Best Strategies to Reduce Churn Rate and Increase Retention with Oli Bridge

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker. In this episode, the CEO of Bonjoro is back with us for another interesting conversation. Join us as he tells us more about reducing churn rate, inspiring customer loyalty, and turning customers into super fans.

So I want to talk about customer retention. I think that absolutely plays into when the minute someone steps onto your platform or knocks on your door, you guys are ready to delight them. I want to talk about some of the best strategies for businesses to reduce their churn rate—churn rate being the amount of people who are unhappy, not delighted, or who don’t have a good experience because they aren’t onboarded correctly. I want to talk to you about that a little bit, because you guys really take care of people. The minute I step into your house, you’re giving me an appetizer, a glass of wine, the comfiest chair, even rubbing my back. There’s a lot to learn from when it comes to delighting customers.

Money too. If you make it even better, you just gotta give me some cash.

Well, let me tell you this too. I believe, if I remember correctly, ConvertKit is doing $2 million a month, so 17% of $2 million—imagine what kind of impact that has. That’s serious money. Reducing churn rate is very difficult to do, but I love the idea of delighting customers right when they come through the door. The fact that you guys were working with ConvertKit to do that, and then others saw it and said, “Hey, wait a second. We’ve got to jump on this as well,” is a great tip.

Ollie, please allow me to pause the conversation for a minute and talk to our listeners. My team and I offer customized digital marketing services that can help skyrocket your brand’s growth. We handle everything from online PR and content marketing to influencer marketing and much more. To contact us or learn more about our services, visit our website at shanebarker.com.

Now, back to the conversation with Ollie. Another thing you touched on was how to turn your audience—the people who like your product—into super fans. So, how do you turn your customers into advocates or super fans?

You’re looking for those advocates, the super fans, and that’s awesome to play on because those are the people. You do that to try to turn everybody into a super fan by delighting them and doing things that go over and beyond—like sending out a bear outfit, right? You can imagine the number of bear outfits. How many bear outfits have you guys sent out? Do you have any idea?

Chief Delight Officer? How did you—did she go to school to be a chief delight officer? I gotta say it—delight officer? That’s awesome!

She’s the CDO—is that what we’re looking at? The Chief Delight Officer, that is. Well, not that I’d ever want her not to be fired, but I bring a lot of delight and say that you guys have to bring me on. I enjoy being delightful, and I’d like to think that, other than my wife, everybody else thinks I’m delightful too. No, I’m just kidding. My wife actually thinks I am delightful for the most part—80% of the time. Awesome. So what do we talk about when we talk about customer loyalty, right? We have super fans. What are some other things you would recommend in regards to customer loyalty? You have the personalized videos you send out to your actual clientele, your customers. What are the things you do for customer loyalty? Is there anything else to help reel those people in and help make them into super fans?

You know, what drives me crazy is that what you’re doing is so simplistic but so impactful, right? Like the smallest thing—”Hey, let me go buy 10 of your books at $10 a piece.” That’s $100 for somebody, and they’re like, “Man, thank you guys for recognizing that I came out with this book and buying 10 copies.” And whatever that is, it’s just the small things, right? I love that everybody’s going to have their own budget. And then, anybody from the Bonjoro team listening to this right now, you have my email, and you can delight me—if you have the cash, you can send me, I don’t know, gold coins or whatever you want to send me. I drink craft beer, so maybe we should put that on the list.

All joking aside, I think it’s awesome how you’ve improved the platform and added different things. It’s just the small little things of showing your appreciation. Even if it’s something small like buying one book, there are other companies that don’t do that. You know, it’s so much harder to grab new customers than to keep your current ones. I’ve received, at Christmas time, packages from companies I haven’t worked with in eight months—shirts and all that kind of stuff—and I love that because it’s just showing that you care. You’re like, “Hey, I want to appreciate you,” whether you’re charging $30 a month, $50 a month, or 10 grand a month. People really have to think about that.

Now, people are going to have this little budget to be able to wow their customers, which is awesome. But what are you doing to have that connection? There are always going to be competitors with similar products and better benefits, but what are you doing to really show your customers that you love and appreciate them? It’s all about those little things.

I’ll give you another small example. I do some consulting for the Small Business Administration and for the US government to help businesses during COVID. I had one client, Julia—she’s an absolute sweetheart—who got me a $50 Amazon gift card for Christmas. My brother, who I love, didn’t give me anything, which is okay, we’re all at different places. But the point is, Julia gave me that gift card to say, “Hey, I appreciate the work you’ve put in and the consulting you’ve done.” I love that. It’s not about the $50—I don’t need the gift card—but it’s about the fact that she thought about it.

What are you doing to thank people, whether they’re customers, clients, family members, or just people you appreciate in your life? I think that’s awesome. I guess what I’m saying is, it’s great that people have a little fun fund set aside for that.

I like having a CDO; that’s one way to tell everybody, “Hey, we’re giving the green light.” So tell us a little bit—I want to hear about Bonjoro’s client success stories. I know you guys have a lot of them, and we probably don’t even have enough hours in the day to hear about all of them. But do you have a few you can showcase?

I love that because, once again, it really takes just a few seconds. It doesn’t take a lot. That’s what I love about it. And people say, “Oh, but I have to do 20 videos or better.” I’m like, yeah, but you’re doing 20 videos—a personal touch that’s insane—and it really isn’t going to take you that much time, and people are going to be wowed. If everybody was doing this, it wouldn’t be exciting. The problem is not enough people are doing it right. I just love that you have to figure out where it makes sense to use this in the customer journey, and probably sooner rather than later. The idea is, people are like, “I can’t believe that Shane or Tracy or Ollie or whoever just sent me a personalized video thanking me for joining their course or doing this or that.” There’s no better way to reel somebody in. I mean, think about social media—people used to get super pumped when a celebrity would respond to you. Now, imagine if you were joining a course, and you really looked up to this thought leader, and they send you a personalized video, like they took the time because they know who you are. There’s a psychology behind that that’s absolutely amazing. And I get all excited about it. I haven’t even used it to its full capacity, and I’m pumped about it.

So I am just writing down video playbooks—video funnel playbook—so I can look at that, because I will be looking at that actually.

Thanks, Oli, it’s been a great episode, and now I’m sure our listeners know how to reduce churn rate, improve retention, and build customer loyalty. Thanks for listening, and I hope you head over to Bonjoro’s website to check out their Video Funnel Playbook. In our next episode, Oli will come back to talk about B2B affiliate marketing. Stay tuned.