Whether they’re checking Facebook, opening their emails, or searching Google, your customers are constantly being tempted by your competitors.

Attracting customers to buy from your brand is one part of the marketing puzzle. But in the increasingly competitive world of eCommerce, how do you keep them?

In this blog post, we explore ten customer retention strategies you can implement to increase loyalty and make more money from your eCommerce website.

Why are customer retention strategies important?

Customer retention strategies make financial sense.

According to Harvard Business School, attracting new customers is five to twenty-five times more costly than retaining existing ones. And increasing customer retention rates by just 5 percent increases profits by 25 to 95 percent.

The bottom line: retaining existing customers is not only cheaper, but retained customers themselves are worth more to your business.

How to improve customer retention

Customer retention strategies are a must have for any successful eCommerce brand. But which works best? Here are ten simple strategies your team can try.

1)    Say thank you

How a customer thinks, feels, and acts after they’ve bought from you can affect whether they’ll buy from you again.

The face-to-face reassurance customers get when they buy from a brick and mortar store can help combat buyer’s remorse.

When a customer buys from you online, post-purchase reassurance is little harder to achieve. That’s where marketing automation steps in.

Marketing automation is your tool to provide the reassurance you can’t provide in person. Setting up a simple “Thank you” email automation that’s triggered when a customer makes a purchase is an effective way to reassure them they made the right choice.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon is on top of its “Thank you” game:

Amazon thank you example

2)    Recommend products

Marketing automation technology allows you recommend products to your customers across your emails and website, based on their buying behaviour. Making smart use of these is an essential customer retention strategy.

Personalised product recommendations are an effective way to upsell and cross-sell products that complement things your customers have already browsed or bought. This encourages them to buy again from your brand.

3)    Explain “how to”

Add value to your customers purchase by automating a “how to” email series to be sent to them based on what they’ve purchased.

Sometimes a customer’s dissatisfaction with their purchase is because they aren’t clued up on how it works. “How to” content helps the customer get the most from their purchase.

Break down your “how to” content into bite sized chunks. Use this to create an email series that keeps customers happy and engaged with your brand.

4)    Ask for feedback

Asking customers for feedback shows your brand is motivated to give them the best experience.

This customer retention strategy engenders positive sentiment. Customers are more likely to stay loyal to brands that take feedback seriously.

Here’s a strong example of a feedback request from Artifact Uprising:

Artifact Uprising feedback email

5)    Reward loyalty

Don’t just say you value loyalty, show customers how.

A simple but effective way to increase loyalty is to explain to customers how it benefits them. Create a loyalty scheme that offers repeat customers exclusive discounts, loyalty points, or first-views at new lines.

Make these benefits clear from the start of the customer relationship. Promote the perks of loyalty scheme in your welcome emails, your thank you emails, and your feedback requests.

6)    Involve customers

Customers feel more invested in brands they feel like they’re a part of. Create a sense of community by involving your customers in the content your brand creates.

Promoting user-generated content campaigns is a great way to involve customers in your brand.

Ask them to share photos of them using or wearing their new product. You can incentivise this with social competitions to increase participation if needs be.

These initiatives encourage customers to associate a brand with their identity. This is a powerful loyalty driver.

7)    Entice them back to buy

Browse and cart abandonment campaigns are a good way to keep customers loyal.

These help you recover revenue you may have otherwise lost, automatically. Sweeten the deal with a discount on their basket to help them resist the temptation of your competitors.

Our customers report an average 12 percent uplift in revenue from this strategy alone.

Here’s a basket abandonment example from Kate Spade:

Cart abandonment email second email

8)    Remind them to re-order

Customer love it when you make their lives simple. Setting up replenishment email automations is a helpful way to encourage them to purchase again.

If your brand offers products that are replenishable, work out when they are likely to run out and trigger replenishment emails to go out just before this.

This customer retention strategy reduces the risk your customers will stray to your competitors when they need to buy again.

9)    Create best-in-class content

Another way to keep customers loyal to your brand is to keep producing best-in-class content.

Not every contact has to be transactional. Surprise and delight your customers by sharing innovative content you’ve created for them to enjoy.

Creative content campaigns can help maintain positive brand sentiment and keep you top of mind. To do this well, keep on top of the content your competitors produce and try to outshine it.

10) Remind them what they’re missing

Our final customer retention strategy is to set up re-engagement email campaigns to pull distant customers back from the brink.

Whether you get cute with relationship analogies, keep it factual, or try something more creative will depend on your brand’s voice.

However you approach re-engagement messages, putting these email automations in place is a tried-and-tested customer retention strategy.

Saturday We Miss You Email

Takeaway

We hope our ten loyalty-boosting ideas have given you some inspiration for your customer retention strategy.

Most of these ideas are easy to implement with the right marketing automation technology in place. That’s where we come in. Get friendly with the button below to see our technology in action.

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