eCom Customer Retention: Building Lifetime Relationships
If you run an eCom business, you’re most likely familiar with the term: lifetime customer value (LTV). For those that aren’t familiar with LTVs, a customer’s lifetime value is the amount of money a person spends during their total time as your customer.
The basic calculation gives you a snapshot into someone’s potential to generate profit. But with the various ways that consumers engage with brands and the different parameters, demographic and macro influences that shape the calculation process, the barriers to measuring and acting on that value are proving a challenge.
In this article, we’re going to throw out the old ideas of LTV and focus on building relationships — you know, building a relationship that lasts a lifetime!
Here are several different retention strategies you can use to help your eCom clients exceed their LTV goals.
Acquisition Starts with Retention
That’s right, retention starts with customer acquisition. As marketers, we have to ask ourselves if we’re being strategic about the consumer’s frontline experience with the brand. We follow these four steps to be sure that we are:
Be sure the champion is your customer, not your business. Instead of talking about how cool your products are, lead with how-to videos, UGC and how your customer will benefit.
Now it’s time to talk about your product. Determine which SKUs provide the best initial experience with your brand and deliver a unique, value-filled experience that feels personal to the potential customer.
Email capture. Your email capture pop-up is like your best salesperson and it may be one of the earliest touchpoints for your brand. We suggest offering an incentive, like free shipping or a percentage off to entice new customers.
Email welcome series. Implement an email welcome flow to hit a subscriber’s inbox as soon as they supply you with their email, as interest and purchase intent are at their highest at this point.
Now that we’ve captured new customers, it’s time to focus on what to do with someone who purchases from you.
According to a study by Econsultancy
How to Build Retention Strategies for Existing Customers
Show them the value. Transactional emails have an 80% open rate, so don’t waste this opportunity to build up their excitement before they get their order! Staying in communication or including personalized ‘Thank You’ messages are great ways to make your customer feel confident in their purchase.
The unboxing. When someone receives your product, make sure it is an experience for them. Branded boxes, instructions and hand written notes are all examples of how to elevate the unboxing experience.
Customer experience. Create customer success by making sure you’re sending personalized emails about past purchases and browsing history — this keeps your brand top of mind and gives you an opportunity to cross-sell and provides reminders about reorders.
Remarketing for retention. Start remarketing when your reactivation is starting to diminish. We suggest using ‘social-proofing’ tactics, like quotes and customer testimonials in our remarketing efforts. We also recommend featuring new products — this tactic helps leverage FOMO to draw a customer back in.
User generated content. Genuine reviews and testimonials are great ways to help promote your product and help you gain credibility. But don’t ask for a review as soon as someone receives your product — you want to wait until that person has had a chance to use, enjoy and love your product! (By the way, UGC is so powerful that we’ve dedicated an entire blog post to it here.)
Customer loyalty. Rewarding shoppers with points based on past purchases or referring a friend are great ways to incentivize brand advocacy.
Wrapping Up
It’s highly important to invest in each step of the customer journey — starting with connecting shoppers with your product on a personal level, nurturing the new relationship, and finally, rewarding your customer for ongoing support. This full-funnel approach will keep your customers delighted and keep your brand top of mind — resulting in repeat purchases and ultimately increasing your LTVs!