customer retention strategies

Businesses and organisations put a lot of effort into acquiring new customers. This they do through various customer retention strategies, which are the most effective processes to convert new and potential customers to repeat buyers. It is important to create new opportunities for the customers who purchase from eCommerce stores. This will connect them emotionally to the business and boost their value.

Therefore, this doesn’t allow the customer to switch to its competitor as well. This also indicates if the company’s product or service is actually benefiting the existing customers. 

What are the benefits of a customer retention strategy in eCommerce?

Most service providers and subscription-based firms follow two important components to grow their business. One is customer acquisition, and the other is customer retention. Ensuring that the old customers return to places from where they purchased their required product, is a challenging task. It is also equally tough to find new and potential customers. 

Here are some benefits of creating an effective customer retention plan:

Increases lifetime value:

When businesses connect with their customers emotionally, there is potential growth of lifetime value of a customer. Customers think they are part of the brand and hence try to remain loyal to it.

Reduces acquisition cost:

It is easier and more cost-effective to retain an old customer than to find a new customer. This is because it takes time to make them understand the product and service.

Enhances Customer Experience:

Most organisations aim to develop effective customer retention strategies to deliver the best services/products to their customers. This helps them to retain most of the customers, by creating brand loyalty.

Customer retention has a remarkable impact on increasing sales of a certain business. Following the below eCommerce customer retention strategies will be profitable for businesses. Also in the era of marketing, a good product description, detailed return policies & Copywriting & other types of content plays a huge role in customer satisfaction, a good content educate a customer thoroughly, on a product & your services, & a modern age customer loves to buy a product after a have complete knowledge on it. So if you own a ecommerce company & don’t know how to create good quality content, you should hire a good content writing agency for your job.

10 best eCommerce customer retention strategies to fuel up business

Customer retention strategies for eCommerce are effective methods to increase customer value. Reports reveal that almost 33% of repeat customers spend more than the newer ones. Proper retention in marketing allows repeat customers to engage more and perform higher value purchases. 

Conduct email campaigns with promotional programs

The best way to retain old customers to eCommerce is by offering them promotional offers and discounts. Since they are already loyal customers of the eCommerce platform through frequent purchases, investing in them by offering exclusive offers will be beneficial. The more times they open their emails, the more they are reminded of the product or service. Hence they enegage.

Initiate a customer loyalty program

One of the wonderful customer retention strategies is introducing customer loyalty programs. These programs provide value to customers by offering them discounts, cashbacks, perks, and benefits. They encourage customers to spend more on the platform and reward them significantly. Reports reveal that almost 75% of customers want to purchase from companies that provide various rewards and loyalties.

Conduct SMS marketing campaigns

SMS marketing has more than 90% reach to target customers, but less than 20% of companies use this method to connect. By using this strategy, businesses can compete with their competitors effectively. Using a proper marketing scheme, such as a discount code, businesses can frame an SMS campaign to drive customers to their website. 

Plan a good social media marketing strategy

Social media is one of the smartest ways to reach out to customers in a short span of time. Both new and old customers can be reached through effective social media campaigns. Defining new products, promoting them frequently, and engaging in conversations with influencers and followers will allow them to visit the eCommerce website frequently. 

Optimise digital marketing campaigns

To reach out to a maximum number of right customers, it is essential to optimise every marketing channel. Only then can the digital marketing campaigns benefit. The optimisation includes promoting and posting marketing campaigns at the right time for customers. Also, crafting mobile-friendly marketing campaigns is an effective way of optimisation.

Introduce a customer referral program

As per reports, more than 50% of marketers reveal that customer referral programs are more cost-effective than other marketing channels. 75% of B2B businesses generate more leads through effective customer referrals. Customer referrals are beneficial in two ways, one where they generate new leads and the other way is that they help customers by rewarding them.

Introduce an extensive customer dashboard

Ecommerce platforms have options for customers to either check their websites as guest visitors or create an account and make purchases later. They camn also wishlist their favourite product. When businesses offer comprehensive customer dashboards to each of their users, customers are able to peek into their history of purchase too. 

Reports say that approximately 30% of customers tend to shop with a brand they have purchased earlier from, than avail a new one. This is a customer’s loyalty towards a product or the service provided by the platform. A dashboard will make the processes easier and allow customers to shop repeatedly.

Execute customer feedback section

Customer feedback is necessary to initiate customer retention and compel them to visit the eCommerce platform. Businesses can only improve if they know the process to retain their customers by creating a feedback loop. This will automatically engage customers towards the brand. Through the loop, collecting, analysing, and sharing the customer feedback will allow businesses to understand if they actually like the product and to what percentage.

Manage customer communication calendar 

To establish a customer relationship, the platforms should maintain regular customer communication. A proactive marketing team should take care of it even when the buyers are not able to or cannot reach out with feedback. They should reach out, speak to the customer and understand their feedback. A communication calendar is one of the effective customer retention strategies to keep track of what was the last chat about. This not only initiates engagements but encourages upselling and cross-selling too.

Initiate customer education program

A customer education programme is another customer retention strategy that extends beyond purchasing products and services. Following these initiatives, eCommerce platforms can create a community forum where they can introduce certain self-service tools. These tools will educate them and allow them to find the solution to specific problems before reaching out to the support executives.

Is corporate responsibility a part of customer retention strategy?

Companies and eCommerce platforms are aggressively initiating corporate responsibility as a part of a customer retention strategy. They are creating opportunities for buyers to remain connected with them every time they purchase. This also connects them emotionally, as they understand that they are involved in a social cause. Moreover, this creates trust and brand loyalty where buyers become proud to be part of such initiatives as they get connected.

Additionally, offering rewards for sustainable behaviour will interest many customers too. Automatically an eCommerce platform will view increased traffic. 

After knowing all these strategies above, it is essential to implement them effectively to ensure the best results in terms of lead generation. Furthermore, companies should know how to introduce these customer retention strategies in a marketing plan to reach out to customers frequently.

How do marketers introduce eCommerce customer retention strategies in a marketing plan?

Customer retention not only analyses the success of an eCommerce platform but also evaluates whether it can retain new customers to purchase. They also evaluate whether the customers are satisfied with their products, increasing ROI, boosting loyalty and bringing new buyers to the platform.

Here is how to introduce simple and effective customer retention strategies into a marketing plan:

Establishing sales goals:

Future marketing efforts can only be driven through effective performance metrics. Before this, is it necessary to analyse the present sales goals and understand if the marketing plan is operating. Once a company knows its sales goal for the quarter, it can introduce tools to push and reach target customers.

Strengthening customer data:

Segmenting customer data according to regular customers and new visitors will help in the right targeting. Companies use customer data to learn the recent market trends and get a glimpse of their likes and wishes regarding a product. An eCommerce platform with proper customer data can also use it to call them randomly to get feedback. Depending on that, marketing plans can be made.

Updating marketing tools:

Various marketing tools analyse whether the marketing campaigns are effective. Updating these marketing tools will create better customer retention as they come with added features. Additionally, marketers can survey to find the recent tools used by competitors. This way, they can also add new tools to gain customer retention.

All these customer retention strategies will lead to allowing existing customers to buy again and new customers to visit. This will be beneficial because this will also generate word-of-mouth marketing as they tend to share benefits they have experienced. Ultimately, customers become the brand ambassadors of these products after that.

By Anurag Rathod

Anurag Rathod is an Editor of Appclonescript.com, who is passionate for app-based startup solutions and on-demand business ideas. He believes in spreading tech trends. He is an avid reader and loves thinking out of the box to promote new technologies.