How to apply customer loyalty to your retail ecommerce?
La customer loyalty is essential for the retail sector, whether you have a physical store or a ecommerce for retail.
Customer loyalty strategies are the secret weapon of a good retail marketing strategy. Once you have acquired the customer, you can make them come back and become a fan of your brand. So it will also be your testimony through word of mouth.
In this article, you will discover how to build customer loyalty in an e-commerce, the keys to loyalty and how to retain your customers with a good shipping policy.
What is customer loyalty and why should you apply it to your retail ecommerce?
The first thing you should know is what customer loyalty is and what is the importance of customer loyalty. The fact is that the success of an ecommerce is no longer about one-time sales. This is how many times the same customer returns to your online store to make another purchase.
The retention and loyalty of customers of a ecommerce for retail refers to the company's ability to convert its customers into repeat buyers. It's a business growth strategy in which you prevent the buyer from switching to a competitor or even exploring their offerings.
Among the advantages of customer loyalty strategies, we can mention:
- Loyalty is more cost-effective than acquisition: when you apply strategies to build customer loyalty, you invest your money better, since it has a higher ROI.
- Returning customers are more profitable: First-time customers aren't easy to acquire. It can be a slow and costly process. On the other hand, returning customers are already familiar with the business. Comparatively, it's less expensive to keep a customer who has already purchased from you than to win a new one.
- Regular customers provide more feedback: A loyal customer knows your business, makes favorable comments, making it the ideal platform for growth.
- Loyal customers provide great word-of-mouth referrals: Word-of-mouth referrals add credibility to the product and brand.
How to apply customer loyalty to your retail eCommerce?
3 key points for building customer loyalty in your retail ecommerce
Although many users frequent your ecommerce, each one has different needs and interests, and not everyone should be treated the same way.
That's why it's important to observe and analyze the behavior of your customers before making further progress in implementing customer loyalty programs.
Once you are clear about the behavior of your ecommerce customers, consider these key points:
1. Define loyalty objectives
In order to implement effective loyalty strategies, it is important that you clearly define the objectives you hope to achieve, such as:
- Purchase frequency: one of your objectives in implementing your strategies may be to increase the number of times a customer buys your products or services.
- Increase in purchase volume: At this point, what you are looking for is for the customer to increase the amount they are usually buying every time they buy.
- Recommendation rate: your goal in this case is to increase the recommendations of your regular customers in order to attract new customers.
2. Outline customer loyalty strategies
Achieving the loyalty objectives you are pursuing is possible with the right strategy.
- Customer loyalty program: When you have a loyal customer, it's key to improving their experience and retaining them, rewarding them with discounts and promotions. This way you thank him for his loyalty and guarantees that he will buy again.
- Optimal customer service: with personalized attention to your best customers, and special benefits for them and a friend, you build customer loyalty and attract new customers.
- Surprise factor with logistics and packaging: It is essential to ensure that packaging and delivery logistics are in the hands of the best service.
You should be clear that it is not enough for the package to arrive quickly, intact and perhaps in sustainable packaging.
One thing that really makes a difference in deliveries is communication.
With Picker as an ally for your ecommerce deliveries, customer loyalty is more effective. Because it provides a real tracking experience, improving the shopping experience and increasing your customer's trust in your ecommerce.
3. Define customer loyalty indicators
Some of the customer loyalty indicators you can use are:
- LTV (Life Time Value): This metric gives you the monetary value of the business you've earned over the customer lifecycle. It is the net profit earned from a customer over a given period.
- Time between orders: measure the time that elapses between purchases by your regular customers. It helps you determine strategies to get your customers to buy in a shorter amount of time.
- Retention rate: The customer retention rate is the number of customers who continue to buy from you over time. If you have a reasonably high customer retention rate, it's a sign that your customers are loyal to you.
Conversely, if you have a low retention rate, it indicates that you are losing customers faster than you are attracting new ones.
3 examples of customer loyalty to inspire and replicate in your retail ecommerce
These three companies are examples of customer loyalty that can inspire you to implement strategies in your ecommerce:
1. Amazon
Amazon has earned first place as a leader in e-commerce by offering impeccable and unique services. For example, Amazon Prime has changed consumer expectations by offering secure, free and very fast shipping.
2. Nike
Nike combines technology and physical location with its loyalty program. Using geo-fencing technology, the NikePlus app offers offers and other messages to its customers when they are close to physical stores. Nike believes that this strategy has a conversion rate 40 times higher than targeted messaging.
3. The North Face
The North Face, an American clothing and outdoor retailer, has a ViPeak rewards program that allows its loyal customers to “turn their passion for adventure into real rewards”.
The North Face customer loyalty program allows customers to earn points in the traditional way, with every purchase they make. The points you accumulate can be used to redeem unique travel experiences.
How can Picker help you with your customer loyalty strategy?
Home delivery is another important aspect that helps you build customer loyalty and retention. If you offer an optimal order delivery experience, you can ensure that the customer continues to trust you, every time they want to make the purchase of one of your products.
With Picker, you shorten waiting times for your customers, since we are looking for the closest delivery people with extensive experience in delivering orders placed from a retail e-commerce.
In addition, you can provide your customer with a real tracking experience, so they will know exactly where their order is. This improves your shopping experience, increases your trust and builds loyalty, and in the end, this generates an increase in your sales.
Conclusions
Customer loyalty programs are a powerful tool for your ecommerce, as they seek to increase customer engagement and boost sustainable business growth.
Considering how costly it is becoming to acquire new customers, it only makes sense to increase the value of those already acquired
Customer loyalty of your ecommerce, it's possible if you pay special attention to the key points to build customer loyalty in your retail ecommerce.
Remember that there is no better strategy than another because they are all equally valid, but their effectiveness depends on the context and how well you can put it into practice.
However, they all have the same objective: to get the customer to reach your e-commerce, complete a purchase and visit it again.
