Using software to cultivate customer loyalty in e-commerce
44% of companies focus on acquiring new customers – and spend five times more per customer than 18% of companies that focus on customer loyalty (Invesp, 2015). It has become more difficult to design a winning marketing program for existing customers.
Simple bonus and discount programs are hardly able to delight customers sustainably today (W&V, 2018). The key is to personalize loyalty programs and integrate them into the customer journey. This is one of the capabilities of BSI CX that can greatly support your online marketing.
Key points
- Successful loyalty programs create customer delight by using personalized incentives.
- The linking of retention management with data management and the segmentation in the CRM make your customer journey management with BSI CX highly personalized.
- Send your customers incentives regularly and for specific occasions based on triggers.
- Retain even dissatisfied and undecided customers successfully with re-engagement campaigns and targeted incentives.
Whitepaper: Retention marketing
Investing in customer loyalty programs has a higher pay-off than acquiring new customers. Find out how to cultivate customer loyalty in the long term with personalized loyalty programs.
The challenge of marketing to existing customers
Successfully marketing to existing customers in retail and e-commerce is particularly challenging today. The customer experience has a much greater impact on customers than financial incentives do (Bond Loyalty Report, 2019).
Delight is the prerequisite you need for customer loyalty. To delight your customers, you will want to pleasantly surprise them and do more than they expect.
What is particularly important in this context is that the incentives are relevant to the customer. Successful programs provide personalized incentives that are tailored to the customer’s taste and current needs.
Did you know? Personalization is the most important driver of loyalty with an impact of 19.9%. Behind integrity, it is the second most important factor that drives customers to recommend a brand to others (KPMG, 2020).
Personalizing your customer journey with BSI CX
Your brand will accompany every customer individually and personally by applying high-level personalization to the marketing to existing customers. To achieve this, BSI CX links customer journey management with data management and the segmentation functions in the CRM.
When you implement your omnichannel strategy, you will have an overview of all touchpoints at all times and, from the aggregate data, get a 360° view of your customers. Here is how it works:
Step 1 – Collect data
For personalization to be effective, you have to know your customer: What type of person is she? What is important to her? Which questions, topics and interests, aspirations and needs define her? If you have a sufficient amount of data, you can even determine her current emotional perspective.
Example:
You own an online store for high-end kitchen accessories. While all your customers love to cook, they are very different from one another outside of the world of cooking.
Tatjana is a professional musician and has two children. Sustainable consumption is very important to her, and she likes board games, creative pursuits and sophisticated humor.
Karl, who is single, is a ski instructor. Whenever he can, he travels to Barbados to party and go diving. He has a secret love for pop songs and muscle cars.
Step 2 – Deliver incentives
You will want to dazzle your favorite customers and cultivate their loyalty using sound ideas. You can do so regularly by sending them monthly newsletters or push notifications – and for specific triggers, behavior patterns, milestones and special occasions, you can accomplish this in the customer journey:
- Product search
- Abandoned cart
- Repeat purchase
- Individually defined triggers, such as a customer’s extended time on one product page without a subsequent product purchase
You can even reward activities and interactions, such as posts in forums and comments on social media, with benefits.
Example:
Karl’s birthday is coming up. You have a partner send him a special surprise five days before so he can get ready for his birthday party: A 20% discount on drinks at the Beach Club for him and his friends. In keeping with his preferences, the information is sent to him via WhatsApp.
Tatjana has purchased a lot from your store in a short time. Your highest priority is to retain your new top customer. Being a musician, Tatjana is an avid fan of an artist who will soon be in her area to give a concert. You pleasantly surprise your customer with a coupon code for a discount on the purchase of a ticket to the concert. Tatjana receives the information in a personal email message.
Step 3 – Retain customers and prevent them from leaving
Every customer journey has peaks and valleys. Your loyalty program will ensure there won’t be a goodbye following a valley but a new and even higher peak instead.
Based on the decreasing activity and other indicators, BSI CX can recognize the risk for churn, allowing you to respond in a targeted manner to revitalize the customer journey. At the same time, you can take a complaint in a moment of crisis and transform it into a peak.
You can turn undecided and dissatisfied customers into loyal followers in many cases by providing excellent service and personalized, pleasantly surprising offers. Your software then delivers customer loyalty actions automatically.
Example:
Tatjana’s friends recommended a store in the next town to her, and she now shops there more frequently. Your team notes the decrease in activity, and gamification functions are a perfect tool to reactivate it. Tatjana receives a message indicating that she will meet a challenge with her next purchase, thereby releasing fun rewards for her children.
Karl ordered a professional grater, but when it arrives, he notices that the packaging is damaged. He wanted to make it a gift, but that is not possible now with the damage. Karl already had a bad day before, and now your service employee gets a taste of it, too. Although the responsibility for the damage lies with the shipping service provider, your employee listens to Karl carefully, apologizes to him and comes up with a solution: to upgrade Karl to a premium service level, for which he would normally have to make purchases of €900. The upgrade includes free instant shipping to the recipient for whom Karl intended the grater as a gift: gift-wrapping and a personal note included.
The conclusion
BSI CX provides comprehensive functions to design winning loyalty programs – that is the way to increase your customers’ loyalty with powerful software. You can automatically deliver personalized incentives regularly and based on triggers through the seamless link to the CRM. You will enrich the customer journey with highlights, delighting your customers and turning them into valuable, permanent and loyal brand ambassadors.
Would you like to learn more about how to cultivate your customers’ loyalty? We would be happy to share our extensive knowledge of effective loyalty programs and many years of industry experience. We look forward to hearing from you.
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