In this article, Statement – a specialist Shopify Plus agency – share their top five trends in customer retention for the year and give some thoughtful pointers to help you learn how to increase repeat purchase.
As ecommerce trends and technologies continue to evolve, brands have to work harder on their sales and marketing strategies to keep their customers returning.
Retaining customers, building brand advocacy and, in the long term, securing loyalty can be done through the use of many creative strategies, tools and apps.
This blog post covers some of the common customer retention trends that we’re seeing in 2019, and how you can use them to increase repeat purchase and loyalty.
A loyalty program is still one of the most common and effective ways of building loyalty and advocacy. It’s also a great way to retain your customers and ensure you’re building up a strong customer base.
Many ecommerce merchants are enhancing their loyalty programs and strategies to build more meaningful connections with customers by using emotion to create more human interactions.
Loyalty apps such as LoyaltyLion will provide your ecommerce store with a variety of powerful features that will allow you to set up schemes and strategies to help retain customers.
They also leverage the power of emotion to help brands build wholesome connections with their customers. This helps to increase the value that your existing customers have.
Rewards and referrals schemes are also quite popular and can be a good way to increase customer retention for your store. They encourage brand loyalty by helping customers to feel valued and important.
Referrals are also one of the most effective ways to build trust with your customers. Studies show that people referred by friends and family are 4x more likely to buy than other shoppers.
Furthermore, incentivised referrals are, quite obviously, more effective as users will be more likely to take part if they know it will be beneficial for them too.
Personalisation is a technique that is only improving. It’s being taken to new levels as new technology evolves. Personalisation is proven to help keep customers interested and entice them to stay engaged with the brand.
Personalisation tools can help you to deliver uniquely personal touches to help brands connect with their customers. But as technology evolves, your personalisation strategy needs to as well.
Omnichannel personalisation is becoming a go-to for most ecommerce merchants. Personalisation across all touchpoints, both online and offline, can be a truly powerful strategy that helps customers stay engaged with your brand.
More and more ecommerce brands are adopting AR and VR features to create unique experiences both online and in store. These features are all focused on user experience, and can massively improve customers relationships with brands.
AR and VR are designed to encourage customers to interact with a brand in highly creative ways. They can effectively increase engagement and give customers more of an incentive to connect with you.
Artificial intelligence is growing in popularity. Retailers are seeing that customers are more trusting of AI-powered features and are willing to interact with them as they become more common.
AI is becoming a more accessible resource for brands of all sizes, due to its ability to perfectly predict highly relevant product recommendations tailor-made for each customer.
Artificial intelligence could be a powerful way to keep customers engaged and help you to build up a strong customer base of trusting individuals. It allows you to optimise the customer experience right from the first encounter – but at an elevated level.
Customer retention is a highly important aspect that should be kept at the front of mind through the entire customer journey process. Many retailers are now shifting focus so that customer retention is something they work towards from the start, rather than thinking about it later.
New trends and advancements in the ecommerce industry mean merchants are always presented with new and powerful strategies to ensure they are retaining their customers and building up a strong customer base.
About Statement
Statement is a specialist Shopify Plus Partner agency working with ecommerce clients across the UK, with offices across Leeds, London and Wakefield. We work with leading brands and creative agencies and are dedicated to creating online stores that not only look good, but also sell more. We work with innovative brands, from household names like Slendertone, Hotel Chocolat and Mirror Home, through to emerging high growth brands like Thyme, Trtl, Lo Dough and more.
