With increased competition for paid marketing efforts, leading brands are turning to retention marketing to scale their Shopify business and increase sales. Brands have been able to increase their profits while spending less just by tapping into their existing customer base. Historically, improving Shopify customer retention by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.
Even Shopify stated that customer retention is a crucial part of growing an eCommerce store. But, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We’ve analyzed how top brands have been able to successfully retain past customers and boost repeat purchases. Using these insights, we listed a few winning customer retention tactics to help you grow your Shopify store sales.
Customer Retention Strategies to Grow Your Shopify Store
1. Designing the customer account page to reflect the brand
Nudging your past customers to shop is also about delivering an on-site experience they would want to engage with. One of the best ways to elevate the experience on-site is by providing a customer account page that is well-designed, reflecting the brand.
The customer account page is a space specifically for your customer and making it consistent to your branding and providing unsure features like wishlisting can allow you to keep the shoppers on your site for longer and motivate them to shop again.
Flits is a Shopify app that lets you customize the appearance of your customer account page. Once installed, you can transform your customer account, adding your brand colors and setting up features like wishlist, rewards, etc to elevate the on-site experience.
2. Display personalized recommendations based on customer preferences
Another way to make your on-site experience more engaging is by displaying personalized recommendations across your Shopify store. You can show the shopper's previously viewed items, and even set up "Inspired by your Browsing History" recommendations, just like Amazon.
With such relevant recommendations on your storefront, product page, or checkout, you can get past customers to purchase as soon as they land on your Shopify store.
You can set up personalized recommendations using Wiser. The Shopify personalized recommendations app is used by leading brands like Kappa, helping them increase conversions by 17%.
3. Set up a loyalty program
80% of your company's future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers. One of the ways you can leverage this is by setting up a loyalty program that existing customers would want to continue reaping rewards through.
Companies with strong loyalty marketing programs grow revenues 2.5 times faster than their competitors. You can set started with your loyalty program with Smile.io, a Shopify loyalty app used by brands like Inkbox.
Here are a few ways to get started with a loyalty program:
- Set up reward conditions and tiers, if you want, to gamify the experience.
- Customize the pop-up showing your loyalty program. Inform shoppers about the rewards available just for joining the program.
- Add new rewards like freebies that help you differentiate your brand.
- Send special products for shoppers who order more than a specific number of times.
- Customize the email, SMS, and other automated messages being sent for every reward earned and redeemed. Add your brand personality to make it stand out.
- Use your customer support team to reach out and connect with your loyal shoppers on a more personal level.
4. Provide live chat
One of the biggest priorities for shoppers is getting instant help. Live chat has made this possible, allowing your team to connect with and assist shoppers buying on your Shopify store in real-time. 46% of customers prefer live chat compared to just 29% for email, and 16% for social media.
With live chat, shoppers can clear their doubts instantly, feel like they are a valued shopper on your website, and feel more encouraged to buy from you. They can find the right size for the product they want to buy, understand the refund process, etc before they go ahead and purchase from you. Being able to connect with a real human makes all the difference!
You can set up live chat and increase customer retention by using Tidio. The Shopify live chat app lets you set up a live chat widget on your store and even set up automated responses for common questions.
5. Allow shoppers to subscribe to products and bring in recurring revenue
If you sell products like supplements, beauty products, and food items, your shoppers would typically want to repurchase these items from time to time. Instead of making them reorder or worse, make them choose a competitor, allow them to subscribe to your
You can use Bold Subscriptions to set up a subscription widget on your Shopify product pages. You can customize its appearance, add discounts for shoppers who subscribe for a specific set of months, and entice shoppers to subscribe to your products.
Such a subscription strategy allow you to retain customers, making it convenient for them to buy your products and generating revenue with ease!
6. Set up automated emails to re-engage customers
Email, despite being an age-old marketing channel, still works! One of the best ways to use email marketing to improve your customer retention rate is by setting up automated and personalized emails that are triggered based on an action the shopper has taken.
You can set up re-engagement emails on your Shopify store, sending messages that remind shoppers about the product they need to repurchase, the rewards that are about to expire, or even letting them know about a new product. Ensure that you’ve added personalized elements like first name, personalized recommendations, etc. This will surely make shoppers eager to engage with the email.
Apps like Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign are built to help you set up powerful, trigger-based email campaigns.
7. Use customer feedback to improve your strategy
One of the best ways to deliver a great shopping experience is by understanding what you are lacking. You can collect customer feedback to understand what’s missing, what can be improved, and what your customers need.
Every complaint ignored is 26 customers lost. By not actively collecting feedback, you end up missing out on areas of improvement, losing revenue in the process.
You can solve this by setting up customer feedback surveys to be sent after a shopper places and receives an order from you. You can then use their responses to actively improve your strategy and let customers know you care about delivering a stellar experience.
Sell better and grow your Shopify store in 2021 with customer retention
Customer retention must be an essential part of your marketing strategy, helping you increase your sales without making you spend much. We hope this list of top customer retention strategies helped you understand how you can improve your existing strategy and optimize your retention activities.
Besides implementing marketing strategies to bring back past customers, your Shopify store design also plays an important role in re-engaging past customers. A poorly designed website will drive away past customers, even if they are familiar with the products you offer.
Our team of Shopify experts are well-versed in the latest design and development trends, helping you set up a Shopify store design built to convert.
Reach out to us at info@xgentech.net to set up a customized store design!
