Online Customer Retention

Online Customer Retention, Importance and its Strategies

So you might be looking for what is Online Customer Retention, its importance and how to retain the existing customers with the perfect strategies out there.

Firstly let me tell you that, the customer is the king in any type of Business. So, maintaining and retaining the existing customer is the best and cheap way to earn more profit and brand loyalty.

Getting a new customer (customer acquisition) is difficult as well as profitable but retaining an existing customer is easy as well as cost-efficient. The reason why I am telling you this is that because we can earn more profit just by reducing the costs.

As we already spoke about targeted traffic and how to convert them to leads, now let’s look at what is Online Customer Retention and how to retain that traffic or customers which comes to our website.

Online Customer Retention

Online customer retention is the activities which you do to make the customers come back to you for the next purchase.

In simple words, making the customer to repeatedly buy things from you through an online medium is known as online customer retention.

This is done by different customer retention marketing strategies which I will be explaining to you throughout this article.

It seems to be easy, but it is not as easy as you think. People out there have many substitutes or varieties of products with different tastes and prices. So bringing them back is difficult.

Customers can be only retained if they are fully satisfied with your product or service and after sales and services.

If they feel a bit dissatisfied then they might think of trying any other substitute.

This will be a customer acquisition for that substitute company, so they will use strategies to retain that customer.

Now you might be thinking, "What’s the difference between customer acquisition and retention?"

It’s simple; activities done to make a new customer come to your website for the first time is Customer acquisition.

If I tell it from an online perspective, then it is to make a new user come to your website for the first time and If the same user comes back to the website from the same browser, then they will be considered as a Returning User (Customer Retention).

To retain both the new user as well as the returning user, we should use some retention strategy.

Why is Online Customer Retention Important?

As per Harvard Business School reports, Average increase in customer retention rates by 5% will increase profits by 25%-95%. This shows the importance of customer retention in driving sales and revenue.

Online Customer Retention and Acquisition, both are important. But here I will be telling you about the importance and benefits of customer retention.

The reason why I told both are important because without customer acquisition you cannot retain customers, it’s because there won’t be customers to retain.

Importance of Online customer retention is due to the following reasons:

1. Increase in Revenue

The chances of purchasing a product or service are more by the retained customers than a new customer.

It is because the retained customers are the existing customers who have been satisfied with the previous purchase and after-sales service.

So you can easily increase your revenue just by putting your products to your existing customers.

Not only that, the retained customer who is satisfied will suggest his friends and family purchase it, so chances of an increase in the sale are more.

2. Cost Efficient

To sell a product to the repeated Customer is the easiest and the cheapest way.

It is because, as the customer already knows the quality, price, and benefit of your product or service. There is no need of advertising them or converting them to leads.

It is cost efficient as well as time efficient.

3. Less nurturing needed

As the retained customer knows about your product or service, no need to nurture them and convince them to purchase the product.

Nurturing is a long process which takes a lot of time to make the customer understand and to build trust in them.

4. Word of mouth Advertising

The most effective and cheapest way of advertising is Word of Mouth advertising. The reason to say this is that, when your retained customer shares his experience with his friends or families about your product, it is a free type of advertising which you are getting.

The chances of those people to be converted into customers are more, compared to any other person.

It’s because when you promote an advertisement or convince the people to buy a product, they will feel like a stranger telling them to buy. But when their friends or family tell them to buy then based on their trust they will feel to buy.

5. To Build Customer Loyalty

By online customer retention strategies or tactics, you can build Customer loyalty by giving them a good experience with you.

It is done by providing customers with different types of customer loyalty programs and techniques.

List of the most common customer loyalty programs:

1. Loyalty card program
2. Coupon code
3. Gift card/ scratch card
4. Cash Back
5. Non- Monetary program
6. Points programs

When is customer retention important?

Online customer retention is important for all type of companies and industries. But it differentiates in different stages.

If your company is in the starting stage (no sales) then you should focus on customer acquisition, by promoting the platform. It’s because in that stage you won’t have customers to retain. Day by day when the customer starts to grow then you should retain them by using different strategies.

Online Customer retention strategies

As of till now I have spoken about what is Online customer retention, why is it important and when. And I was telling about the strategies to be used for customer retention. So now I am going to help you with some best online customer retention strategies.

1. Interactions

A major portion of the customer usually think that they are not been cared by the company, so they just try for other companies or websites. The more you interact, the more trustworthy they become. Even social platforms are there where you can interact with them personally.

Examples:

Yesterday I had an incident where I chatted with a Host review website named Host advice. They interacted and helped me so nicely that I got impressed. They were so polite and made me understand the thing which I was looking for.

So I can say that the acquisition part from their side has been completed. As they don’t have a product to sell they won’t focus on converting me to a lead, because I am already a lead for them.

They will advise us and give us a coupon code to purchase the Host provider. This is their conversion. They will get a commission as an affiliate from the host provider.

Now they will try to retain me by interacting with me so that I will again ask for more pieces of advice. And the other advantage is that I will tell others about the great interaction they made with me, so this is the free Word of mouth advertising which they get.

2. Personalisation

The website which you create should be personalized for the customers. Once customers come to your website and purchases a product or service, then the next time they should be greeted with their name and give them different kinds of products related to the one which they purchased before, so that they can be retained online.

The customers should feel that the content or offer which you are providing is for them itself. They should not feel like a common content or offer which is for everyone.

So the content which you provide on the website should be written by using ‘YOU’ and ‘I’. And if it is an E-mail then his name should be written in the mail.

Making the content more personalized will make the customers happy and will help in retaining them.

3. Attractive website or application

Creativity shows how talented you are. So you should always be creative while creating the platform where you want the customers to come and buy a product or service from you. Whether it is an offline store, website or application creativity decides how easy it will be for them to get the products.

If your website or application is created in a way with a good structure, where customers will easily find what they are looking for, then they will get impressed as it is user-friendly.

The website should not be created in a way where the customers will feel that you are not a professional; it will make them value your product also.

4. Offers

Giving different kinds of offers will help to build customer loyalty. This will help the customer to retain for a long term.

List of the loyalty programs which I told you above are the offers which I am speaking about.

With those different strategies, you can easily retain customers for a long term.

5. Marketing Automation

This is the best and easiest strategy to help you to retain your customers. But this alone won’t be enough, the above mentioned all should be considered together.

Marketing automation is nothing but automatic marketing. Yes, no need for you to market, the software will do your work.

If you are not using marketing automation, then you will be sitting in front of your computer and will be E-mailing or sending SMS to people who have registered for your product or service.

If marketing automation is there then the work will be done by software automatically and on time.

We just need to set a structure on how the whole process should be done.

Structure in the sense, when a person applies for a product, then automatically the confirmation mail and product should go to them.

So they will feel that we are caring for them. This will help with customer retention.

This can be done the help of software like ConvertKit, Zoho, MailChimp etc.

Conclusion

So now what do you think?

Should you focus on Online customer retention or what?

Online customer retention is not as easy as you think, but when you understand its benefits and profits then you will start enjoying it.

The main thing which you should have when you deal with customers is patience.

Thank you for your patience, I guess you are retained

If you have any doubt you can comment in the below section. Feel free to ask, we will reply as soon as we can.

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AK Digi Hub(Arishna Digital Communication Pvt. Ltd) is the blog where you get Latest updates related to Digital Marketing. Inspired to Work and give the best possible solutions.