Every business wants loyal customers. No matter if yours is very large or small, old or new, offline or online-this fact holds true. Fortunately, there are a variety of low-effort methods for retaining your ecommerce customers.
Read on to learn more about turning one-time buyers into loyal customers within the ecommerce realm.
What Is
Ecommerce?
What is ecommerce? Shopify defines ecommerce as “the exchanging of products or services using the Internet, and the transfer of money and data to complete these transactions.”
Did you notice the part about transfer of data? quite simply, ecommerce businesses can strategically use the data they collect from online shoppers to retarget and retain buyers.
How to Retain
and Retarget Your Ecommerce Customers
Therefore, without further ado, here's how to keep ecommerce customers through retention and retargeting schemes.
Take
Benefit of Online Advertising
Targeted advertising is all the rage nowadays, with good reason. Rather than merely buying ad space on a webpage or blog, that could be shown to anybody, you buy the chance to remind specific users regarding your e-store.
For example, if a web user visits your store twice a day to see exactly the same jean jacket, she or he will likely be shown an advert for that jacket on a third-party website by using cookies. This helps keep your ecommerce store surface of mind. Moreover, it could motivate a purchase.
Harness the Power of Email Marketing
While social networking is the talk of the town right now, you should not disregard the old standby-email marketing.
As a matter of fact, ecommerce email marketing has a reported ROI of $40 for each one dollar spent. Luckily, it's not hard to capture a customer's email address. For instance, only use email campaign subscription opt-ins or checkout forms.
However, don’t abuse this privilege. Quite simply, don’t send your ecommerce customers spam or any other unwanted messages.
RELATED ARTICLE: 3 EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGIES TO Improve your BUSINESS
If you need to harness the strength of email marketing, there are a variety of approaches you are able to take. The first is run-of-the-mill marketing announcements. These include store news, notices of upcoming sales, alerts regarding new product launches, and the like.
Get Personal
with Your Ecommerce Customers
The second type is personalized e-mail. These should mention the shopper's name along with content specific to them. For instance, “Hey Jessica. Are you enjoying your brand-new cookware? Find deep discounts on kitchen products within our clearance section!”
RELATED ARTICLE: BIG DATA: 6 WAYS LEARNING HOW TO USE IT Can help YOUR BUSINESS
The email starts through getting the buyer's attention. It provides them recommendations according to their recent purchases. However, don't get too specific. That’s because some of your ecommerce customers could find hyper-specific messages creepy.
Retarget Your
Ecommerce Customers
A third suggestion would be to retarget shoppers who have inexplicably abandoned their carts before completing their orders. It doesn't need to be a large to-do.
Instead, turn it into a gentle nudge reminding your customer about their pending order. For example: “Hi Tom. We noticed you had three items in your cart. Complete your order to prevent passing up on these exciting products. For those who have any queries or need further assistance, see our contact page.”
A note such as this one could make the main difference from a successful sale and a missed opportunity.
Leverage Order Fulfillments for Retargeting Your Ecommerce Customers
Then again,
its not all method of retargeting is digital. There are tactics to retarget
customers offline as well.
Consider the transaction fulfillments for a moment. A first-time buyer purchases something out of your website and waits eagerly by their mailbox because of its delivery. Once the package is within hand, she tears open the box and is happy to see her merchandise.
She tosses the cardboard box into the recycling bin and forgets regarding your e-store. And this is even though she loves your product.
You just missed
a chance to retarget this customer.
How to Retarget This Customer
To retarget this customer, consider dropping limited-time online coupons into the delivery box. For instance, one could read, “30 percent off your next order. Good for 60 days.”
The concept is to provide the new buyer a customized promo code that automatically reintroduces them into the ecommerce sales cycle inside a short period of time following their first purchase. And since it is a unique coupon code, you are able to track the efficacy of this program. Pretty clever, no?
Stay Front
and Center together with your Ecommerce Customers
As you can see, retargeting and retaining ecommerce customers is about keeping your ecommerce website surface of mind. This can be done through digital advertising, email marketing, or even throughout the order fulfillment process.
Of course, you will find dozens, if not hundreds, of other methods available. Therefore, feel free to experiment before you determine what is most effective together with your ecommerce customers.
