eCommerce customer retention is crucial for your business, and this is why it’s vital to understand the B2B customer journey. The best way to retain customers is by ensuring they have a positive experience with your brand and products. When you provide excellent service and offer a high-quality product, customers will keep returning for more—even if you’re not the cheapest option on the market. In this guide, we’ll cover how to increase your customer retention rate by implementing best practices into your eCommerce business model.
Know your customer’s path to purchase.
- Understand how customers find you. The first step in understanding your customer is to identify their channels to engage with your brand and products.
- Learn how they buy from you. It’s essential to understand the path each customer takes from discovery to purchase and any additional steps necessary to complete their purchase (e.g., adding items or services or signing up for a free trial).
- Study how customers use your product after purchasing it–and why they continue using it over time. This information can help inform future marketing strategies that improve retention rates while boosting sales conversions at each buyer journey stage.
Stay one step ahead at all times.
The best way to keep customers is to stay one step ahead at all times. This means knowing what your customers think and feel, using data to predict customer behavior, being proactive instead of reactive, and using predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs.
Don’t just send a message; manage the conversation.
Using automation to manage the conversation is a great way to engage customers and make them feel like they’re being heard. Automation can help you manage repetitive tasks, such as sending out holiday cards or birthday reminders, but it’s also useful for more complex interactions that require more than just a simple email template.
If you’re not sure where to start with automating your customer communications, consider these three tips:
- Use automation to automate repetitive tasks (e.g., sending out an order confirmation email) by creating rules based on specific criteria (e.g., “When an order has been placed”).
- Use automation so that individualized messages are automatically sent based on each customer’s preferences–and then monitor these messages’ performance so that, if necessary, adjustments can be made in real-time. This could include anything from product recommendations based on past purchases or site visits versus simply asking about their experience with other brands in our industry; either way, it will help us better understand how we might improve our service offerings in the future.
How to calculate customer churn
Customer churn is the rate at which customers leave your business. It can be calculated by dividing the number of customers who cancel their subscription or contract by your total number of customers.
The best way to calculate customer retention is to define what you consider a “customer.” In this case, let’s say that anyone who has made more than two purchases in the past six months is regarded as a customer for our purposes (and let’s also assume that we only care about those who bought something).
The next step involves calculating how many customers have left during this period:
- Calculate your monthly revenue per user (MRPU) by dividing your total income by active users in any given month.
- Calculate MRRPU over three consecutive months and use it as an estimate for lifetime value (LTV), defined as average MRRPU multiplied by average tenure–or how long users stay with you before canceling their subscriptions or contracts altogether–in months.
- Finally, divide this number into 1 – churn rate = cost of acquisition.
Use automation to be more efficient.
Automation is the best way to streamline your business. It can automate repetitive tasks and make your marketing, sales, and customer service processes more efficient. Some examples include:
- Automating email marketing campaigns using drip campaigns or autoresponders so that you don’t have to manually send out each email yourself.
- Automating sales emails by using an email marketing platform such as HubSpot or Pardot (or even MailChimp) which allows you to create templates for common messages like “thank you” or “welcome aboard” automatically when someone signs up for one of your products or services.
- Sending customer service emails based on how customers engage with different pages on your site–i.e., if they sign up but don’t complete their purchase within a certain amount of time after signing up, then send them an email asking if there’s anything else we can do to help them achieve their transaction.
Be consistent in your messaging and tone.
Your messaging and tone should be consistent across all channels. A consistent tone builds trust and confidence, which enhances customer loyalty. Consistent messaging also helps build a brand image that customers can rely on to understand what they can expect from you as a company.
Implement reward programs
Reward programs are a great way to thank your customers for their loyalty, and they can be used to incentivize them to buy more. Research shows that customers who receive rewards are more likely to spend more money than those who don’t.
Reward programs can also motivate buyers who want to make something manageable occasionally. By offering a free product or service (or even just an exclusive discount), you’ll entice these types of buyers into becoming regular shoppers at your store–which means more revenue.
Educate customers with content to build trust and strengthen relationships.
- Content marketing is one of the best ways to educate customers and build trust. Use content to help your customers decide, understand the product, or even better–both.
- If you’re selling a B2B product or service, you must provide as much information about what you’re offering as possible. This will help potential clients understand why they should choose your company over others in the market.
Understand what sells and what doesn’t at each funnel stage.
Understanding what sells and what doesn’t at each sales funnel stage is essential to improving your customer retention strategy. You can use this information to create targeted offers that drive more conversions while reducing your overall cost-per-acquisition (CPA).
This process starts with understanding customer needs. What are they looking for? How do they shop? Are specific products or services most likely to convert into sales? Once you know these things, it’s time to look at how customers behave when they come into contact with your brand and determine which actions lead them closer to becoming loyal repeat purchasers.
Finally, take a step back from all this data and look at how it fits together:
- What does the buying process look like from end to end?
- Who makes up each phase of this journey (i.e., prospects vs. customers)?
- Where does each stage fit within the more giant conversion funnel (i.e., awareness/interest; consideration; evaluation; purchase)?
Keeping up with customer behavior and needs is essential to successful CRM campaigns.
Customer retention is a vital part of any CRM strategy and can be used to increase revenue and profit. For B2B eCommerce businesses, it’s imperative because it takes time to build relationships with your customers–and those relationships are often built on trust and familiarity with your brand.
In addition, customer retention strategies allow you to stay in touch with these people over time so that when they’re ready to buy again (or recommend you), they’re more likely to choose your business over others.
It’s also worth noting that customer retention doesn’t necessarily mean keeping old customers forever; instead, it refers to ensuring that each new lead turns into a loyal customer who will continue doing business with you for years.
Final thought
As you can see, there are many ways to keep customers engaged with your brand. The critical thing is to be consistent in your messaging and tone. Your customers will appreciate that you’re always thinking about them and their needs, which will help build trust and strengthen relationships over time.
