After reading digital marketing and e-commerce blogs for nearly a decade, I have noticed a trend. There are thousands of posts on building an email list and social media following. There are far fewer posts on maintaining a relationship with existing followers.
Shopify wrote a great post on the reasons that e-commerce businesses run into problems. They focus solely on building a following, without a strategy to keep their followers. This is like playing a basketball game solely playing offense or defense.
Customer retention needs to be a top priority< for all e-commerce companies. On average, existing customers account for about 65% of all sales. If you can’t maintain your existing customer base, then your sales will plummet.
As an e-commerce company, maximizing your customer retention rate can be difficult. Fortunately, there are a number of tips that you can follow to retain customers, which are listed below.
Communicate your company‘s core values to them
According to a report published in Harvard Business Review, 64% of customers cite shared values as their biggest priority when deciding which companies to do business with. You will have an easier time maintaining a relationship with these customers if you show that your company shares their values.
This is a difficult concept for many new e-commerce brands to grasp. Since you don’t have a face-to-face relationship with your customers, it is difficult to think of them as real people that share your core values. The lack of personal communication also makes it difficult to get their feedback to understand what they are looking for.
This is why you need to:
Your values should be conveyed on your company website and other social media platforms. Make sure they are consistent, so there is no room for ambiguity.
Optimize your website for mobile
Many e-commerce companies still think of mobile marketing as a novelty. Even though mobile devices account for over half of all website traffic today, they don’t think that it is a big deal if they lose customers browsing on mobile devices.
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This is a very bad assumption. Not only will you lose customers, but you will seriously damage your brand. One poll found that 43% of customers probably will not return to a website that loads slowly on mobile devices. An even larger percent of users will not recommend a brand to their friends if is not optimized for mobile.
Avoid using negative social proof
Testimonials and other forms of social proof are invaluable to e-commerce companies. However, social proof will only help your brand if you use it properly.
An article from the Wall Street Journal delved into this topic. According to their research, companies that use negative social proof in their copy are more likely to turn customers away. On the other hand, websites that use positive social proof will leave a positive impression in the customers mind. Their customers are more likely to maintain an ongoing relationship with the brand.
Here is an example of a sentence that relies on negative social proof:
“70% of Brands are hurting their ROI by failing to use a marketing automation platform”
At first glance, this may not seem like a bad sentence to include in your copy if you are selling in marketing automation tool. However, when you really think about it, it seems a bit condescending. That will explain why it would turn people away.
Instead, you should try using a sentence like this:
“The 30% of brands that use marketing automation tools say their ROI has increased by over 70%.”
Not only does the sentence have a more positive message, but it also highlights the benefits of your service.
Author: Chris Pentago
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