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How can your ecommerce store boost its customer retention rate in 2021?

By 12 January 2021September 20th, 2021No Comments

The retail industry took a hit at the start of the pandemic – and, in a fashion, continues to do so as many companies are forced to keep their brick-and-mortar stores temporarily shut in line with lockdown restrictions. In sharp contrast, however, the COVID-19 era presents the world of ecommerce with a huge opportunity for growth.

Still, a big question is whether your online store can ensure what may have been its pandemic-sparked expansion lasts well into this New Year.

Regardless of how long the pandemic itself lingers in 2021, here are several strategies you could pursue to help keep your company’s ecommerce growth going.

Use the RFM model

The recency, frequency and monetary value (RFM) model enables you to classify customers on account of their shopping behaviour. One way to put it into practice is by assigning each of your customers a score from 1 to 5 on the measures of how recently they have bought, how often and the average monetary value of their orders.

So, a customer who scores 555 should probably be in line for VIP treatment, while one with a 255 score may be tempted back to your online shop by an automated email or text message.

Use customer onboarding to build relationships

Customer onboarding can work with both new customers and those whose transactional habits at your online store have waned. In either instance, though, your objective would be to foster a relationship that encourages the customer to buy repeatedly from you in the longer term.

So, while onboarding for a new customer might involve them registering an account with your online store and subscribing to its content, trying to win back a former customer could entail messaging them privately to thank them for their last order and offering them a discount code redeemable on a future order.

Regularly publish fresh content to keep shoppers… content

How many times have you seen, in your email inbox, a message focused on a specific product? The mere sight of this kind of message has probably made you think “not spam again”. That’s why your marketing campaigns can’t be limited to product-specific pieces like these.

While it would not always be of the best use to your customers, content that touches on pain points in their everyday lives would come across as much less self-publicising. This content can comprise articles and videos, for which we can help you to select the right keywords.

Keyword research and guest blogging are among the services we include as standard with our search engine marketing (SEM) packages here at Piranha Designs. We can help you to choose between our Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum packages if you directly reach out to us in the UK or Gibraltar.