In a recent post, I spoke about the importance of customer retention and how it can be more of a priority for a brand that has some traction in their marketplace and is more established.
Customer acquisition is vital to your brand in the early stages of start-up & beyond.
However…
Once you’ve developed a customer base, retention should be on your mind. The more customers you have, the more important retention is.
It’s important to note that customer retention is important for every business, but it’s especially important for ecommerce brands. At the end of the day, an online business lacks the opportunity to connect with customers in person. This may well change with advancements in technology, but for now this is what we have to deal with.
This inability to build face-to-face relationships can cause customer churn.
What I didn’t explain in that previous post was how you can develop customer retention. How do you get your customers to stick round and purchase from you again and again? How should your brand nurture these customer relationships so that you achieve a better lifetime value, create raving fans and more customer referrals to your brand?
Let’s talk about that below –
Go The Extra Mile For Your Customers
Let’s start off with a pretty obvious strategy and one you can easily improve on without any real difficulty.
When you go the extra mile for customers, it makes your brand stick out in their minds. Consistent regular acts of care convey to your customers that you do indeed appreciate their business.
When looking for ways to go above and beyond for your customers, test the idea of offering free trials from your product line. Or how about a customer care package for new customers that include extra goodies with their original order?
Customer got a problem? Go above and beyond to amend the situation and offer something that will surprise them in a good way.
Doing something that surprises and delights customers will make them want to remain loyal to your business and refer their friends. In my opinion, this is considered one of the holy grails of marketing.
It’s the positive emotional reaction we experience as a customer, that makes us want to share what we’ve experienced and made us happy. Positive word-of-mouth marketing is priceless to any brand because it’s genuinely authentic.
Many businesses use these examples of customer delight in their marketing by implementing them into customer testimonials and other marketing materials. It’s no harm to go the extra mile as it can do wonders in terms of having these customers purchase from you multiple times in future, and also having them refer their buddies to your business.
Incentivize Retention Using A Rewards Program
Another great way to increase customer retention rates is by utilizing a rewards program into your brand. A rewards program gives customers a valid reason to continue shopping with your brand.
Collecting all those stars, points etc gives customers a great feeling. They’re receiving more value simply by purchasing more of what you have to offer. When executed correctly, this can really make your customers stick around for years to come and continue doing business with your brand.
As humans, we like to close open loops. So when we start collecting points on our purchases, knowing that after a certain amount of points collected, we’ll be rewarded with extra value, we make it our business to complete that loop to gain our reward.
What’s important to note here is not to make your rewards program too much of a challenge in terms of completing these cycles or levels within the rewards program. At least not at the start. Just make sure there is an end goal with value for the customer.
One brand that has an excellent rewards program is Sephora. Sephora lets its user choose how they want to spend their rewards points. Customers can spend points on individual Sephora products, or they can buy discounts or coupons. This way, Sephora users can get exactly what they want from the rewards program.
Get Personal With Your Customer Experience
No doubt you are going to have many customers with different wants and needs for their problems and desires. What you want to do in this case, is offer a personal experience to your existing customers.
Provided you have a good customer relationship management system in place, you’ll most likely be able to view your customers purchasing history and understand the types of products they are purchasing from your brand. Use this to your advantage and deliver a more personalized offer to your customers.
There are many brands online that recommend products to customers on their website or via their email channel. Amazon is perhaps the most common example of this. As you are logged in, it’s able to show you similar products based on your purchasing history.
Why not showcase products that your visitors have browsed in the past on your website, or added to a wishlist or given a “like”. This offers a more personalized experience… and a more personalized experience leads to a better sales conversion rate.
Got an Email List?
Use this for customer communication. Personalize your email messaging by sharing relevant content such as blog posts based on their past purchases. Test the idea of sending out a survey asking customers how you as a brand can better personalize their experience. This level of commitment in making sure every customer feels like they matter can only increase customer retention for your brand.
Get Your Customers To Create an Account
Another great way to better ensure customer retention is to have a customer go ahead and actually create an account. A customer who is willing to create a website account with your brand, shows the beginning signs of trust and respect for your brand.
