5 min read
4 Customer Retention Strategies You Need To Boost Sales & Churn Profits
“It’s cheaper to get current customers to purchase than it is to acquire a new one.”
I bet you’ve heard this phrase repeatedly.
It’s an absolute truth for online businesses, especially in the eCommerce industry where clicks and conversions always increase the overall cost of acquisition.
Taking care of your loyal customer base will boost your bottom line without having to spend extra for new customer acquisition.
According to Bain & Co., increasing customer retention by 5% can boost your profits by 95%!
Yes, bringing in new customers is indeed essential for your eCommerce business; however, customer retention is vital for your stores’ long term success.
One of the best things you can do to increase your revenue and profitability is to leverage your existing customers with a solid retention marketing strategy.
Now the question is, “How can I keep my current customers happy enough to continue making purchases on my site?”
Re-engagement.
If you have yet to market to current customers after a sale, now is an excellent time to start.
In this article, I’m going to share 4 retention methods that work:
While it may sound like another buzzword, retention marketing is crucial for the growth and sustainability of your eCommerce store.
Retention marketing is the collection of marketing and tactical activities that businesses use to increase their number of repeat customers.
When you effectively increase the amount of repeat business, you also maximize the lifetime value of those repeat customers.
The customer lifetime value is a critical metric that measures how valuable a customer is to your company with an unlimited time span as opposed to just the first purchase.
So, when you maximize the lifetime value of your customers, you also maximize your profits.
The overall benefits of Retention Marketing in eCommerce are:
To strengthen your brand recognition, you have to get to know your customers.
When you know both sides of the proverbial coin, the good and the bad, you can use both to improve your overall customer experience.
You can collect all kinds of information on your customers explicitly with form fields or implicitly through hidden fields.
This information includes:
You can then use this information to create personalized marketing messages.
For example, let’s say you run an eCommerce store that targets women who are pregnant. You can gather information about which stage of pregnancy they’re currently in. Then, you can send these customers custom content based on their customer profile.
Pretty neat, huh?
Customers interact with websites through 3 primary channels:
According to MarketingWeek, 31% of consumers use social media when browsing for products. However, the majority of online purchases occur on your website from both desktop and mobile visitors.
So, by using push notifications, you can easily keep your brand top-of-mind.
With a reliable push notification strategy, you can send notifications to share content, announce new products, recover abandoned carts, and retain more customers.
You can easily reach out to your customers without using a mobile app.
And the best part?
Customer retention becomes much more affordable.
To get started with web push notifications, you must ask your visitors for permission to send them notifications.
So when a customer lands on your website, they’re presented with a web push opt-in box.
Push Notification Opt-In example by Checkoutify:
Once they hit allow, you can send them push notifications from your site.
Keep in mind that its another channel for marketing, just like email.
And just like email, your audience may become frustrated and unsubscribe if you bombard them with push notifications.
Now that we’ve covered that one major stipulation, let’s move onto the key metric you need to track with push notifications:
Click-through rate.
If you’re only getting a few clicks, then it’s an indication that you have to optimize your messages with the right copy or timing of the messages.
It’s crucial to engage with customers after the sale.
By not doing so, you are missing out on the best opportunity to retain those customers.
For most buyers, the first order is a test drive.
They’re familiarizing themselves with your brand, and if they leave impressed, they will return as regular customers.
There are many ways to engage with new customers and enhance the post-purchase experience.
One way is to send out an email campaign with tips on usage or maintenance of the product they’re receiving.
Any relevant content related to the recent purchase that adds free value through emails is the best way to keep your customers close.
Besides sending relevant content out, you can follow up purchases by sending out personalized emails, asking them to follow on social media, and even send out updates.
With the aid of customer analytics, heat map tracking software, and order history, you can track every action your visitors take on your site.
You can use the information gathered to segment your customers and tailor specific messages according to their preferences.
Here are some examples:
For example, Baboon sends out monthly $99-adventures that complement their contemporary luggage brand. They send out these monthly $99 adventure updates to customers who have previously bought their products:
It’s an ingenious way to get their customers to engage with their site, promote new purchases, and strengthen their brand recognition by working with 3rd party companies.
Customer retention and retention marketing is a necessity for your eCommerce business.
You can save half of the time, and 70% of your money, that you put into acquiring new customers just by focusing on re-selling to the ones you already have.
Start putting these 4 strategies into practice, and you’ll see your sales skyrocket!