It is one thing to get new customers for your business. But it’s a completely different thing when we talk about retaining your customers.
Many e-commerce entrepreneurs, especially those who are just starting up, focus on getting new customers for their store (also known as “customer acquisition”). While this is completely understandable, there’s a point where entrepreneurs must learn not only on how to make new customers, but also to make them buy again at their store again. This process and strategy is called “customer retention”.
What is Customer Retention?
Customer retention is simply the process or strategy on how you will get your customers to keep buying from you. When a customer buys at least twice from your store, he or she is considered a “repeat customer”.
Repeat customers are great not only because they make more regular purchases on your store, but also because they already know your store. This means that it’s relatively easier to call their attention compared to new customers who probably don’t even have any idea about your store or business, let alone buy from you.
But customer retention is very different from customer acquisition. It’s very possible that you’re great at acquiring new customers, but if you have a poor customer service or poor product, you will not get your customers back to buy from you again – not to mention that bad word will eventually spread about your store and you’ll soon new customers, too!
So, how you get to retain your customers? Here are our 5 tips on how you can retain your customers.
5 Tips on How to Retain Your Customers
1) Provide positive customer experience
If there is one thing that you need to remember in this article, it’s this: provide positive customer service. There’s just no way around it.
It does not matter how good your product is, or even how timely your delivery is, if you do not provide positive customer experience, customers are more likely to jump to the next store the moment they saw one.
By positive customer experience, we mean positive customer service. Respect your customers. Make them feel that you care about them. If your customers don’t feel the warm and good experience in your store – and worse, if you are rude to your customers – don’t expect them to buy to you again. And oh, you can expect bad reviews from them!
2) Build your brand
Building a brand is certainly a long-term game, but if really want customer loyalty, then it’s important to make a name for your business.
The great thing about having a brand is that, you’ll be more memorable to your customers. In fact, brands make a long-lasting impression on our minds that we sometimes associate a product to the well-known brand that sells it – e.g. think about how we think of “Colgate” whenever we think about toothpastes.
Branding is a long-term strategy and it will take a lot of commitment and effort to successfully launch your business to that level. But once you’re successful, you’ll not only have repeat customers, but potentially loyal customers!
3) Always stay in touch
Customer experience does not end when your customer had already bought his or her product. Continue to reach out to them through social media and e-mail. When you are always connected to them, not only they will remember you, but they will feel that they somehow belong in your business or brand. With that, they would more than happy to buy to your store again.
4) Offer loyalty programs
Loyalty programs are a great way to keep your customers from coming back because these programs incentivize them to buy to your store again by offering them with discounted prices.
Simply put, if they already love your business or brand and you sell your products to them at a lower rate, then they would mostly love to buy from your store!
5) Watch out for the market and your competitors
Sometimes, and sadly, some businesses go under because they do not check the market and their competitors and had instead remained complacent to their success.
Because they have little news on what’s currently going on in the market, they didn’t know that their biggest competitor is offering something great, or that a new business offers new products that are not currently satisfied by their market. And there they are, still relishing on the success they had 5 years ago – success that is certainly in danger unless they act on it.
Don’t be complacent. Always check on what’s going on in the market today. Learn what your competitors are offering. And then, decide on how you’ll do better in the current market trend!
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