3 ways scent can increase your customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is one of the most important metric in business today. Repeated business will ensue from loyalty as well as one of the most powerful tool to gain new customers: word of mouth. A 5% increase in customer retention can impact profits by 25-95%. So rather than focusing all your marketing efforts on obtaining new customers, you should allocate some resources to actually keeping your customers with you and encourage recurrent purchase. Here are 3 easy ways to do so.

1. Create an emotional connection with your customer

An important aspect of customer loyalty comes from the emotion you generate. Customers need to like you and they will remain committed if they feel that they have developed with you a genuine and mutually beneficial relationship. Scent is the most emotional of all the senses. By connecting to the part of the brain in charge of emotions scent allows you to connect deeply with your customers. As a result scent should take a significant place in your brand strategy.

 

2. Deliver a long lasting impression

Noah Fleming is the author of the new book The Customer Loyalty Loop: The Science Behind Creating Great Experiences and Lasting Impressions. In an interview, he recently told “We’re finally realizing that the customer experience does not start once you have a customer. In fact, the customer is experiencing long before they decide to do business with you and long after they do business with you.” 

Long lasting impressions are crucial to increase customer loyalty. Scent being processed by the part of the brain in charge of the memory will ensure long lasting impressions on your customers and more memorable experience.

 

3. Create enlightening experiences

Now more than ever successful businesses don’t focus on products but on delivering experiences to their customers. Many brands have started tapping on their customer senses. For example Zane Cycles has been focusing on making his customers feel good by giving away free drinks at his in-store coffee bar. His customers walk away with an experience, an experience that will keep them coming back for more, and pushing positive word to mouth. 

Same concept used in Furla, by diffusing an incredibly pleasant aroma Furla makes sure that all of its customers have an incredible positive experience during their shopping journey in their outlets and feel satisfied. Indeed surveys show that scent marketing can improve customer satisfaction up to 55%.