How to Maintain eCommerce Customer Loyalty

Since people watch hundreds of TikTok or Reels in an hour, it’s hard to retain their attention, and keeping customers loyal is tougher than ever.

With endless options just a click away, why do some customers stick with certain brands? It’s all about customer loyalty, the secret sauce behind big names like Apple and Nike.

This article opens up the practical strategies to maintain customer loyalty. 
Let’s dive in.

What is customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is a customer’s outlook towards a brand, which leads them to choose that brand over the competitors every time they purchase. Rather than a calculative mindset, loyal customers possess a special liking for a particular brand. They praise a brand’s excellence and accept its subtle errors.

From testing the new products to advocating on social media— loyal customers are the special people who you can rely on to expand your brand identity.

Loyal customers help you increase sales, revenue, and profit, and eventually create a lifetime brand value.

The subtle differences between retention and loyalty

While retention is purchase-centric, loyalty is about the connection between the customer and the brand. However, retention is an integral part of loyalty.

Retention is the result of loyalty whereas loyalty is the confirmation of retention.

Specifying the reasons, some aspects like well-built features, offers, strategic pricing, or other efforts can generate customer retention when loyalty might come from any of them, without having a pinpoint fact. 

Loyalty shows a complete view of how the customers value your brand amid the competitors.

Power of customer loyalty in modern eCommerce business

Netflix, Adidas, WordPress, and other big brands are extraordinary examples of maintaining customer loyalty. Customers don’t even always check what these brands are going to provide them but purchase knowing that their favorite brand will surely provide something exclusive. They don’t even think of what the market trend is, as the brand will make a trend or adapt to the trend.

Increased rate of repurchases

Loyal customers follow your brand on various channels. When you add a new product, they grab it. When a product is getting out of stock, they buy it. When there is an offer, they drive for it. This is how the never-old loyal customers catch whatever you throw in the air. Eventually, your sales will increase.

Enhanced cross-selling and upselling

Cross-selling determines whether your customer is buying all types of products from your store. Loyal customers are the easiest option for you to cross-sell. They have trust in you and don’t hesitate to spend their money on your other products.

Upselling involves selling complementary products to the same customer who has purchased a relevant product. A new customer might think twice before purchasing another product or a couple of products. But a loyal customer knows both the products are similar in quality. So, you get instant revenue.

Reduced price sensitivity

Loyal customers know that your products are high quality and ready to buy even if they are above market price. They accept the pricing all the way and continue purchasing with the same rhythm.

Your loyal customers save you from your competitors’ pricing manipulation strategies.

Valuable feedback

Loyal customers don’t always give positive feedback. If they provide any negative feedback, that is as impactful as the positive ones. Sometimes they go beyond the regular complaints and provide an in-depth analysis because they care about your brand. Tracking loyal customers’ complaints will put you a step ahead of the negative results that could harm your brand.

You can use WordPress form builders like Fluent Forms to build customer survey forms and send them to your loyal customers to collect feedback. See this demo customer survey form template to get an idea.

Impactful and credible advocacy

Who do you think new customers rely on when buying a new product? 

New customers rely on the evaluation of your brand’s old and consistent customers.

Your loyal customers advocate and explain the expectation or satisfaction level.

Here, you can see the instances of advocacy provided by the consistent customers of Fluent Forms.

Use your loyal customers’ reviews to showcase your brand’s strength. Tools like WP Social Ninja help you showcase customer reviews on your website. You can connect Fluent Forms integration with WP Social Ninja to collect custom reviews from users and show them on your business website. 

10 impactful ways to maintain eCommerce customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is a fence that keeps your competitors away from the customers. Now, it matters how good you are at making that fence. The more you are into customer’s pain points and the better you know your customers’ demographics, the closer you become to the customers’ heart desires.

Establish a tailored shopping experience

The age of generic shopping is over. Today’s eCommerce tech solutions have made sure that shoppers purchase more than they have planned.

Personalized eCommerce provides the customers with the scopes to get custom product recommendations according to their preferences, and expected pricing range.

Build an ecosystem that welcomes users and provides solutions to their problems even before they seek.

Utilize the purchase history or the assessment of interest and apply in tailored recommendations.

