Earn Three Times As Much Money Writing Customer Retention Projects … While Helping Clients Grow Their Customer Base and Business
By Sandy Franks

In 2007 Henry Schuck had an idea … if salespeople had access to more detailed data, they’d have a way better chance of hitting their numbers or quotas.

And since he already had experience working as a market analyst for a software service firm, he knew how to collect data.

So he and a friend put $25,000 in start-up expenses on their credit cards and created a company that offers insights, software, and access to a database of millions of contacts to sales professionals.

They called their company ZoomInfo.

Today that company earns over $1 billion in revenues. What’s even more impressive is it has a 98.5% customer retention rate.

That’s quite an impressive achievement, especially when most B2B firms strive for rates of 35% or higher.

How’d they achieve such success in keeping customers?

Well, for one thing, they stay in touch with their customers on a regular basis. In fact, they took the time to map out the customer journey and realized that every stage is an opportunity to talk with and get feedback from those using their services.

But that’s not all. ZoomInfo offers its customers a series of what they call “education interventions,” which are in-depth educational programs including live webinars, on-demand, and private training. Customers can even get ZoomInfo certification training.

In today’s competitive landscape of modern business, customer retention is a critical factor in not only sustaining growth but also profitability. ZoomInfo knows this and is doing it right.

Creating Customer Connections

When I say keeping in touch with customers matters, that also means at the very beginning. Studies show that a key strategy that consistently proves useful in developing long-term customer relationships is to start building those connections from the very beginning of the customer journey.

That’s because the journey begins long before a purchase is made. It starts with awareness, moves through consideration and evaluation, and then into the decision to buy.

Each stage presents an opportunity for businesses to connect with potential customers on a personal level.

How exactly can you help businesses stay in touch with customers? By taking on customer retention writing projects.

And that’s because customer retention isn’t just a marketing thing … it’s also a writing thing. The good news here is as a writer, you’re in a perfect position to take on these projects. Think of them as creating customer connections for your client.

Connections that include writing welcome emails … writing weekly or monthly newsletters … writing renewal emails … writing invitations to participate in webinars and chats … writing telephone scripts … writing cross sell and upsell letters.

The list goes on and on. You can even use storytelling to build meaningful relationships.

For instance, you could write stories that highlight the value and benefits of your clients’ products or services.

Storytelling humanizes the brand experience, making it more relatable and compelling to customers. And that goes a long way to creating long-term relationships.

Getting Paid – Three Ways to Leverage Your Customer Retention Skills

Clients love it when a writer can step in and help them build long-term relationships with their customers. And when you do that, you’re able to make a lot of money.

In particular with customer retention projects, you can get paid in three different ways …

Payout #1: Audits – As crazy as it may seem, there are businesses that don’t focus enough attention on customer retention. Instead, they spend a good portion of their time and resources on getting a customer.

And this means an opportunity for you. You could propose to do an audit of their customer retention efforts, where you find areas that could be improved on or things they aren’t doing at all.

Perhaps they haven’t thought about sending out surveys to customers on a regular basis. Or maybe they haven’t offered any kind of group chats or “office hours.”

Maybe they don’t send out enough emails, letting customers know about new products, new services, or new discounts being offered.

Audits are an eye-opening experience for businesses because they usually uncover blind spots. By that I mean, simple retention efforts they just haven’t used.

You can charge them a fee for doing the audit, which could range anywhere from $1,000 to $2,000.

Once you find those areas of opportunity … you can get paid a second time.

Payout #2: Writing the projects – If you find during the audit that the company doesn’t make use of newsletters, you offer to write one for them. It could be a weekly or monthly newsletter that gives customers the latest information on upcoming products. Or maybe it spotlights a customer who used their product, and the results were absolutely what was expected.

For the newsletter, depending on length, you could charge $500 up to $1,500. And even better, if it’s a monthly newsletter, you could ask to be put on a retainer. That’s consistent income for you!

Or let’s say you find the company doesn’t send out enough email marketing messages. Here again, you offer to write those emails. Your fee can range from $250 for one email to $750 for three.

Emails are usually short in length, so we’re not talking about time-consuming projects either.

Or you might find they don’t upsell (ask for additional purchases of a higher-priced product) or cross sell customers (ask for additional purchases of similar items). If you offer to write these messages, it’s yet one more way to get paid. In fact you could negotiate a royalty.

Payout #3: Earn royalties – It’s often expected in newsletter publishing firms, especially financial related ones, the writer of sales messages is not only paid an upfront amount of money but also earn a royalty.

That royalty adds up quickly too. In some instances, writers are paid as much as 5% of the revenues that come from the marketing messages (sales letters) they write.

For example, if a writer who negotiated a 5% royalty writes a powerful sales message, which might be six, eight, or 12 pages long … and it generates $100,000 in extra revenue, that works out to $5,000.

But here’s the thing. When you write customer retention upsell sales messages, you can negotiate a royalty too. So not only do you get paid to write the message, but you also earn a royalty on it as well. It’s a little-known way to enjoy the benefits of being paid a royalty without writing lengthy sales letter.

Yet there’s one more way to negotiate a royalty. What if the combination of all the customer retention projects you write adds more profits to the company’s bottom line?

You could ask for a percentage of those profits. If the projects you write added an extra $500,000 in profits, maybe you negotiate a royalty of 3% and so you’d wind up earning an extra $9,000.

This is why working on customer retention projects is so lucrative for you as a writer.

In an era where customer expectations are higher than ever, businesses no longer have a choice of IF they should prioritize relationship-building as a core strategy for long-term retention but as a MUST DO.

And as a writer who is well versed in customer retention, you are in the “sweet spot” to lead them in the right direction. You’ll be helping them grow their customer base and business and making a great living doing it.