Improve customer loyalty with rockstar engagement strategies

Successful businesses are built on customer loyalty. It’s the foundation on which retention rate and repeat purchases rely on - without that army of brand devotees, you’ll be swimming against the current forever. And that’s just exhausting, ask the Atlantic salmon.

Unlike the salmon, there is another way. You don’t have to keep performing tasks that are repetitive, exhausting and ultimately lead to an early demise. 

To get back to the point of this blog, that other way is called customer loyalty. Through customer engagement strategies, you can create a strong base of patrons that keep coming back.

This is important because those loyal customers spend 50% more, on average, than one-off buyers and can provide up to 80% of income despite making up a small percentage of customers.

Now that we’ve established how important it is to try and grow customer relationships, you’ll probably be pretty eager to see a few strategies to try and make theory a reality?

Luckily you’ve come to the right place. In this blog, we run through some more statistics on why this needs to be on every retailer’s radar, show you some strategies on how to improve customer loyalty,  and finally some examples of how the process can be simplified, yet made more advanced, powerful and manageable.

Sound good? Course it does. Let’s dive in.

Why you need to implement customer engagement strategies

Having top-notch customer loyalty is incredibly important for a number of reasons. 

• This will help you drive repeat business, as we’ve touched on before. These customers might continue to buy the same product from you, while they’ll be more inclined to purchase something new because of their loyalty.
• This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point, but strong customer loyalty will help you to increase revenue. Returning customers spend more than first-time buyers, or one-time buyers. It’s vital to harness this energy.
• Feedback can be a really important way for any business to improve its services and offerings, and collecting feedback can be an important part of customer engagement. These loyal customers are more likely to provide feedback, which will enable you to improve your offering to help recruit more loyal customers.
• The best companies in the world all have an incredibly strong brand. Why? Think how much people who love one specific company keep on rabbiting on about it; showing off the latest and greatest gear and basically trying to convert everyone they see into the latest follower (yes I’m thinking about Apple). Brand ambassadors spread the world in a really engaging, organic way. Cultivate that, use it.
• In any walk of life, there’s going to be someone else trying to have a bit of what you’ve got. The good news is that customer loyalty can break the competition because once you’ve got that loyal following, they ain’t going to hop on the latest bandwagon and leave your business in the dirt.

Customer engagement platforms can create an army

Having things like good customer service and a superior product are one way to gain a customer’s loyalty, but to really cultivate those long-term relationships that help sustain a brand through thick and thin, you need to go further.

Marketing automation is incredibly important to the process and it can facilitate strategies like loyalty flows.

These don’t need to be saved for your VIPS. If anyone is enjoying your product or services, they can be targeted via loyalty flows that will benefit your ecommerce business.

One simple way of activating a flow that can boost loyalty is the humble feedback form. Asking for feedback shows people that you care and allows you to figure out how to make your products even better! You can create a flow that automatically sends out a personalised email asking each customer for feedback and a review once they’ve made a purchase - you could even include a little discount as a way of saying thanks. It’s as easy as that!

Segments can deliver personalised experiences

The best marketing automation flows make use of segments to deliver personalised experiences to customers and potential customers. 

You can segment shoppers based on their loyalty to your brand and also based on their interactions with you - which will help you to personalise each individual’s experience.

Different types of customers could be sent different content. A first-time buyer could be thanked and then retargeted with something you know they’ll love based on their previous purchase, while someone who has made multiple trips to your online store could be rewarded with a small token of your appreciation after reaching a milestone. 

Small things like saying thank you or providing new-user incentives will go a long way towards building customer loyalty and all the perks that come with it!

This also lets you communicate with real-time relevance. There’s no point sending a customer an email about some new shoes when their last purchase was a fresh pair of kicks! 

Perform powerful product recommendations

With APSIS One, you can include a product recommendation add-on that will help take your experience to the next level by:

• Creating recommendations based on behaviour or demographic data
• Using Profile data to create truly personalised recommendations
• Improve revenue by showing off products your customers are likely to buy
• Be consistent in your messaging
• Increase average time spent on your website.

Getting product recommendations right is an important part of building strong customer loyalty. It shows that you pay attention to the individual, and their needs, while evidence exists to suggest that customers are prepared to pay more to get that personal touch.

Simple yet strong

It doesn’t need to be the most complicated plan in the world to improve your customer’s loyalty. Talking to people like they’re individuals, and not another Euro sign in the spreadsheet is one of the most important things here.

But how are you supposed to do that when this individual is one of many? Marketing automation does the heavy lifting so that you can communicate with thousands of people at an individual level. 

At a very basic level, you should be offering outstanding customer service. We’ve all experienced the bad kind in our everyday lives, and being on the receiving end of an unpleasant business makes everyone less likely to spend money.

Strategies like welcome flows and product recommendations can help to enhance customer loyalty, while personalised content and asking for feedback can truly enhance your business in their mind.

And once you get them, remember to treat them nicely! Nobody ever gained customers by treating ‘em mean to keep ‘em keen.

Grow customer relationships today!

Some of these terms and strategies can seem a little overwhelming to the newly initiated, it’s true. To go deeper into the subject, download our drip marketing handbook for free!