By
If you are spending thousands of dollars trying to acquire new customers and lose them after one or two purchases, then your eCommerce business is heading for trouble! Learning how to improve customer retention rate is an essential step in your business growth.
Although growth usually triggers an image of more customers, it's a lot more critical for your business growth to ensure that your existing customers stay happy and satisfied. In this article, we will go over some tactics that will help you retain your customers for years!
Discover what is a good customer retention rate for e-commerce and how to calculate
11 Tactics To Improve Customer Retention Rate For eCommerce Business
There are countless ways that can help you improve your customer retention rate and keep your customers happy. But to make it easier on you, we have gathered the top 11 tactics that proved to be successful with many eCommerce businesses.
1- Manage expectations
Right off the bat, you should set the right expectations and never promise anything you can’t keep. By that, you are ensuring your customers know exactly what to expect from your company. You can even take it a step further and lower expectations a little, so customers get a nice surprise when they receive the quality you actually offer. Needless to say, don’t set expectations too low or you won’t acquire customers in the first place.
2- Always be there
The most successful eCommerce businesses are the ones who ensure that customers find them in every corner. Your business can do that through content marketing that provides real value to your target audience.
3- Personalize their experience
Nowadays, customers expect to have a personalized experience with any brand, anything starting from mass emails to generic recommendations will be ignored. Accordingly, one of the best ways to improve customer retention rate is personalizing every step in the buyer’s journey.
For instance, you can add a welcome (name) pop-up on your website, send informational blog posts about products they’ve recently purchased, or add some personalized product recommendations in emails you send them.
4- Evolve
No eCommerce brand can ever improve customer retention rate or stay on top of the competition if it's standing still. You have to constantly evolve to meet the changes in the market’s demand and the customers’ preferences.
A real-life example of the importance of this tactic not only in increasing your customer retention but also in staying afloat is the famous failure story of Kodak. The once-industry guru failed in keeping up with the technological advances in the market, and that was the beginning of the end. The moral of the story, focus on your customers and evolve as much as you can if you don’t want to become the next Kodak.
5- Build a community that helps the community
Try to build a community around your customers that make them feel like they belong to something bigger. You can share a common cause and work with your customers to give back to the community in any sort of way. Try to choose a cause that supports your values or your branding. For instance, if you sell women's hygiene products, you can take up the cause of women's empowerment.
6- Send a newsletter
Many customers love to stay in the loop at all times and there’s no better way to do that than sending a company newsletter. Once a month, send an email blast to all customers who opted-in to your newsletter, showcasing your milestones, any company updates, and what’s upcoming in the near future.
Don’t forget to let customers who receive your newsletter the first to know about any deals or offers you are planning on having.
7- Apologize when there’s a mistake
Ideally, your business shouldn't make mistakes, but that’s never the case. So whenever a customer brings to your attention a mistake, be apologetic and try to make it up for them. This humanizes your brand and builds trust with your customers.
On that note, 81% of customers say that trust is a vital factor in their purchasing decision. So, maybe remember that next time when your company slips up, and don’t get defensive if you really want to improve your customer retention rate!
8- Reward Loyalty
Loyal customers should have more perks like exclusive deals or free items on special occasions. Keeping in mind that you should ensure that all customers know about these perks so they have a reason to make more purchases and become loyal customers. This is easily achieved through loyalty programs that unlock certain advantages when a customer reaches a certain amount of orders or spends a predetermined amount.
9- Showcase social proof
Utilize user-generated content in proving that your products provide real value to customers. For example, you can add some reviews and ratings on your website’s home page or post on your social media accounts photos and videos were taken by your customers. Although this may not directly improve customer retention rate, it will help you stay in your customers’ minds and grab their attention even when they are just mindlessly scrolling on social media.
10- Provide an easy shopping experience
By having a lot of returns and delivery options, you are ensuring that customers don’t hesitate to order from you. This may seem like a way to get customers to take back their order which will lose you money. However, this helps customers make their purchasing decisions without hesitation and gives you a trustworthy image that's not easily achievable. As a result, customers will turn to your brand more, and retention rates will increase!
11- Be Distinctive
Set yourself apart from competitors and have a distinctive image that makes customers always choose you over other brands. Like any eCommerce brand, you probably at least have a handful of local competitors and countless global and indirect competitors. Therefore to improve customer retention rate and ensure your customers don’t turn to your competitors, you have to offer a unique experience.
Learn more tactics for improving customer retention rate in 10 Proven E-commerce Customer Retention Strategies
The Importance of a High Customer Retention Rate
If we are completely honest, these previous tactics are easier said than done, and surely they will improve customer retention rate, but they will take plenty of time and resources. That’s why we are gonna show you some factors that prove the importance of having a high customer retention rate and how it is vital in your eCommerce business growth:
- Existing customers spend more money and bring in more business than new customers.
- Around 20% of your existing customers account for 80% of your sales.
- A 5% increase in your customer retention rate can cause a 25-95% increase in revenues.
- Acquiring a new customer can cost you up to 7x more than retaining an existing customer.
- 15% of businesses that started using personalization tactics are projected to benefit by $800 billion in the next 5 years.
How Can Marketing Operating Systems Help Improve Customer Retention Rate For Your eCommerce
As previously mentioned, to successfully implement tactics that improve customer retention rate, you will need time, resources, and money. However, it doesn’t have to be that hard. Simply, by using a marketing system like ConvertedIn you can improve customer retention rate, through
- Auto-segmenting your customer base
- Personalize retention strategies for the most valuable customers
- Automating email campaigns and workflows
- Offering personalized recommendations
Ready to drastically improve your customer retention rates, increase your sales, and grow your business? Book a demo now and let one of our experts help you out!
