[Stoots]

Without giving any exact my retention is also 40%. That is I have 40% of the total customers I've ever cleaned still on the books.

[Richard iSparkle]

Tax man is getting cleverer every day.

I'm related to someone who works for the HM Revenue and Customs in a managerial capacity, who has carried out tax investigations in the past, and I can categorically state that this person is NOT getting cleverer every day.

In fact he's often not very bright at all.

 

[Richard iSparkle]

The maximum amount I'm prepared to invest to  "make" this £210 is 25% ie. £52.50 - giving me a return on investment of 400%.

a) Find out how my retention rates compare with industry norms (which is why I'm asking about retention rates).
b) calculate what the average lifetime value of a customer is.
c) Allocate advertising budget to the most effective form of (tracked) sales generation (seo / leaflets / other advertising) with the amount being allocated being 25% of the Lifetime Value of a customer.

To make this calculation I'm looking for information on retention rates.

If you can help me out Please state:

1. Your customer retention rate.
2. Wether the figures are for established work (more than 5 years) or new work (less then 5 years).

So



a) state the time period that you have gathered your figures over.

b) Clarify    i) If these figures are for established work more than 5 years old
                        ii) or wether you were round building.

c) If it is established work, please state how many years the work is has been established.

Hi,

Great post by the way.

This is exactly the sort of thing that I am interested in...

If you don't know how much your average customer brings in, how can you decide how much to spend on getting them?

It is complicated to measure for me because we have changed so much over the lifetime of the business.

At the start we were all canvassed work accepting any payment method. Now they're mostly leaflet customers but we insist everyone pays by Direct Debit before we will book a clean in.

That means that we get less new customers, but the ones we do get stick with us a lot longer.

On the customers from the past year, we loose about 30% over the first year, and about another 30% over the second year