How To Get Repeat Customers For Your Online Business

Problems:

Are you wondering why your customers are not making repeated purchases in your online business? Why don’t you see a customer coming back more for more in your business?

If you are facing this then this might not be a good sign. People continue to buy from businesses when they have built a positive relationship with them. The purchase does not come from simply the product’s likeability. Therefore there is a possibility that your customers did not have a pleasant experience with your business. Do you know customers pay more for a better customer experience? From a study by PWC, a whopping 86 percent of buyers are willing to spend more for a superior customer service experience.

Your repeat customer has a higher chance of making a purchase than your new one. Besides this, a repeat customer is likely to spend more money. According to a recent study by Endear published in Forbes, existing customers are 50 percent more inclined than new customers to explore new goods and they also spend 31% more on average. So your business is losing out on important revenue.

Many companies concentrate a big portion of their budget to acquire new customers. But this might not be the best strategy to increase your sales. According to Forbes, from the Pareto Principle, only 20% of your customers generate 80% of your profits. You will need to spend more on getting a new customer than a repeat sale from your last customer. It is a well-known fact that getting a new client costs five times as much as keeping an existing one. So encouraging existing customers has greater cost efficiency.

Since the value of repeat customers is clear by now how do you persuade them to buy again? Or how do you grow a relationship with the customers where they keep coming back to your business? You can follow these strategies to preserve these invaluable individuals of your business:

Improve your quality:

If you want to improve the number of customers you have, you might have to start improving the quality of your business. Listen to you your customers. Read their reviews, and their complaints. Make sure they do not happen again. Give them the best customer support possible.

Offer discounts:

Offering discounts might seem like an obvious step for keeping customers. However, it works all the time! Offering various types of discounts targets a wide range of customers and aids in customer retention. But don’t go on offering discounts forever. If giving out a discount means losing out on extra revenue where the customer will make the purchase regardless, you should stop it. You could offer these discounts for your online business-

• Offer special offers after first purchase.
• Provide free shipping after purchasing a certain worth of products.
• Consider giving free gifts with certain items.
• Give out discount codes for repeated purchases.
• Retarget offers who have visited your site before.
• Hold competitions where customers are rewarded with repeated spending and visits.
• Reward referrals with discounts.

Send regular emails:

Having an email list is essential for your repeat business working as a good reminder for the customers about your brand. According to a survey by Emarsys, 80% businesses depend on email for retaining their customers. You can use email marketing in these ways-

• Give your customers the option to sign up for emails, providing an incentive to do so works better.
• Send out information about new products like new season collections.
• Mail in advance about upcoming sales.
• Inform customers ahead of holidays and seasons.
• Share personal business achievements.

Motivating customers to place orders through social media:

From research by GlobalWebIndex, social media is used by 57.6% of the world’s population. The average daily usage stands at 2 hours and 27 minutes. So we can realize easily from the data that a huge number of people spend a significant portion of their time on social media. If customer queries and orders are handled through social media, it saves customers time. Thus an easier process will drive customers to your business again. You could take the following steps to motivate your customers to make orders using social media –

• Always be responsive.
• Provide prompt responses.
• Respond to public messages through private messages.
• Manage your customer expectations by setting a time when your service is available.
• Get a chatbot to provide 24/7 customer service.

Build a loyalty program:

A good customer loyalty program is important to make your customers feel special for their repeated purchases. According to Hubspot, 69% of consumers say where they can earn customer loyalty program points influences their choice of retailer. Hence make your top customers feel important and it is they who will reward you. A customer loyalty program can be created in the following ways-

• Reward points for purchases.
• Enhance the customer experience by personalizing it.
• Offer exclusive deals discounts for customers of the loyalty program .
• Partner up with related businesses to offer reciprocal deals.
• Keep the loyalty program simple and straightforward.

Take Customer feedback

If you want to show you care about your customers, ask about their feedback and opinions. Collecting customer feedback demonstrates that you value what they have to say. Besides, this can also help you get valuable data about what your customers want and what is not working. Customer feedback can be collected by these steps-

• Create a survey.
• Make a forum on your site.
• On the order confirmation page, ask for feedback.
• Make use of Facebook and Instagram stories.
• Run social media contests to get feedback.

Put emphasis on packaging:

Good packaging helps to make a good impression and create reliance in your business. Packaging can be a good marketing strategy for your new and returning customers. Since packages travel many places, it gives plenty of options for others to see and redirect to your business. You could make good packaging for your business by taking the following approaches-

• Make the packaging reusable for customers later on.
• Use customized tape to wrap the box or packet.
• Include customized notes for your customers.
• Include free samples and stickers in your package.

Provide better return options

Customers want satisfaction but they also want the ease of shopping online. If they can have a happy shopping experience your customers will stick to you. You could take a look at these steps for return options-

• Give free shipping when possible.
• Include specific timeframes in your eCommerce return policy.
• Reduce refund costs by creating an exchange-based return policy.
• Provide the option to return by both in-store return and online shipping.
• To maintain the relationship with your customers re-engage with them.

Include Upselling and cross-selling:

Upselling is the tactic to persuade customers to buy a comparable higher end-product than what they initially considered to buy. On the other hand, cross-selling encourages customers to purchase items that are related or complementary to one another. According to a 2015 SaaS survey, acquiring $1 from a new customer is 68 percent more expensive than upselling current customers. From McKinsey,cross-selling techniques result in a 20% increase in sales and a 30% increase in profits. So we can see that these two tactics are very profitable for our online business. We can achieve them by these steps-

• Offer discounts on upgrading to a similar product.
• Provide upsell for customers who have been a part of your business for a long time.
• Give extra items or gifts with the upgrade to a higher-end item.
• Offer extended warranty while upgrading.
• Give discounts on product bundles.
• Promote items that enhance the performance of a product.
• Include additional services with the purchase of a bundle.

From the above strategies, we can see that there are a number of ways to retain your online customers. Wondering where to start? You can use LazyChat. LazyChat gives your customers a very unique online shopping experience with its Webview and other amazing features. You can read how LazyChat can help you get repeat customers in this blog. You may also read How LazyChat Can Help Your Business to know more about the amazing features of LazyChat.