Using Digital Marketing to Create a Retention Strategy for Growth
Many businesses tend to think of digital marketing purely as an acquisition tool, meant for generating leads and guiding them through the sales funnel until a sale is made.
But what this common view forgets is that the customer journey doesn’t end with the sale, and neither does the opportunity for your business to grow.
“Forgetting about the customer post-purchase means that you are missing out on low-cost revenue for your business. Once a few automated strategies are implemented across email and remarketing, you’re set up to let extra revenue flow in while at the same time improving customer loyalty.” – Josh Sexton, Digital Performance Director, Sprocket Digital
Sprocket Digital creates data-led retention strategies that connect with your customers post-sale, to increase the lifetime value of each customer, build trust and brand loyalty, and seize opportunities for low-cost extra sales.
Read on to find out more about how to maximise these opportunities to help grow your business.
Automated Post-Purchase Email Sequences
Once your customer has completed their purchase, they’ll need (and expect) to receive confirmation of purchase, information about delivery and returns, and options for support. The most common way for this information to be delivered is with an automated email sequence.
This is your opportunity to not only deliver important information, but also to get your customer excited about the product they’ve just ordered, and the company they’ve ordered it from. A well-designed, well-written email sequence has the potential to establish a strong relationship, and deliver a great customer experience.
Using a system like Klaviyo, an automated email sequence can be set up to send timely, hyper-personalised messages to your customers in response to particular triggers. The best thing about this type of system is that it’s easily scalable – as your business grows, no extra man-power is required to send or personalise emails, so you can focus on keeping your business running, not sending emails.
An automated sequence is also useful in acquiring reviews and testimonials on Google. Once your customer’s product has been delivered, follow up again with another email sequence to check that they’re satisfied and ask for a review.
Relationship-Nurturing E-Newsletters
With the immediate post-sale processes complete, it’s time to begin nurturing the long-term potential of this new relationship.
Email newsletters present a great opportunity to keep your customers engaged by showing off ‘new arrivals’ and ‘coming soon’ stock, sharing promo codes and upcoming sales, and offering special discounts for email subscribers.
“Email is the most important tool to use in a strong retention strategy – businesses MUST engage with past customers in a meaningful way that they find interesting, and that nurtures them into future purchases.” – Josh Sexton, Digital Performance Director, Sprocket Digital
Remarketing & Ad Personalisation
By the time a customer completes a purchase on your website, you have a series of collected data points about their interests and behaviour. This data then becomes valuable in your remarketing to help serve personalised ads that can entice these customers back for another purchase.
“Remarketing is hugely valuable, and can be split into different audience segments to provide ongoing relevant content using dynamic ads to promote offers and promotions that drive additional sales.” – Josh Sexton, Digital Performance Director, Sprocket Digital
Dynamic ads – ads that show products associated with each customer’s past visit – are at the core of remarketing and have been growing in popularity over the past few years. Now, the average click through rate for dynamic/ retargeted ads is about 0.7%, while regular display ads average around 0.07%. Website visitors who are retargeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert on a retailers website.
What a Data-Driven Retention Strategy Can Do For You
When growing your business online, the work doesn’t end when the customer clicks ‘buy’ – that’s just one stage of the journey.
“All eCommerce clients should think about how they can drive repeat purchases from their customer base.
With a proper customer retention strategy, businesses can improve their customer LTV (lifetime value) by upselling or cross-selling into associated products or services – i.e. people who buy a camera may purchase additional accessories such as cases or lenses.
Lead-generation clients can also take advantage of email retention strategies, as long as they are aware of their average repeat purchase cycle duration.” – Josh Sexton, Digital Performance Director, Sprocket Digital
The opportunities are there – so what are you waiting for?
