According to Tarp Worldwide, “it’s five times cheaper to keep clients than to get new ones.” So Emarsys conducted research to find ways brands can keep their customers. After more than 2,000 consumers were surveyed about their attitudes and preferences to online shopping, the findings revealed three things marketers can do to transform customers into loyal shoppers.
1. Make personalisation feel authentic
Has anyone got your name wrong at a party over and over again? Or worse, told you the same story a million times? How special did you feel? Not very, we imagine! In fact, you probably spent the rest of your time trying to avoid that very same person. Why? Because they didn’t take the time to get to know you.
In the same way, customers expect brands to take the time to get to know them. 59 per cent say they feel irritated when they receive irrelevant marketing communications. 37 per cent say they’ll ignore future communications from those same ecommerce sites. But marketers don’t have to know all their clients personally to build loyal relationships. Marketing technology can do that for them.
Customer insight technology reveals how often customers buy from a specific site, or what they’ve bought. This information helps marketers automate relevant messaging to their clients. Meanwhile predictive technology advertises other items they may like to buy in the future.
2. Give your best clients your best treatment
Once a customer has chosen their two favourite brands, it’s important to keep them coming back for more, as 64 per cent of them bought from only two brands in the last three months. Our research shows 42 per cent of consumers find that special treatment entices them back to buy another item. According to Adobe, converting just one per cent of shoppers to returning buyers could generate as much as $39 million in extra revenue. Extra revenue is relative to the size of the revenue in the first place, but a one per cent conversion has such an impact, and brands have the chance to convert 42 per cent of shoppers into returning purchasers. What are they waiting for?
There’s nothing better than being treated like a VIP. Whether it’s skipping the queue at an event or getting first pick of the summer sale. A brand can experiment with what works for its customer base, whether it’s a discount code or a free delivery voucher. Whatever the offer, consumer insight technology will help identify who the “VIPs” are. Marketing automation tech will help brands A/B test different ways to keep your clients’ buying.
3. Be there for customers, on every device and channel
Customers are not static – they use different devices and many channels at all times of the day to access their favourite brands’ sites. So marketers need to know who their customers are, and on which devices they are accessing a brand’s site. Then there is a seamless customer experience throughout.
A multichannel marketing strategy doesn’t mean marketers should send the same message, to all customers, across every marketing channel at the same time. Each channel has a different purpose for each client. For example, an email can promote products and discount codes. Social ads might further promote items if the email wasn’t opened. SMS could be for informing customers of their order status.
Customer communication should be triggered by customer behaviour, not sent in “batch” mode. Marketing automation technology can help marketers set up programmes to automatically contact individual customers, based on their interactions so the right communications can be distributed to the right customer’s device at the right time, day or night.
All statistics can be found in the Emarsys whitepaper: From Personalisation to Customer Loyalty.
