10 Customer Retention Strategies That Keep Customers Coming Back

Image Credit: Roy Rachamim

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Moran Khoubian
Head of Partner Marketing
February 12th, 2018
We rounded up the top customer retention tactics from eCommerce industry experts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) Create peaks in the customer experience
2) Continuously test email strategies
3) Tailor your loyalty program to your business goals
4) Be where your customers are
5) Be passionate and engaged
6) Offer time-limited promotions
7) Be transparent and honest with your customers
8) Don�t over-promise
9) Create a customer community around your brand
10) Incentivize social shares
Top takeaways to improve customer retention
Returning shoppers are critical to any store�s success.

Not only does a third of the overall money spent online come from returning
customers, but they spend nearly 3 times more than one-time shoppers as well. Plus,
it�s much cheaper to bring back an existing customer than to acquire a new one.

customer retention strategies

To stay relevant and keep your best customers happy, it�s super important to
continuously optimize and update your customer retention strategies. Everything
from customer marketing with campaigns based on shopper feedback to improving your
omnichannel strategy can help you boost customer retention and increase trust and
loyalty.

Since there�s so much noise out there about customer retention strategies, we went
straight to the top agencies and tech companies in the eCommerce ecosystem and
asked them to share their most effective tips.

Here are the top 10 customer retention strategies, according to the industry
experts:

1) Create peaks in the customer experience

A few unique, low-cost initiatives can go a long way to delighting your customers
and building loyalty. Think of the last time you received a welcome surprise, it is
probably easier to recall than its unwelcome counterpart. Find milestones in the
customer relationship and find ways to reward customers that they won�t expect. For
example, imagine a customer orders their third pair of shoes. A week later, they
receive a pair of socks that match with a handwritten note thanking them for their
business. These type of unexpected displays of appreciation could go a long way
(especially in the social sharing world) to improve customer experience and
offsetting the cost of the item many times over.

customer retention strategies, gorilla group

Randy Kohl, Director of Content and Digital Strategy at Gorilla Group.

2) Continuously test email strategies

In addition to using the data you already have on your customers � like what they
have purchased or browsed � to tailor the content and product recommendations in
your email marketing campaigns, be sure to also constantly test incentives and
other factors to see what is most effective. For example, find out which subject
lines elicit the most opens and what cadence of email increases customer engagement
for your audience.

customer retention strategies, listrak

Heather Gruber, Digital Strategist at Listrak.

3) Tailor your loyalty program to your business goals

Loyalty is not one size fits all. The best loyalty programs incentivize the actions
that matter most to your brand. For example, f you�re looking to boost lifetime
value, you�ll want to base VIP tiers on spending behavior, like the total amount a
customer spends or the number of times they purchase. But if you want to
incentivize brand engagement, you should focus on actions like social shares,
writing reviews, or referring friends.

Josh Enzer, General Manager & Co-founder at Swell, a Yotpo Company.

4) Be where your customers are

Consumer behavior has undoubtedly evolved. It�s the consumer who now dictates to
brands where, when, and how they want to engage. Therefore, it�s incumbent upon
retailers to provide a consistent and seamless experience on all channels,
particularly when something goes wrong and customers need help. Research from
Zendesk suggests that 87% of customers think brands need to put more effort into
providing a seamless customer service experience.

customer retention strategies, zendesk

Abhiroop Basu, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Zendesk.

5) Be passionate and engaged

Truly care about your clients! For us, as an agency, that doesn�t mean smiling at
your meetings and sending them little gifts (though you should do that too!), but
actually doing your due diligence to constantly learn about new technologies or
options that might benefit them. Be responsive to their needs and proactive in
bringing ideas to the table � gathering and engaging with your customer feedback is
the key to customer retention for any business.

customer retention strategies, born group

Paula Gadsby, Senior Account Director at Born Group.

6) Offer time-limited promotions

Top eCommerce brands often present banners highlighting a time-limited promotion �
visitors must complete the purchase within a preset amount of time, determined by
the audience segment they belong to. In addition, you can automatically add the
promotional gift card to the visitor�s cart and highlight the promotion during the
checkout process.

The benefit is twofold: the time-sensitive promotion boosts conversion rate and the
gift card brings customers back to the website to make another purchase.

customer retention strategies, dynamic yield

Mike Mallazzo, Senior Manager of Brand, Content and Communications and Dynamic
Yield.

7) Be transparent and honest with your customers

As an agency, we don�t hold anything back from our clients and work hard to
establish a relationship built on transparency. Unlike some agencies, we work out
of our client�s ad accounts so they�re always able to look into the work being done
and will always own the data. We also find it important to have healthy,
unambiguous conversations about ideas and strategies brought to the table. For
eCommerce brands this translates to being open and upfront about everything from
payment and return policies to any causes you support through your sales.

customer retention strategies, hawke media

Kate Aurell ?, VP of Operations? at Hawke Media.

8) Don�t over-promise
Align expectations with your customers regularly. Keep in mind that they only know
what you tell them. Over-promising and under-delivering is an easy way to lose
credibility. Improving customer trust goes a long way towards getting shoppers to
love your brand � so keep everything from product descriptions to promotional
offers as accurate as possible.

customer retention strategies, searchspring

David Ogborn, Head of Customer Success at SearchSpring.

9) Create a customer community around your brand

People don�t actually connect with your brand, they connect with the other people
that connect to your brand. Give those people a voice on your website to remind
your guests they aren�t buying a �product� they are buying their way into a
community of like minded people, or people they want to be more like.

customer retention strategies, BVAccel

Mariel Bacci, Director of Account Strategy at BVAccel.

10) Incentivize social shares

Clients are often high-potential returning buyers who just need a sense of urgency,
or a point of connection to your brand to come back for another round. Social
sharing competitions that feature customer photos and offer great prizes are the
perfect way to establish that connection in a time-sensitive way. But not all
incentives are equal. Some serve as pure retention tools, while others can entice
brand ambassadors to do some word-of-mouth marketing. The latter, which saves on
marketing expense down the road, allows you to justify a more significant reward
for your most loyal customers when they share your brand and products on social.
This increases customer engagement, while bringing you high quality traffic that
you would work hard to reach otherwise.

customer retention strategies

Itai Bengal, Enterprise Client Success Manager at Yotpo.

Top takeaways to improve customer retention

In many ways, improving retention and increasing sales comes down to creating and
maintaining a bulletproof customer experience that focuses on customer communities
and the social proof shared within them. Here�s a quick recap of the top 10
customer retention strategies:

Create peaks in customer experience

Continually test email strategies
Create a VIP program for your customers
Be where your customers are
Be passionate and engaged
Offer time-limited promotions
Be transparent and honest with your customers
Don�t over-promise
Create a customer community around your brand
Incentivize social shares

https://www.yotpo.com/blog/10-ways-to-improve-customer-retention/