All customers are important, but returning customers are beneficial to your business in many ways. A returning customer is a happy customer, so what’s to say that if they buy a second time from you, they won't also buy a third or fourth time? Not to forget, if they are that happy with your product, they may have also told friends or colleagues about your brand.
Besides their ambassador function, increasing customer retention by just 5% boosts profits by 25% to 95%.
Having a customer return is one of the best compliments a business can receive. Yet, it is easily achievable with these 4 easy tips.
1. Stay connected
Make it as easy as possible for your customer to stay in contact with you. There are so many opportunities nowadays - allowing them to subscribe to a newsletter, putting business cards in the parcel or being present at markets and fairs. Alternatively, you can use the most straightforward opportunity of them all by just adding your social media links to your tracking page.
Every time they open their tracking page, they get the opportunity to connect with you on all possible social media platforms. No matter if it is your website or your Instagram account. The chance of people actively searching for your social media account, hoping that they find the right one is small. The possibility of people checking their tracking page and clicking a link, on the other hand, is way higher.
Instead of chasing the customer for them to come back, let them come to you when its convenient for them by making it as simple as possible. If you have your customers returning to you then they are more open for marketing advertisements as they have chosen to re-engage with your brand. Returning customers spend an average of 33% more on every order. Besides, letting them come to you also reduces your marketing costs, leaving you with better sales margins.
With Siid, you can add all your social media accounts to your branded tracking page and give your customers this exact chance.
2. Keep customers informed
Did something go wrong? A sold item is out of stock? Not telling your customer about it would be the worst thing you can do. 70% of consumers may not shop with a retailer again after receiving a late shipment. Worse still, 86% of consumers say their expectation for on-time delivery increases in peak seasons, such as the summer holiday season. Holiday season! The worst season when it comes to delivery errors.
Errors can happen. You know that as well as your customers. All you need to do is to keep them informed. Let them know when a delivery is going to be late, or other problems occur. With Siid, informing your customers has never been so easy. Besides the branded tracking page, that updates your customer every step of the way, Siid gives you another opportunity to communicate with your customer and keep them informed.
Just click "message buyer" on your order overview page. A window pops up automatically, that allows you to email your customer with the latest piece of information regarding their order.
Giving them a quick message keeps your customer happy and gives you more time.
3. Keep your brand visible
The more visible your brand is, the more likely it is for your customers to recognise it outside of their purchase. No matter if its at the beginning of your customer's journey or the end. Your brand is who you are. Your brand is your businesses identity. Keep it visible as well as consistent. With your branded tracking page, your logo, brand colours, and social channels are customisable to ensure that your customers are more than aware of your brand identity.
If you add your social media links to your branded tracking page, the picture you show of your brand must reflect in the picture you paint on your socials. Having two different tones of voice might turn people off, and they won't follow your socials, won't get the latest updates, and won't shop with you again. Besides, the more consistent your brand is, the more recognisable it gets, the more customers will remember it, and the more customers will buy again.
This visibility and consistency have even greater importance for B2B marketing. Trust is the number one driver in B2B sales. The company who buys from the business needs to make sure that the product arrives on time when they order it, so that they can stock the goods in time. Some businesses even run a just in time stock system, whereby they order stock upon receiving the order so that they don’t have their cash tied up in stock. It becomes even more important in these instances that they can track orders.
Businesses track their sales with other businesses by a measurement of lifetime value. This determines how profitable a business is after working with them over a long period of time. Delivery or communication issues slash the LTV of a business, as they lose all future sales should they have a bad experience.
Having this in mind, it isn't surprising that in B2B marketing, real-time tracking is fundamental. So having a branded real-time tracking page with a recognisable logo and a consistent brand message, is one of the most significant factors that can effect customer retention levels. No matter if its a B2B or B2C sale.
4. Having a seamless post-purchase experience for the customer
Besides visibility and staying connected, the whole post-purchase experience plays a significant role in the retention of customers. In the customer journey, this is the last place that your customer interacts with your business before they eventually decide whether to buy from you again. It is similar to watching a movie. Even though the film might be boring, you might still recommend it to your friends if the end is capturing and exciting.
Post-purchase experience isn’t really thought of from the customers perspective. For them, it is the waiting time from clicking "buy" to the item being at their front door.
For business owners, on the other hand, post-purchase is a keyword in relation to whole order management process of picking an order, packing an order, finding the right carrierand providing your customers with delivery updates. Making all these steps work together seamlessly seems like a crazy and difficult job, but with Siid, it doesn't have to be.
With features like integrated management, batch label printing and branded tracking, your order and shipping management process becomes basically automated. Save time by having all your eCommerce platforms in one place and improve customer retention by providing your customers with a branded tracking page as well as the best post-purchase experience.