How to Influence your Existing Buyers to Purchase Again?

You have often heard this ‘Cost of getting a new customer is five times more than keeping your existing customer’. Well, the new concept of Customer Retention proven to be a shiny idea for the retailers in marketing. So, based on the fact as described above, retailers should focus on keeping their existing customers intact with their product. Customer Retention is incredibly important for your business sales in many ways. Learn more about customer retention.

Daily emerging competition has made ‘Customer Retention’ a must-to-have strategy to improve their business sales. Just think once, how many of you have made the customer acquisition their first priority. Well, most of you. Buy, then what next? Did you find the customer returning after their first purchase? The real work has just begun. Smart businesses try every strategy to keep their first-time buyers engaged with their brand post their purchase. The core concept lies in retaining your existing customers.

Our today’s post tells you how to target existing customer and make them purchase again from you.

Before we begin, first have a look at few supporting Customer retention stats

• According to Bain & Co., business incurs profits by 25% to 95% once their customer retention rates increase by 5%.

• Marketing Metrics stats show chances to sell to an existing customer is 60% to 70% while to the new customer is 5% to 20%.

• In 2014, Cross-Channel Marketing Report shows 82% companies admitted that cost of customer retention is cheaper that customer acquisition. Also, a report found that the marketers are now concentrating more on acquisition than retention.

Here are few tactics that suggest ways improve Customer Retention Rates

Fast and On Time Delivery

Of course, we all know how much customer is impatient to receive their package. ‘Want it now or ASAP’ is a common human behavior. If a customer knows that their product will be delivered fast after their order, then chances are they will keep returning back.

Even, if you provide an excellent product at a competitive price, still you are a step away to gain your customer. Giving freedom to the customer to track their package or know the latest shipping information creates value for them. Make sure to turn this last step convenient as it will only decide whether the customer wants to stay with you or not.

Provide with the latest shipping information or progress status, where their package has reached or how soon they will get it.

For Example, A text reminder regarding product delivery or calling them an hour ago will be more convenient for a customer to be available for receiving the product.

Giving Right Product Packaging

Dotcom Distribution, a logistic solutions provider, shows in its study that 52% customer purchase from the same merchants again if they get product packaged in a premium, branded bags or box. Adding that little extra surprise marks huge impact on the customer buying decision. The box that is used to protect a product and shipped safely is an important factor that determines customer’s repeated purchase behavior.

Targeting Customer Expectation 

Knowing what your customer expects help in improving the efficiency of your service. Improved technology have raised customer expectation to be everything at the speed of light. Few common factors determining customer expectation like consistent service, more than they desire, personalized relationship and maintaining the promises made to them.

It is always important for the companies to set, meet and reset their customer’s expectation.

Registration Process and Repeat Purchase

Fact lies that the Registration process is the heart of brand conversion and increase sales. Meaning that it is a process of convincing an anonymous user to register with your website. You cannot ignore this process as this is what that drives more sales. However, you cannot start without customer data. Most customers checkout as a guest if they find the registration complex or lengthy. Meeting and exceeding customer expectation is possible only after customer data collection and that happens only after registration.

Few Tricks are:

• Easy Registration: It’s a challenging task to persuade your customer to register with your website. However, providing an easy registration process without annoying your customers will be helpful in gaining potential customers.
• Personalization: Every customer wants to gain personalized experience. If someone has purchased from your website, then provide with the relevant product recommendation by knowing their buying history to give personal attention or send a personalized email with their first name or put their name in welcome message gives a special treatment to your customers.
• Encourage Repeat Purchase: Customer making one purchase is not the end. The real challenge is to encourage them to purchase again from you. This is possible by simplifying the buying process and making easy to buy from your site. A returning customer can get their credit card details automatically filled or they only require buying using their username and password. As a customer don’t want to stick to a lengthy process every time they log in, therefore keep everything easy to increase sales. 
• Send marketing emails to inform about the latest offers and the gentle reminder to come back.
• Use social media to interact with the customers and given them updates about latest offers and sales.
• Promote products by offering one-day deals or heavy discounts. 
• Easy Password/Account Recovery: As customers have several accounts on different websites, it’s quite painful to remember all passwords. Giving them an easy password recovery method by sending new password on registered mobile number or an email to reset their password is a good way. Another great way followed by Amazon is creating a new account with the same email id by disabling the existing account.

Customer Service

No second thought arise on the fact that customer prefers purchasing from the websites offering good customer support. Excellent customer service is what encourage them to promote your brand and service by telling other buyers how they were treated. Customers will spend 13% more if they feel a company is providing them good support.

Few important aspects to consider are:

• Rendering a personal attention using social media is a good way to solve customer query quickly.
• An email support service is what 44% customers depend on. Providing quick feedback is what expected by the customers.
• Most customer service representative is bounded with limitation to deal with the customer query. Trust and give responsibility to your employees to serve the customers exceeding their expectations.
• Providing immediate support or response is what every customer wants. Holding call for several minutes often annoyed the customer. Companies that instantly answer calls or within a minute is what expected by the customers.
• Error free delivery: Delivering product on time without an error is preferred by the customer. This may include informing where their packaged is currently reached and when it is will be delivered.
• Offer free shipping and easy return: Customer convenience matters most. If a customer knows they can easily return a product if not satisfied, chances are they will make a purchase. Free shipping is what attracts the customer most. Most of them even wait for few days if getting free shipping on their bought items.

Email Marketing

Email is an easy and cost-effective approach to be in touch with your customers. Here are few great ways of using emails to market business:

• Reminders: Give a gentle reminder to a customer regarding making the purchase if they didn’t do for a while is a good approach to customer retention. Be aware, this reminder is only to add pleasure and not to pin blame on them for not making the purchase.
• Post-Purchase Emails: On making the first purchase from your website, drop a welcome email and follow up with their feedback, experience and put-up cross-sell suggestions. 
• Event Emails: Make your customer feel special by sending a personalized email during events like Birthday or giving them the discount on their purchase.

Reward Programs 

Reward Programs are a good option to encourage buyers (EIP-Extremely Important People) make the purchase from you. This could include reward points on purchase some products or early access to a promotion. The main aim of such reward programs is to make your customer feel special. They should be well-taken care.

Few ways of rewarding customers are:

• They will be given the first choice of new products.
• They were assigned personal shoppers for wardrobe planning.
• VIP orders are given priority like their order is firstly picked, packed and dispatched.
• Loyalty Programs: This includes presenting a surprise gift for your loyal customers by offering little extra reward points of cash coupons for their purchase.
• Points for Making Referrals: Customers will get their account credited with a referral amount after making successful referrals of your website.
• Benefiting Social Followers: Offer cool and exciting gifts to your social media followers and make them return back to purchase again. 

These tactics are designed to help companies improving their Customer Retention. If you want to maximize your business sales, contact our eCommerce consultant to plan customer retention strategy today!