[eCommerce 2021] A Step-by-step Guide to Customer Retention

Did you know that the average Customer Retention Rate (CRR) is just around 35% for eCommerce businesses.

But why is CRR crucial to maintain for a business? Just take a look at these stats

65% of a company’s business can be credited to existing customers.
Companies have to spend 7 times more to get a new customer than to retain an existing one.
Improving customer retention by 5% increases profits by up to 25% to 95%.
If you are trying to sell something, the chances of making a sale are 60-70% with a retained customer. The likelihood of the same is only 5-20% with a new customer.

Considering all these stats, you can say that a business needs to focus on improving customer retention to increase sales and revenue.

Steps to retain your eCommerce customers

Here are five steps that you can follow to retain your eCommerce customers:

1. Leverage email marketing

Email marketing is an efficient tactic to retain your customers.

Statistics suggest that about 80% of businesses still rely on it to maintain their customer retention rate.

There are many types of emails that you can send, including:

You can send welcome and thank you emails
Special promotions
Friendly reminders
Customer feedback surveys
Gifts and messages on special occasions
Emails that educate subscribers and add value
Personalized product recommendations
Or emails to create personal relationships.

Since 60% of customers say email is their preferred promotion channel, sending a surprise email with freebies, discounts will serve as an even more powerful retention incentive. Such offers also help you give a much-needed nudge to customers sitting on the fence.

2. Create a customer loyalty program

Offering a loyalty program is another effective way to retain your customers.

Over 90% of companies offer a loyalty program. And 37% of consumers are even ready to expense to upgrade to an improved tier of a loyalty program. – Forbes

When choosing the incentives for your loyalty program, analyze your target customers’ needs and behavior. Consider experiential rewards as they can make customers feel good and add value to their lives.

For instance, Swarovski offers a rewards program for its members that provide exclusive benefits, including yearly SCS-only gifts, early access to new products, and access to events for members-only.

By providing their loyal customers one-of-a-kind experiences that are unforgettable and valuable, the luxury jewelry brand generates long-term loyalty.

eCommerce platforms like Shopify allow you to launch branded loyalty programs and reward your customers. However, if you are using the platform, note that it is not an ideal platform for SEO. You will have to take care of Shopify’s on-page and off-page improvements to make the most out of the platform.

3. Build a customer referral program

Given that 92% of customers trust referrals from people they know, building a customer referral program can be highly beneficial for your eCommerce business.

A customer referral program can help you engage and content with your customers that are your brand’s biggest assets.

If you implement the correct referral program software and strategy, you can easily acquire new customers and turn them into loyal customers.

4. Get your social media game right

Yes, you can use social media to your advantage in customer retention.

A simple way to use your social media presence to boost user experience is to implement social listening. By using alerts or social listening software, you can easily listen to what your customers are saying about your brand or products.

This allows you to find out your strengths and weaknesses and help you to build on those experiences. Plus, it is a great way to identify customer pain points and offer better UX to retain them.

Social media also allows you to offer better customer service, which in turn influences retention.

Make sure to respond to your customers’ problems in real-time. It will increase customer satisfaction and improve your brand’s image.

5. Give customers an incentive to create an account

Why not offer an incentive like reward points, freebies, discounts, or exclusive sales to your customers to create an account?

It will automatically add new customers to your mailing list as they are most likely to get enticed by the discounts or freebies. In the meantime, if a customer finds that you have a great loyalty program, they will most likely try your brand.

Whether you are making the signup process free or charging them for a subscription, offering an incentive to sign up can highly boost your conversions as well as retention.

For instance, if you are selling a paid subscription, you can offer a free month when new users sign up. Or, if you are offering a new product, you can offer an incentive to early adopters.

The incentive you offer doesn’t necessarily have to be big, depending on what you are giving out as an introductory offer. Just remember that the more costly your offer, the better your incentive should be.

This is a guest post by Hazel Raoult

Hazel Raoult is a freelance marketing writer and works with PRmention. She has 6+ years of experience in writing about business, entrepreneurship, marketing, and all things SaaS. Hazel loves to split her time between writing, editing, and hanging out with her family.

Bonus: Build long-lasting customer relationships by managing your delivery experience

The delivery experience you provide also plays a crucial to building a loyal customer base.

How, you ask?

When you take effort to improve your delivery experience by:

Proactively identifying and over-communicating with customers, whose parcels are facing critical delivery issues
Impressing your customers with seamless, brand-consistent order tracking pages
Making better delivery choices at the behest of your customers, etc

You are consistently improve your brand’s performance in post-purchase phase. This helps you earn fierce customer loyalty in return as your customers are now delighted at your efforts.

You can make use of a delivery experience management solution like LateShipment.com to take control of how your customers interact with your brand post-purchase and improve customer loyalty via retention.

Wrapping Up!

Which of these strategies are you going to implement in your next marketing campaign to retain your customers?

Retaining existing customers is going to highly benefit your business, considering that the cost of acquiring new customers is higher than retaining old ones.

Consider the effective strategies in this guide to retain your customers and increase sales.