Arrange customer loyalty programs

A loyalty program is a privileged offer to the prioritized customers who you want to be your brand’s loyal customers. 

It’s not necessary to give big discounts or gifts, even recognition can broaden your brand’s worth to customers.

Several options are available to help you design a customer loyalty program:

• Tiered rewards
• Membership badges
• Personalized discounts

[Image Courtesy: XPLR]

Introduce Inclusive referral programs

Strong references from a regular buyer can help a new shopper make a purchase instantly. A few of your customers might occasionally refer your brand to others. But you can make this irregular scope turn into a trend.

Make sure that your referral program doesn’t sound like a business trick. Rather, it should be a nice way to embrace the perception as a token of appreciation. 

[Image Courtesy: paypal]

Surprise and appreciate customers

How do you surprise a customer?  Even doing something nice that they’ve never expected from you can surprise your customers. 

Appreciate your customers in a way that they remember. 

A birthday email, purchase anniversary offer, or a special day free delivery can be good examples of surprises.

For example. if a customer suggests any change in a product design, and you use it— mention it on your social channels. If a customer purchases 3 times in a row within a month, send a thankful email. If a customer waits two days for a return rather than canceling the order, withdraw the delivery charge.

Appreciation matters.

Offer exclusive membership system

Let’s take soccer as an example. All viewers are not equally dedicated fans of the playing team. Same way, all the shoppers in your eCommerce store don’t see your brand equally. If a few people are consistent with your brand, treat them specially. 

To ensure that exceptional customers feel special, you can introduce a membership badge system.

The membership system may not need to be spend-based. Even the interaction on social media can be a metric to upgrade the membership.

The success of the membership system depends on how many new customers join the program and how many existing members engage with your brand.

Ensure a strong bond with the customers

To create a strong bond with the customer, you, the brand should take over the charge. It will seem to be pretty much a one-sided relationship till a certain period of time. But, once you make the bonding go well, it will be a win-win situation for you and your customers.

First, know your customers. Know more than the name and email address. Know what they like and what they don’t. Analyze the customer behaviors and prepare segmented buyer persona standards.

Organize surveys and engage customers on different marketing channels in a way they feel like the contributors.

Ask for feedback whenever there are scopes. Know the pain points and take steps with solutions accordingly.

Provide high-quality products and service

Customers may ignore little faults in products once or twice but not every time. 

Your products and services stay at the center of the evaluation of your brand. If these two aspects seem to be better, the other customer satisfaction attributes start working.

Be consistent in branding and marketing

Do not expect to get your branding right if you start working today and want to see the results tomorrow. It’s a slow-expanding business strategy that requires consistency.

Analyze the customer journey and decorate the most significant touchpoints in user-centric ways. 

Whether it’s multichannel or omnichannel marketing, be exactly where your customers are and find out the solutions to the industry-relevant problems they are facing.

Let’s take BIC’s pen for an example attached here. They have been continuing this design since 1955, upholding a terrific example of consistency.

Curate educational content

Products are not the only scopes that can add value to a user’s life. Sometimes customers may need polished research on great problems, lessons on new ideas or free entertainment.

It’s worthwhile content that engages a customer, involves consideration, and helps make decisions. 

There are several ways you can utilize the power of content.

• Publish informational blogs and generate leads
• Accumulate user-generated content
• Visualize user manual and product comparison
• Create social content to entertain shoppers

There are plenty of scopes to build brand awareness inside the content.

Here, this video enlightens the users on how you can use Fluent Forms to suggest that shoppers add relevant products to the cart.

Organize welfare campaigns

It’s a fact that welfare comes from social responsibility, not a business mindset. Still, your brand can uphold its ethical value while helping people.

People want to be a reason for someone’s happiness. Customers feel happy to spend on a business that implements a charity program to help underprivileged children, an educational sponsorship, or extra benefits for the employees.

What’s next

Utilizing customer loyalty is like bringing the ready dish to your table. All you need is to serve the proper strategies in the proper area. Great customer experience helps you boost loyalty among your customers.

Loyalty is never achieved within a pre-decided period. You should keep implementing the loyalty programs and fix whatever efforts don’t suit your business.

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