customer retention | Small Biz 101

Lauren Hill provides 5 fantastic ways to reward customers in an article published for volusion.com (@volusion). But if you’re looking for a more creative and inspired approach, consider the use of social media in 2 of her tips: social shout outs and video.

Social Shout Outs: The fact of the matter is, your customers most likely have a social networking presence (from Twitter to Facebook and Pinterest). Yet more importantly, everyone likes a little personalized attention! Use your social networking channels to send a personalized shout out to a specific customer. Thank them for their loyalty. Mention a suggestion they had. Or just retell their experience with your online store. As an example, check out the tweet from @CocaCola above!

Video It: If you’re looking to really be creative, though, online video has been shown to be incredibly effective. Film yourself or an employee thanking customers right off the bat. Video allows customers to see a face when they think about your company; and that can make all the difference when customers look to your online store amidst your competition.

To read more about how to reward online customers, visit Lauren Hill’s blog post, Thank You for Being a Friend: 5 Fantastic Ways to Reward Customers.

-Christopher Lin, lexity.com

Stressing about fostering customer loyalty? Robyn Keegan for @groovecommerce has a few helpful tips. The beauty of a loyal customer comes with their potential to save any business money. Marketing efforts to acquire new customers can cost nearly five times more than efforts aimed at retaining existing customers.

Something as simple as “requiring a login” can directly affect customer loyalty, both positively and negatively. Lengthy registration processes deter customers and “creating an account” can oftentimes be seen as too time intensive. Shorten the registration process and offer the option to save their account information for future logins.

You might also consider creating a rewards program for returning customers. Look to programs like Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards, where for each dollar spent, points are gained. Your points program should be enticing enough (both in points and actual rewards) to spark loyalty from your customers.

But, these aren’t the only ways you can improve customer retention. Robyn Keegan provides an extensive list of customer retention tips (including the two above) for online stores in her article, Customer Retention Best Practices for Ecommerce.

-Christopher Lin, lexity.com

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Customer Retention Best Practices for Ecommerce