The five messages every business needs to send

Customers rarely leave in one moment. They leak out in five places, and each place needs a different message. Most businesses work on only one of them, the quiet drift, with a newsletter. Here are all five, with one number to count and one first move for each.

What happens before the customer gets a first real result?

They signed up, booked or paid, and never got the thing they came for. The kitchen was installed but the tap drips. The course was bought but never opened. The first haircut was fine but nobody explained how to style it.

Count how many new customers reach their first real result within a week. The message that fixes it is a short human check-in before day 7: "How is it going? Is there anything that did not work?" It comes from a person and asks one question. It also gives you the first honest feedback on your product.

What happens between the first and second purchase?

This is the biggest drop for most businesses I look at, and it is the one worth fixing first if you can only pick one. A first purchase is a trial. The second is a decision.

Count the share of new customers who come back within 30 to 60 days, or whatever fits your cycle. The strongest move here happens before they leave the first time: suggest or book the next step, such as the next appointment, the refill or the follow-up session.

If you want the casino version of this, with how an operator turns a first deposit into a second, see how to turn a first deposit into a second one. The mechanics are close to a shop's second order.

What happens when the card fails?

Nobody chose to leave. The card expired, the limit was reached, or the bank blocked a charge. For subscription businesses this is a quiet and fixable loss.

Count the failed payments that never recover. The message is one plain note with a link that goes straight to a page that updates the card. A few details matter, and I wrote them out in how to recover failed payments on Stripe subscriptions:

• Say what happened in plain words, name the product and the amount, and say what changes if nothing is done.
• An expired card will never succeed on a retry. It needs the customer to give you a new one.
• Do not attach a discount to a failed payment. Customers whose card failed did not ask for a lower price.
• A pre-expiry email, sent before the card runs out, removes some failures at the source.

If you do not charge cards on a schedule, skip this one. Many businesses do not have this leak.

What happens when a customer drifts away quietly?

Visits get rarer, nobody complains, then they are gone. This is the leak the monthly newsletter tries to cover, and it covers it badly because the newsletter is not timed to anyone.

Count the customers who are past their normal interval. The message is a reminder timed to that person's own rhythm, not a blast on the first of the month. This is where the next-due date from what retention is earns its keep: a customer who orders every five weeks hears from you at five weeks and a few days, in words about what they ordered.

Keep the tone light at first. A person who is a few days late is probably busy.

What do you do about your top customers?

Your biggest customers often bring a share of revenue far larger than their share of headcount. You can check this on your own list by taking the top tenth by spend and adding up what they paid. If that tenth is a large part of your revenue, losing one of them hurts more than losing ten others.

Count who among them went quiet this month. The fix is a phone call from a person, you or someone senior. Automation is the wrong tool here, and I say that as someone who sells software. The previous part of this series, how to look after top customers, covers who gets the call and who is better left alone.

Which one should you fix first?

Pick the leak where the number is worst and the fix is cheapest. For most businesses I would start with the gap between the first and second purchase, because it affects every new customer and the fix is mostly a habit.

If you charge cards on a schedule and have never looked at failed payments, look at those first. They are the one leak where a customer wanted to stay and could not, so every recovered payment is close to free money.

Whatever you pick, change one thing at a time. If you launch a check-in, a reminder and a call script in the same week, you will not know which one worked. Part 8 explains how to find out.

What can you do today?

Pick one of the five and get its number. One number you track beats five you guess.

Here is a way to do it in an hour. Take your last 50 new customers. For each one, mark whether they came back within 60 days. Count the yes marks. If that count surprises you, you have found your first leak. Write one sentence for the message you would have sent at day 30 to the ones who did not return, and send it to the three you most want back.