Get Them to Come Back: 7 Ways to Retain Ecommerce Customers

Getting someone to hit the “buy” button the first time is one thing. The right photos and the right CTA may do the trick. But that’s just the first step. Next up, you need to retain ecommerce customers and keep them coming back.

Before you ask how to retain ecommerce customers, let’s focus on the why.

The Benefits of Reselling to the Same Customer

Customer acquisition is a hot topic in ecommerce. And it’s only natural.

After all, who doesn’t want more clients?

My goal here is not to deter you from new customer acquisition, but to show you that client retention is equally important, if not more important.

You see, it’s cheaper to resell to the same customer. Five times cheaper to be exact. The same report that gave us this number also tells us that only 18% of companies deemed client retention as more important than client acquisition.

Aside from a lower cost-per-sale, 82% of companies also miss out on a few things.

First of all, retained customers are very likely to turn into product or brand champions. You see, when you make a single purchase from a store, you tend to forget to mention it to friends, family and colleagues.

But when you build a relationship with said store, they become part of your routine – something that comes up in conversations more often. Even more, a loyal customer is obviously a happy one. They love your products, your customer service, your speedy delivery or a combination of these. And they are bound to tell people about it.

In other words: when you manage to retain ecommerce customers, you’re not just gaining their business. You’re also building your customer acquisition strategy.

Furthermore, when you retain ecommerce customers you’re looking at a higher profitability rate. Repeat customers are often more profitable than new ones. In fact, the profitability rate increases over the life of every retained customer.

Better yet, if you increase your customer retention by 2%, you’re looking at a profit change identical to cutting 10% of your costs.

Which one is easier to do? If you answered cutting costs, read on. I’m about to show you how to retain ecommerce customers without spending a fortune on PPC ads.

7 Ways to Retain Ecommerce Customers

Customer retention techniques are more than mastering Google AdWords campaigns. An existing customer is rarely influenced by an ad. And if your ad treats them as a new customer, you’ve lost them.

So you have to dig deeper. You have to master inbound sales and come up with ways to retain customers that work in the long run.

To put it differently: you don’t need to think about how to get people to buy again. You need to think about how to retain ecommerce customers for life. This means more than a second purchase. It means building a long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationship.

Let’s take a look at the best ways to retain customers.

1. Leverage Customer Accounts Wisely

In the era of speed and millions of ecommerce stores (not to mention other types of businesses who want customers’ email addresses), an account is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, it allows people to check out easier. For you, the business owner, it facilitates communication and helps you retain ecommerce customers.

On the other hand, people may view it as too big a commitment. What if your product sucks and they never want to be reminded of you? What if they know for a fact that they don’t need to buy from you again?

This is why it’s important to allow people in a hurry to check out as a guest.

However, it’s equally important to get the ones that may return to sign up for an account. You can offer an incentive (exclusive discounts for club members) or a perk (faster/priority shipping for members).

But getting them to sign up for an account is not the end of the story, nor does it guarantee that they will turn into repeat customers.

For that to happen, you need to make sure that you don’t abuse their account. Keep communications to a minimum. More importantly, give the gift of relevance: don’t bombard them with irrelevant promotions just because you have their email address.

The same goes for social sharing. Social buttons are great on your website and in your email campaigns. We all know that social media, especially Instagram, is great for ecommerce sales. But for the love of God, avoid annoying pop-ups or, worse, posting to their profiles without their consent.

The bottom line here is that you need to be a discreet presence in their life. Pop up in their inbox or social channels ONLY when you have something to help them with.

2. Send our Repurchase Reminders

But don’t do it the very second your new customer checked out their first order. This is perhaps the most annoying email you can get.

Assume that people didn’t forget to buy anything from you and that they already saw all the products they are interested in/can afford on your website. Plus, the time and place to get them to buy something to match their original order is during order placement, on the checkout page.

Not the email you send a day later!

Instead, try to be useful. This is how Sephora does it:

Image via Litmus

See what they did there? They got extra personal. They took the time (or the big data tools) to learn when their customer may be out of the product they bought. And they reminded the customer to make the purchase.

This is exactly what I mean by being useful and relevant: they went for the same product AND they helped their customer stay on top of their make-up supply.

3. Get Creative

Clinique got even more creative with their ecommerce customer retention tactics. Their data showed that women shop for beauty products more than men. However, they couldn’t send them an email with men products targeted at men. Who’d open that?

