3 Customer Retention Strategies for eCommerce Brands

Want to see improvements to your bottom line? Then you need to stop focusing only on chasing new customers and pay attention to the ones you have. 

That’s not to say new customers don’t matter; of course, they do. But engaging with the people who have already bought from you, and getting them to continue to do so, is incredibly important. And it can grow your business.

Email is the perfect tool to help keep customers interested in your brand and keep them coming back for more. Buying is a two-way street, so you have to do your part to make it worthwhile for your customers. 

Here are a few strategies to help boost your retention rates. 

Realize communication doesn’t end at purchase

A new customer bought something from you! Great. So what’s your next step? 

Many eCommerce brands think the purchase confirmation email is the end of the conversation between them and customers. The reality is it’s the start of the next phase of your relationship. Ignore it, and your new customer will spend their time buying from a brand that pays attention to them. 

You want that company to be yours. So you have to take steps to continue to follow up with your customers and keep them engaged. There are a couple of ways to do it, including creating campaigns that:

• Ask for customer feedback.
• Follow up on purchases to see if they need help or support. 
• Reminding them to reorder.

When you treat communication with your customers as something that involves both of you, it’s easier to engage your customers in conversation than talking at them. 

Plus, getting more data and feedback makes it much easier to deliver better messaging.

Push personalization to the forefront

Are the days of sending blast emails to everyone on your list over? If not, the time is probably coming in the not-so-distant future. Since today’s customers want personalized content, you’re not serving them with blast or generic messaging.

No one wants to read something that doesn’t speak to anyone. Instead, go all-in on personalization. When you build a highly personalized customer experience that focuses on the individual, as if you’re speaking to just them, you’re leading with their wants and needs first.

Use your email messaging to send personalized content. 

• Create how-to posts on products they’ve purchased. 
• Use user-generated content and other customers’ ratings and reviews to highlight new products.
• Let them know about a related product that will go perfectly with what they’ve just bought.

Always think about how to tap into your customer data to create a better experience for them. And that doesn’t always mean selling, so don’t forget to add value.

Deliver to your VIP customers

If you don’t know who your best customers are, prioritize that. These are the people you want to use email to create an incredible customer experience. So make it easy for them to add to their lifetime customer value.

First, it will encourage them to keep buying, which is always great. But second, a lot of your happy customers will be some of your best sources of marketing, spreading the word about your brand. That has value.

This doesn’t mean you have to create a program; it just means looking at your best customers and segmenting them into their own list. From there, you can send them all sorts of personalized loyalty email messaging:

• Offer perks like discounts or free shipping for being VIP customers.
• Let them in on deals earlier than the rest of your list.
• Promote members-only flash sales to get people buying.

When you do this, customers will feel special, and who doesn’t like that?

Smart Banners™ can help get you there

One of the best ways to hit these eCommerce customer retention strategies is to use Smart Banners™. With Smart Banners™, it’s easy to personalize every email you send, with no hours of segmenting, testing, or playing around with lines of code needed. 

Instead, pick a few templates, hook up your data sources, add a snippet of code, and you’re good to go. Your emails will automatically transform, delivering all sorts of personalized messaging to your customers. 

Want to learn all the different ways you can tap into Smart Banners™? Check out our latest guide. You’ll get tips and tricks on using Smart Banners™ to deliver for customers and raise your revenue.