With so many effective customer retention strategies to consider with ecommerce marketing, keeping your customers happy no longer needs to be a challenge. Despite the number of retention strategies out there, however, some companies still forget that it costs less time, effort and even money to invest in current customers than it does brand new customers. Treating retention as something that you’d better do rather than something that will drive real value is a rather risky move.
Avoid These Customer Retention Strategies at All Cost
To help you get a better idea of what not to do, here are a few customer retention strategies that you definitely want to avoid if possible.
The worst customer retention strategies to stay clear of include the following:
1. Seeing every channel as a separate entity
Many brands forget that no channel exists in a vacuum. When you have separate strategies for all of your ecommerce marketing channels, without a plan to tie them together cohesively, it becomes a lot harder to reach customers on a deeper level. Many customers follow brands on more than one channel. When there is no cohesion, there is a bigger risk of duplicate content, diluted messages and missed opportunities.
2. Treating every customer the same
Sending every single customer the exact same message is another thing to avoid. It may seem like the quickest and simplest way to stay in touch with customers, but, in reality, if you are not personalising, segmenting and targeting your lists and campaigns, you run a very real risk of alienating customers. No customer likes to feel as though they are just a small fraction of a highly replaceable audience. Blindly broadcasting messages without trying to connect is one of the quickest ways to lose customers.
3. Being reactive rather than proactive
Are you invested in customer loyalty? Do you have strategies in place to improve customer experience? Or, are you so focused on customer acquisition that retention is treated as an after-thought? If you are being reactive, it means that you are missing out on a chance to transform customers into brand loyalists. This means thinking forward and not waiting until customers have not been back to your store in ages.
4. Blindly following trends
Be very careful of customer retention trends, unless you are certain that it will add genuine value. Getting caught up in strategies that could end up causing more harm than good is that last thing you want to do at any point. Campaigns that are borderline spam, aggressive tactics that do not inspire trust, and other short term solutions may not always get you the results you think they will, either.
5. Failing to keep an eye on your stats
Instead, keep your eye on your stats. Using data to drive your decisions is the only way that you will be able to make a real difference. Once you notice customers starting to drift, you can develop highly targeted campaigns that prevent them from saying goodbye forever. At the same time, you can create the type of experience for your current customer that makes them not want to leave in the first place.
The good news is that you can see an increase in retention once you begin to focus your resources on customer retention strategies that help rather than hinder.