So they got creative.

Image via SmartMail

Another way to retain ecommerce customers is the good ol’ “we miss you” email. Why should your customer care that you miss them?

Because you’re offering an incentive to get them to come back, of course!

A 10% discount on the next purchase or a lifetime value-added membership does the trick in this case.

The Amazon one-click review is another great example of ecommerce customer retention strategy. They don’t ask you to do much. Just one click to let them know if you’re happy with your purchase.

Image via Sleeknote

4. Be Relevant

Once again, the key to retain ecommerce customers is relevance.

If you get this down to an art, repeat customers will be the norm in your company, not the exception. However, of this to happen you need to rely on more than your buyer persona profiling.

Here’s a good example:

Has it been raining in Montana and the rain is not forecast to stop any time soon? Help your customers make the most adequate purchase for the weather conditions.

All you need to do is segment your email list carefully based on location and you’re good to go.

5. Don’t Forget about Regular Newsletters

Once again (sorry to repeat this ad nauseam, but it is the most important takeaway), keep them relevant. But don’t refrain from sending newsletters just because you read somewhere you need to keep email communication to a minimum.

Email is still the best tool for ecommerce sales and ecommerce customer retention.

Image via Monetate

Use email to retain ecommerce customers by sending out promotion and massive campaign announcements, as well as various combinations of the strategies above.

Track your open and click rates carefully to know what works and for whom in works. Next, generate better campaigns.

Furthermore, pay extra attention to the copy and the headline of your emails.

We’ve had a lot of ecommerce customers who focused a lot on the visuals. That makes a lot of sense – a photo is worth a thousand words, after all.

But the email subject is what makes a recipient open that email and see your great visuals. The CTA is what makes them click on “buy”.

For our ecommerce clients, we have managed to boost email conversion rates with as much as 20% by creating better, more compelling copy to accompany their awesome visuals.

Need help crafting compelling copy for your email campaigns? Our amazing direct response copywriters can help you boost conversion rates and turn one-time shoppers into loyal brand champions.

6. Use Discounts Creatively

Yes, discounts work. But if you abuse them, they become the norm and they cheapen the brand. If you offer them every day, your customers begin to expect them and refrain from paying the whole price.

Find out when to offer your clients discounts and when not to.

Here’s a good example that will help you both retain ecommerce customers and get new ones: offer a $10 discount for a referred friend coupled with another $10 discount for the existing customer (receivable as soon as the referred friend makes the first purchase).

Talk about a win-win situation, right?

You can also come up with cumulative discounts: the value of the discount grows with every new purchase or create exclusive deals for premium members.

This doesn’t just boost customer retention. It also creates happy, loyal customers.

When you make people feel special, when you treat them like VIPs and when you show them that you value them, they will come back. There are too few companies who actually value long-lasting relationships beyond the dollars they bring.

This is your chance to stand out from the crowd.

7. Upgrade Your Copywriting and Your Content Writing

Go beyond simple product descriptions for the items you sell. Talk about how they fit in your buyer persona’s life, how they make it better.

Paint a picture with words to help potential and repeat customers feel as if they already own what you’re selling. Let them know how much better their life can get.

There is no better way to retain ecommerce customers than to show you care for other aspects of their lives. Use your blog section to offer them valuable tips, tricks and how-tos.

Create exclusive content for loyal customers. Make sure to tell them no one else has access to it. It’s so special – just like them!

Again, stay relevant. Make-up tips work for Sephora. Home improvement tips work for Home Depot. Stick to the topics you know and make sure you offer added value.

Final Words

If all else fails, try to get out of your brain for a bit. No matter how long you’ve been working for an ecommerce company, you must still remember what it feels like to be at the receiving end of an upsell email.

When you get those, don’t look at them through the eyes of a marketer. Look at them through the eyes of the customer.

Do they move you? Do the discounts offered make you hit the “buy” button? Are you feeling valued?

Analyze every campaign of your competitors’ and other ecommerce businesses through those eyes. And move beyond your niche. Who says a home décor shop can’t borrow ideas from Sephora and vice versa?

Need help crafting the perfect messages for ecommerce customer retention? We can help you with web content, copywriting, email writing, blogging and more.

Let’s talk about how to boost your customer retention rates through carefully crafted messages and content: