5 Customer Retention Tips For E-Commerce Businesses

By  |  November 2, 2018

Every African business owner wants to retain customers.

Do you know that it is more expensive to gain new customers than to retain old customers?

Credit: Giphy.com

According to Marketing Metrics, if a customer has previously purchased from your company, there is at least a 60 percent chance that the customer will make at least one more purchase.

You shouldn’t only have a strategy for getting new customers; you should also have a strategy for retaining your current customers.

The goal isn’t just to have customers; it is to have customers that keep coming back and would even refer others to your business.

Here are 5 customer retention tips to help you in your e-commerce business:

  1. Loyalty Programs: Do you know that you can gain the attention of your customers over and over again if you reward them in some way? Loyalty programs are one of the ways to increase their attention because you reward their loyalty by offering discounts on their next purchase.

  2. Personalisation: Most of us love the personalisation. We all love to feel special and know that a brand has our best interest at heart. When you make the effort of personalising the brand experience for your customers, they would feel special and patronise you. Remember the example of the Coca-Cola campaign that personalised the experiences of the customers by writing their names on the bottle of their product.

  3. Appreciation: Appreciation always goes a long way. Take out time to appreciate your customers for each purchase, recognise them on their birthdays or special occasions, send out ‘thank you’ cards, etc. Just show them that they are not only a number, but you do appreciate them.

  4. Subscription plans: If you sell the kind of products that your customers would keep on buying either weekly, monthly, or yearly, then you can create a subscription plan that would be subsidised for recurring customers. This would keep your customers glued to your product or brand. To make this more effective, you can use CRM software to remind your customers whenever each subscription is nearing expiry.

  5. Nurture your customers: Always find ways to keep your customers engaged and nurtured. You can invest in email marketing for you to always be in the minds of your customers.

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