Today I want to talk about customer retention in the ecommerce industry.
In today’s economy, it’s more important than ever to keep your customers coming back for more. After all, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.
“How do you make your ecommerce business successful?”
This is one of the biggest challenges faced by majority of the business owners.
And the most common answer vocalized by this majority is “By attracting customers”. But this majority is unaware that a short term relationship with a customer will again put you behind competition. Only a long lasting customer relationship will help to increase sales, revenue and business growth; keeping you ahead of competition.
You can build up a long lasting relationship with customers, by retaining the existing customers and encouraging them to return to your ecommerce store frequently. Studies by Small Business Trends indicate that 5% increase in retention, helps increase profits by 95%.
Hence focusing on the retention of existing customer is equally important as obtaining a new customer.
Adapt some good customer retention tactics, so as to form life-long relationships with your customer, who remain loyal to your brand and also become brand ambassadors for your product, by influencing their social circles.
There are a number of things you can do to improve customer retention, but some of the most important include:
- Offer free shipping and returns. This is one of the most effective ways to attract and retain customers. Offering free shipping and returns shows that you value your customers’ time and money. It also makes it easier for customers to make a purchase, which can lead to increased sales.
- Provide excellent customer service. This is another important factor in customer retention. Customers want to feel like they are valued and that their concerns are being addressed. Make sure your customer service team is responsive and helpful.
- Personalize the shopping experience. Customers appreciate feeling like they are getting a personalized experience. You can do this by offering recommendations based on past purchases, sending targeted emails, and using social media to connect with customers.
- Create a sense of urgency. This can be done by offering limited-time discounts, running flash sales, or creating a sense of scarcity. Creating a sense of urgency can encourage customers to make a purchase sooner rather than later.
- Make it easy to shop. The easier it is for customers to shop, the more likely they are to make a purchase. Make sure your website is easy to navigate and that the checkout process is simple and straightforward.
- Offer loyalty programs. Loyalty programs are a great way to reward customers for their repeat business. You can offer points, discounts, or free shipping as rewards.
- Collect feedback. Ask customers for feedback on their shopping experience. This will help you identify areas where you can improve and make it more likely that customers will return.
- Stay up-to-date with the latest trends. Ecommerce is constantly evolving, so it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest trends. This will help you ensure that your website is competitive and that you’re offering the best possible shopping experience for your customers.
- Invest in marketing. Marketing is essential for any ecommerce business. Make sure you’re investing in marketing that will reach your target audience and drive traffic to your website.
By following these tips, you can improve customer retention and boost sales for your ecommerce business.
Let’s explore some more crucial tips for customer retention and help you to increase your ecommerce profits TODAY! Keep reading to learn the strategies that will improve your Customer Retention rates:
1. Extraordinary Customer Support:
Unsatisfied customers, unattended customers, or poor customer service, all these factors are responsible when a customer abandons a site.
In this competitive world, customer is the king and hence excellent customer service helps to create a trust bond with them. Their queries should be solved on priority and they should be satisfied and delighted with your services. This prompts them to stay and repeat your site.
Listening to their feedback, encouraging communication with them, phone and email support, survey forms for further improvement, etc. not only helps increase brand loyalty, but also helps retain more customers.
2. SSL Security:
SSL (Secured Socket Layers) certificate is a security protocol which encrypts communication transmitted between the browser and server. This encryption (coded) format is difficult for hackers to read and misuse.
Your ecommerce store is not complete without SSL security. Customers are very cautious about the dangers of online shopping, and hence they first check out, whether the store has encryption security to keep their transactions safe or not. SSL certificate is compulsory as per PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) also and helps in boosting Google SEO rankings too.
Different SSL certificate providers have multiple types of SSL certificates, which secure your domain and sub-domains. For example, there are certificate providers who sell all global brands of SSL certificates at very nominal rates, which secure your ecommerce site with strong encryption.
3. Personalized Email Marketing:
Email is a wonderful way to reach out to your customers. Post purchase of product, a greeting of thanks made to the customer via email, goes a long way in maintaining client relationship.
Apart from greetings, you can also use email marketing strategy for attractive offers for regular customers, festival discounts, and personalized birthday messages etc. to keep them engaged and dedicated to your company; thus keeping the retention ratio high.
4. Dynamic Content:
Research on your target audience, their needs and expectations and then put up a content which they wish to read on your site. Since the content is targeted, those customers are bound to feel personalization of content and hence their approach towards the site becomes positive. Personalization of content marketing helps in overall increase in marketing, thus leading to more sales.
Research indicates that 74% of the customers are irritated when the web content is not personalized; and 85% of the customers are influenced by personalized home page promotions.
5. Loyalty Rewards:
The best way to retain your customers and to increase conversion ratio, is to reward your loyal customers. Customer Loyalty Statistics 2020 indicate that 75% of the customers opt for companies offering loyalty rewards.
How can you Reward?
- Special attention
- Gesture of thanks
- Personalized emails
- Attractive discounts and offers
- Bonus for new referrals
- Invite them to company events
Thus loyalty rewards not only help in customer retention, but also increases client base by new referrals suggested by these loyals.
6. Referral Rewards:
Apart from loyalty rewards, referral rewards also motivate the existing customers to give references. Referral rewards can be in the form of gifts, discounts or any other special recurring or life time offers.
Majority of the online customers read the reviews before purchasing any product. In fact, customer referral is an excellent marketing strategy, and hence referral rewards must be planned meticulously to grab the best business from an existing satisfied customer.
Never forget to mention a personalized thanks note along with the referral reward, to make your customer feel special.
7. Keep your Brand Image Consistent:
Always maintain your product quality and efficiency to keep your brand image intact. One small defect in the product can cause huge losses and can damage your brand.
Hence consistency in product quality helps in online customer retention.
8. Better Delivery Options & Return Policies:
Ease factor is preferred by majority of the online customers. When customers make online purchases, not only do they lookout for simple checkout processes, but also for good delivery options and return policies.
Many customers abandon carts because the shipping rates, clubbed with the purchase price of a product, tend to make the product costly. Latest ecommerce statistics indicate that 79% customers in US prefer free delivery and shipping options. Free delivery encourages them to purchase more often and keeps them engaged with the brand.
Easy and simple return policies, with a stipulated time frame will help customers to try out your products, with a feeling that their money is not lost in case of dissatisfactions.
This customer retention factor is one of the most successful factors for ecommerce business.
9. Increase Repeat Purchase Rate:
After setting a benchmark on monthly expected purchases, you can increase repeat purchase rate with the help of email marketing, personalization techniques, offering incentives to repeat customers, and implementing loyalty and referral rewards.
The most important question, an ecommerce marketing personnel works on: “How do I ensure that this customer repeats themselves? How do they come back to me again?”
And the answer is: By constantly improving customer experience and beating their expectations. Less persuasion and increased positive reviews are the benefits of repeat customer. A delighted customer will always choose you amongst your competitors.
10. Use of Social Media for Developing Relationships:
Many ecommerce companies approach to social media marketing for displaying and selling their products. Though this approach helps in increasing sales, utilizing social media, for developing customer relationship, goes a long way in maintain them.
Wrapping Up:
Instead of prioritizing on customer sales, it’s important to prioritize on customers. Use all the necessary strategies to turn visitors into potential customers and, keep them satisfied and happy to improve your retention rate.
The above retention tips will surely set your ecommerce profits roaring, keeping you on the top of the competition.
