More often than not we think about sales as an end-to-end process. What you might not understand is – Sales are circular, it’s always revolving.
Most of our sales goals are to close a deal or to get a sale, and once we get that sale, that’s almost the end of it right? Wrong. You are missing a massive part of the sales 101, Customer Retention.
What is Customer Retention and why is it so important?
Customer Retention is the number of customers you get to come back to your business and buy again.
A successful e-commerce business should not only be focused on lead generation but customer retention as well. Yes, leads are important but did you know that you can save a LOT of time and money by nurturing your existing customers?
You already spent money and time to get these customers, it only takes a fraction of the original cost to get them to buy from you again. Why? Because they already trust you, and hopefully, love your product!
Never underestimate the power of loyal happy customers. Loyal customers will always revisit and purchase from you if they feel that they are valued and loved by the brand they are buying from.
How do you retain loyal customers and what are the methods you can implement to keep them coming back?
1. Create Client Accounts
When a new customer tries to purchase a product from you, give them the option to create an account. This will house all their information of recent purchases and may tell them the shipping information of their parcels. Customer accounts scream exclusivity, and who doesn’t want that? It also makes repurchasing way easier. So how do you incentivize this for your customers?
Ask your web developer to add this to the checkout process, or jump in the back end of your website and implement it yourself!
2. Surprise!
Now that you have your customers information, you can use some of it to inform your marketing decisions. How about a birthday promotion or a surprise discount welcome email?
HOT TIP: It will be more amazing if you can send them emails days before their actual birthdays so they have ample time to check out your website!
EVEN HOTTER TIP: Set up the automation to send a couple of weeks before their birthday so they have enough time to purchase an outfit from you for their birthday, or treat themselves to a birthday gift!
3. 24/7 Customer Support
Did you know that one of the factors that distaste customer satisfaction and retention is whether or not you offer customer service support?
Initially, they might be looking at your products and/or services but when push comes to shove, your customer service is one of the most important factors that impact customer retention. Let’s put it this way, if they were to purchase and maybe they haven’t received their package, they are going to have a much better experience if they can receive an almost instant reply to their query.
HOT TIP: Try researching chatbots to save missing out on further sales from a bad customer experience.
4. Invest in Email Automations
Manually monitoring your sales and orders is a full-time job in itself. Creating email automation will not only save you time that can be better spent on other aspects of your business, but it will also help you run a more efficient and sophisticated business model where everything is functioning like a well-oiled machine.
HOT TIP: Do your research into the benefits of implementing email automation and flows to your business. Our highest recommendation would be that you employ a professional to set this service up for you so it is tailored specifically to your business and caters to its growth. This is also a service we offer directly – so if this is something you’re interested in learning more about, book a Complimentary Strategy Call with us!
5. Provide Incentives
Loyalty is sometimes bought (oops!) but we don’t mean this in a bad way. You want to reward your customers in some way to incentivize returning business.
Of course, it does not need to be extravagant, it can be as much as 10% off, but these incentives work well as a strategy to increase customer retention and pair with email automation – make creating returning business a breeze.
While lead generation is important for business development, customer experience, and customer retention is the silent backbone that will make your e-commerce some serious passive income.
If you find you need further help with your Customer Retention Strategies, follow us on social media @bidpixel where we post best practices and updates for businesses online. Or want to hear more about Digital Marketing Strategies for e-commerce? Head to our youtube channel here.
If you’re looking for experts to grow your business online for you, Book a Complimentary Strategy Call with us!
