Which Customer Retention Tools Should Be Used In Ecommerce?

According to Harvard Business Review, 5% increase in customers retention can result in a 25 – 95% increase in profit. Absolutely, a good customer retention strategy boots your profit as well as builds a long term business success. 

Have you decided to go with a retention strategy or you have already run a program? In this blog post, we will introduce you some most popular ecommerce customer retention tools to select. By the end, you can be able to choose the suitable one for your business.

Let’s get started!

1. Extraordinary Customer Service

An excellent customer service is a not only a tool but also a brand strategy. With provision of extraordinary customer services, customers are satisfied then they are likely to be loyal with your brand and tell others how well they were treated.

The performance of excellent customer services can be in some key facets as follows:

- Company representatives should be friendly, helpful and dedicated.

- Immediate response to inquiries (before, during and post sales)

- Consistent to delivery commitment.

- Good maintenance services.

-….

“86% of consumers quit doing business with a company because of a bad customer experience”

(Source: Customer Experience Impact Report by Harris Interactive/RightNow, 2010)

Consideration:

The pros of launching this tactic is the proven positive result, long term business success and naturally well-known through word of mouth advertising. In contrast, the cons make you consider are human and financial resources (sometimes, it is quite expensive), time consuming to prove the excellence.

For whom: We recommend this tool for retailers with long life-cycle  products such as technical products, especially those self-produce then sell products to market.

Tools to try: - Live chat software from Zoopim

- Advanced Delivery Schedule by MageWorld: Manage delivery smartly

2. Loyalty and Reward Program

Loyalty and Reward Program is a popular tool among retail sectors for a long time. However, it is still proven to be one of the most simple but effective one.

A loyalty and reward program can be in terms of rewarding customers with points or credits for their behaviors and purchases. These points will be redeemed to purchase other products as discount.

The basics stuffs you need to concern are as follows:

- What you should reward customers for

- The value of a point/ credit

- How much customers can spend on orders

- An attractive explanation page

Consideration:

The pros of using loyalty and reward program are easy to set up and flexible campaign depending on your marketing strategies. Whereas, the cons is hard to make it different from other competitors and customers are joining too many reward programs.

For whom: Retailers, who have medium and high profit margin and sell products that can be purchased regularly.

Tools to try: Reward Points Pro – MageWorld: Drive your sales by loyalty program

3. Personalization

With personalization, customers will experience a friendly and personal customized shopping procedure. In order to personalize each customer, you need to collect customer data that you use to make product recommendations, run promotions, send emails, etc.

There are some examples of customization. The first one can be made right on your website with product recommendation. Based on customer activities on your site, the system will make product recommendations to customers with relevant ones. Customers will feel like being served by an excellent sales representative, who understands their inner needs without saying out.

A more popular simple way of personalization to increase customer loyalty is through email. Customers will be happy if they can receive emails with their names, company, hobbies. Especially, these emails can be sent on a personal event such as: Birthday. They will be much more loyal to you and your store.

Consideration:

Personalization can bring you higher conversion rate and an increase in customer satisfaction. However, the system to personalize customers on website can be costly. Moreover, the situation can be terrible if the personalization is not right, which will lead to sales decrease.

For whom: A simple way of personalization such as emails is recommended for every business. However, if you want a total personalization, consider carefully if you don’t have enough data, technical resources and staffs to run it.

Tools to try: MageWorld Follow Up Email Pro, Mailchimp, Getresponse.

4. Referral Program

Referral Program or Affiliate Program has been a well-known tool for your store to reach more customers. By allowing customers to invite customers/share referral code to their friends through email/social networks, you are reaching a huge people through word of mouth. This referral program doesn’t only bring you more customers but it also makes that refer loyal to your brand. Because no one introduces a brand to their friends if they don’t really trust.

Consideration:

With referral program, your brand will reach a lot of people at once and increase loyalty among existing customers. Moreover, implementing an online affiliate program is not difficult. On the other hand, the program can reach huge people but they are not right targeted customers.

For Whom:

Any business wishes to increase reach and loyalty should use referral program.

Tools to try:

Magento Affiliate Pro – MageWolrd

Understanding the benefits of customer retention, we hope that with above suggestions you will be able to select the suitable retention tools for your business.