize experiences

You might think personal touches get lost when you use automation. Good news: That's not the case. Using automated customer service tools, email campaigns, and social media chatbots can actually help you give each customer a unique experience, even as your business grows.

For example, chatbots can quickly answer questions at any time, day or night. But they can also be set up to remember your customers' names and past purchases. This makes your customer feel seen and valued, even if it's a bot on the other end.

When it comes to emails and social media, automation lets you send out messages tailored to each customer's interests and behaviors. That means they get content they actually care about and answers they need, which is bound to improve their satisfaction.

Build a community

Building an online community (social media, forums, Discord, etc.) that's friendly and personal gives you a unique opportunity to connect with your audience, and allows them to get to know each other.

Use these spaces to talk to people, even if they haven't committed to your brand. There's also the benefit of social proof. For example, you could ask customers to share their best creations with your product.

Wrapping up

Be sure to consistently gather feedback from your customers on what's working and what's not. Remember that personalization is more than just a buzzword: It's a powerful tool for keeping customers close, and keeping your churn rates low!

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by Cameron Scully

Looking to reach more people on X?‍ Create insightful posts with a visual touch, then get them seen with this strategy!

Nail the visuals

Janis Ozolins's course on creating visual tweets in Figma is a great place to start if you're new to the game. Check out the tips there, then build out at least 20 visual pieces in your niche.

Add your website link to your designs, and you're ready to post.

Reaching out to well-known founders

Now that you have your visual posts ready, you can repurpose and share them. Identify a few founders whose content resonates with you, and check out their comment section.

For example, let's take a look at Sahil Bloom's post:

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90% of the comment section includes useless comments like this one:

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But take your visual tweet, and post it in the comments:

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This way, you can reach more of their followers since your visual post stands out in the comment section. Not only are you providing value, but you may also get a retweet from the founder themselves!

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If you enjoyed this visual tweet strategy, check out the course for more!

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by Rob Hope

Strengthen your landing page with these design, development, and conversion tips!

Don’t neglect retina optimization.

Simply put, retina displays have higher density pixels, requiring a bigger version of the imagery to appear crisp.

Subscribe to Rob's One Page Love newsletter for his favorite UI, design, and development finds.

by Tony

I created a side project that brought in 3K users in three weeks. Here's how I validated it!

Idea

I started by identifying a problem faced by many solo founders: Finding viable ideas. My solution was to create a simple tool that generates micro-SaaS ideas based on a user's niche.

I kept the tool really user-friendly. All it required was for users to input a niche to generate ideas. If a user didn't have a niche in mind, they could generate a random one.

As far as development, the only thing I needed was a basic landing page with a text box for people to enter their niche, a button to generate a random niche if they didn’t have one in mind, and a button to generate the ideas. Then, I needed a page to show the results. I used a Next.js boilerplate called ShipFast to build it.

Launch strategy

I launched the tool on Hacker News, relevant subreddits, and directories. I actively asked people for feedback, and through that, I learned that the idea wasn't validated. People didn't totally understand the point of the product, but were willing to use it just to give me feedback. It helps to be intentional about asking for user feedback!

I monitored user interaction through simple analytics (using Plausible for this), which helped me understand how users were interacting with the tool, and where they were dropping off. This is how I found out that the tool was being used every day. Users are still coming in from all of the places where I launched, so the key is to get the word out there.

What's next

So, the tool has been doing quite well, and I'm updating it to add more value based on the feedback I got.

Currently, when you generate ideas, you can also check the SEO potential of your idea. You’ll see keyword suggestions, keyword difficulty (how hard it is to rank on Google for it), and the average search volume per month. If the SEO potential is good, then the idea has the potential to do well in organic search results. This means you could build the product, optimize it for SEO based on the information you’ve just gotten, and watch the customers come in without having to do too much marketing.

Hope this can be of help to some people!

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by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

Forward it to a friend, and let them know they can subscribe here.

Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.

Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Syed Balkhi, Darko, Cameron Scully, Rob Hope, and Tony for contributing posts. —Channing