I believe, as marketers, we spend too much time focused on new customer acquisition without a real understanding of the value of retaining our customers.
To the extent it shackles business growth. The greater value a customer is to your ecommerce business, the greater the scope for setting your customer acquisition target costs (CPAs)
I spend my days listening to how acquisition costs are rocketing, how customers are becoming harder and harder to convert. The majority of time they’re looking at unrealistic CPAs (set in years long gone) set by averaging a broad range of products at varying price points.
And there, in the background is a database of 50,000 real life customers. People who have bought and consumed. There’s a good chance that they’re very happy with what they bought and consumed.
The success of your customer acquisition strategy is determined by the scope of your customer retention strategies
There’s a likelihood that those people told a few other people about how happy they were. You know, that old favourite ‘Word of Mouth marketing’
And yet, as marketers, we just keep our eyes on the funnel. We bloat the funnel. And it costs money and time.
A lot of that time is spent running the tweaks. Adjusting Max CPCs in Google Ads. Opening up look-a-like audiences in Facebook (even if the data that feeds them is poor). Updating the homepage with new promos. And of course, updating the popups to push the discount codes.
As all this is going on, those existing customers are getting on with their own lives.
Actioning a customer retention strategy is critical. From the moment your customer clicks the buy now button you have the opportunity to solidify that relationship. You and your customer. Make it personal.
This isn’t about cross-selling and up-selling. You need to beyond the ‘others bought this, so you should too’ messaging. It’s weak. It’s even weaker when, again, the data that feeds the machine is poor.
There’s a whole bunch of data out there to support arming your brand with a distinguishable retention strategy. The opportunities are great. The costs are low. The rewards are enormously profitable. Costings shouldn’t come into the equation as there’s a likelihood you already have the tools to enable your work keeping more customers.
It’s about your time.
Making the time to consider each post-sale customer touchpoint. To frame each touchpoint to further that connection between you and your buyer.
Making the time to ensure you’re working with real, consistent data, as a marketer and as a team. Data that informs you of the real lifetime value of your customer to your business. Data that can predict the lifetime value of your customer into the future. Data that alerts you to the opportunity retention marketing presents to you and your brand.
Each week, through my newsletter (you can subscribe below) and this blog I’ll be sharing ideas on how you build, action and optimise your ecommerce customer retention strategy.
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