They’ve committed to receiving your emails, rewards program and easier/faster checkout processing. Your customer creates an account because they see a mutually-beneficial relationship with your brand. This is exactly the kind of relationship you want to build.
The question is…
“How do you give a strong reason for your customer to create an account with your website?”
Why would a customer create an account on your website? After all, it’s easier and quicker to pay as a guest. To overcome this barrier you need to do the following –
- Create an irresistible offer
- Have a sign up form on your website that requires no more than three fields (Name, Email & Password)
Your irresistible offer should include lots of perks for registered users. Things like –
1. Early access to new products
2. Exclusive discounts & coupon codes
3. Shopping rewards. (The more your customers shop, the more value they acquire)
4. Exclusive monthly giveaways
5. You can even test the idea of offering store credit that is applied to a customers new account when they achieve a certain purchase value.
6. Use gamification to further engage your registered user
Once a prospect or customer becomes a registered user, they’re more likely to stay with your business for a much longer time due to all the exclusive perks they now have access to.
Stay Top of Mind With Social Media
Another important channel to use to help you stay top of mind is being consistent with your social media presence. Whether that’s using Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc, consistent posting and regular engagement in the comments section of posts, stories & DM’s will help to keep the conversation going with your audience and nurture the relationships your brand has with its audience.
The nurturing of relationships can only help to improve customer retention. Having an interactive social media presence can be the difference between a fan/customer engaging or disengaging with your business. It gives your brand online a platform to connect with your followers in real-time.
Pay regular attention and respond to any questions or concerns your audience publishes on your social media profiles. Make customers who share positive things about your brand feel recognized and appreciated. Monitor your hashtags to help you see if your posts are acquiring any attention and conversation from the offers and content you are publishing on your own profiles.
Offer a Subscription Service
Last on the list for today when looking to improve your customer retention rate, is to offer a subscription service based model. This is a business model where your customers subscribe to a monthly/bi-monthly subscription service to receive a package in the post with all the goodies they need on a regular basis.
Subscriptions work well for most consumable or disposable products. Things like food, health and beauty products, pet supplies, fitness supplements, clothes etc.
Some great examples of subscriptions models in ecommerce:
- Amazon Prime – 2 Day shipping, exclusive discounting and offers (to name a few)
- Dollar Shave Club – Sends you affordable, high-quality personal grooming supplies
- Tails – Get tailored dog food, delivered to your doorstep
- Birchbox – Sends you a variety of makeup, skincare and hair care products.
- HelloFresh – Delivers pre-portioned ingredients to make homemade meals right to your door.
A question you might ask yourself is…
“Do I have customers who buy frequently enough to benefit from things like unlimited free shipping, exclusive discounts & sales?”
Even specific offers? If you recognise this in your business, offering a paid subscription service that includes these special kinds of perks can make the difference between satisfied customers and customers who buy almost exclusively from you.
Let me share with you an obvious, yet very successful membership program that does a great job of retaining its user base.
Amazon’s Prime Membership Program
Their prime members pay $12.99 a month for exclusive perks, such as free 2-day shipping, advance promotions and year-round discounts.
Amazon’s paid membership program has been so successful that, in July 2016, they launched Prime Day—a day similar to Black Friday or Cyber Monday, but only for Amazon Prime members. Not only did people sign up for the Amazon Prime free trial just to take part, but Prime Day also produced record sales that made it the biggest day in Amazon’s history.
Amazon Prime day continues to drive more sales each year. In 2019, Amazon Prime Day sales amounted to an estimated 7.16 billion U.S. dollars!
Executing a successful subscription service for your brand requires serious thought and planning. You should start with a handful of loyal customers to begin with. A value packed subscription service, with great customer service will retain many customers for many months, if not years to come.
It will increase your customers level of commitment to your business and paying the subscription fee will give them yet another reason to continue buying from you.
That’s all I got for today! I hope you found this valuable. If you did, please hit the like button to let me know you’re digging the content 😉
Any questions? Just pop them in the comments section.
