Engage or Lose: How to keep customers actively choosing you

In recurring revenue businesses, the real sale starts after signup.

Acquisition might get the attention. Brand gets the love. Pricing gets the debate. But in recurring revenue models, engagement is what keeps you in business.

You don't just win a customer once, you have to keep earning them.

One-off communications, generic journeys, and half-hearted loyalty schemes don't cut it. If your customers aren't seeing value, they disengage. Quietly. And churn follows.

Why the middle matters

Think about your current customer base. Imagine each one spends an average of £500 per year. Now, what if you increased their value by just 10%? That’s £550 each. Multiply that by 1,000 customers, suddenly you’ve got £50,000 in incremental revenue… without spending a penny on acquisition.

Compare that to acquiring 100 new customers at £500 each, with a £200 acquisition cost. That’s £20,000 in spend to gain £50,000 revenue, and that’s assuming they stick around.

Retention is not just cheaper, it’s smarter. It’s where long-term, profitable growth lives.

Retention = Engagement = Emotional Connection

If your customer doesn’t see value, they disengage. Quietly. Then they churn.The challenge is, disengagement doesn’t always look dramatic. It might be:

• An app never opened again

• A core feature never discovered

• An email that gets unsubscribed from

• Feedback forms that say "I didn’t see the point"

These aren’t just marketing problems. They’re business performance red flags.

Across categories, research shows emotionally connected customers:

• Stay longer

• Spend more

• Refer others more frequently

One stat always stands out to me: Customers who received tailored communications based on behaviour and usage patterns were 34% more likely to remain active after 6 months.

What does real engagement look like and how to build it.

What do I mean by "engagement"?

This isn't just email opens or app logins. Engagement is the customer choosing to interact with your brand or product - consistently, and with purpose.

Examples include:

• A telecoms client introducing "data milestones" that celebrated customer usage moments drove a 22% increase in app opens

• A food subscription brand that used in-box inserts with personalised recipe tips led to lower cancellation rates by 18% in certain cohorts

• A health tech product using weekly nudges post-onboarding, tailored to motivation type (goal-setters vs. task-completers), improved 30-day retention by 2x

  
  

Signs of low engagement

• Users stop interacting before the second billing

• Your best features are going undiscovered

• Email engagement is dropping each cycle or people unsubscribe

• Customers say 'I didn't see the value' in exit surveys

• Churn spikes at predictable points

  
  

These aren't product flaws, they're signals that engagement is missing or misfiring.

How to build sustained engagement

1. Start with a behavioural-led onboarding journey

Don't just tell people what to do, guide them based on what you know.

From the research, brands that used progressive onboarding, revealing features based on customer actions, saw up to 40% better conversion to activation than static tours.

2. Design communications around lifecycle and intent

Avoid batch-and-blast. Use what you know about the customer's lifecycle stage, segment, and motivation to shape messaging.

💬 Instead of: "Still with us?"💬 Try: "Your routine is working, here's what's next."

Example: A business in the fitness space shifted from generic check-ins to usage-based nudges and cut week 4 drop-off in half.

There is nothing worst than buying a product to have that same product recommended to you in the very next communication you get from the same company….

3. Create micro-moments of value

Not every message needs to sell. Some should simply reinforce the emotional ROI of the product.

• A milestone "You've completed 10 sessions"

• A reflection "You've saved 12 hours cooking this month"

• A soft nudge "Here's a feature you haven't tried yet"

• A small reward "We noticed your purchase - here's something extra"

Finding: Brands who used non-transactional loyalty moments saw longer retention curves and higher NPS.

4. Use Data to Anticipate Disengagement

Don't wait for churn. Act when behaviour dips.

Look at:

• Inactive usage days

• Reduced session depth

• Drop in purchase cadence

• Support issues with no resolution

• Comms fatigue (open/click declines)

Framework: Set "engagement risk scores" using behaviour and time since last action then build journeys to address them proactively.

In blog 3, I talked about data and data chaos. If you’re in a place where you don’t know where to start with using data to anticipate customer behaviour, take up the very kind offer of a free Lunch & Learn with the team at Blue Hat.They’ll come to you, talk through your biggest data challenges, and share practical solutions built for scale-up realities. You bring the lunch, they’ll bring the insight. Just reach out to me and I’ll connect you.

Reward the right behaviours

Key learning I've made are that loyalty points and discounts help but recognition and relevance build emotional loyalty.

That means rewarding engagement with:

• Personalised content

• Access to beta features

• Community invites

• Surprise thank-yous

• Value reminders ("Here's what you've gained...")

Case study: One subscription brand replaced tiered rewards with surprise "retention treats" after 90 days and saw a 15% improvement in 6-month retention.

Don't just acquire. Engage.

If you want real growth, you need to focus on what happens after someone becomes a customer.

• Make onboarding personal and intuitive

• Use comms to reinforce value, not just push usage

• Watch for risk signals early and intervene meaningfully

• Recognise effort, celebrate progress, and show up consistently

What's working for you when it comes to engagement right now?

⚙️ Next Steps

If you're unsure where to start, especially when it comes to using data to anticipate disengagement or setting up retention journeys that actually work, then reach out. I’d love to connect you with the team at Blue Hat who are offering a free Lunch & Learn session for those struggling with data chaos or a CRM system that just isn’t working for them. You bring the lunch, they’ll bring the insight.

Because the middle matters. And if you’re not talking to your customers... someone else is.