Top 5 Customer Retention Strategies for Online Businesses

There are many ways to improve your customer retention strategies. And, there are probably just as many ways to lose customers. If you want to avoid the latter and keep your online business thriving, you need to keep current customers in mind, as they are your bread and butter. If you keep them happy you can keep them loyally coming back for repeated purchases and telling their friends and family all about their positive experiences. When you create negative customer experiences, on the other hand, you not only lose that one customer, but when that one customer shares their bad experience with others, you lose potential advertising and the new customers that come from a good reference.

Remember: when people have bad experiences they now have the whole Internet to air their grievances to. The good news is that keeping your customers happy doesn’t have to take a whole lot of time and effort. You can’t please everyone all the time, but with these five simple strategies you can sure come close:

Personalize Your Packaging
It’s important to create a seamless customer experience where your branding message is always at the forefront. Limiting logo exposure to your website and online presence makes it easy for people to forget who sold them the items they receive when they open the box that arrives in the mail. So don’t miss this opportunity to provide personalized packaging and messaging to remind customers who you are!
Don’t Annoy People with Constant Emails
While email marketing is still a valid tool for staying in touch with old customers and reaching out to new customers, there are limits to its effectiveness. Rather than sending daily emails, save email efforts for truly important announcements and information. You can add things like in-app messaging to continue reaching out to customers while you begin reducing your email frequency.
Stay in Touch with Preferred Customers
If you’ve been around a while, you probably have a select group of customers that are most loyal, purchase most frequently and spend more than others. These special customers should know they are appreciated if you want to keep them. Consider sending cards, or treating them to a gift when they reach spending milestones. They may even share the experience with others.
Always Keep Old Customers in Mind
While it makes sense for new customers to walk through each step of the ordering process and see everything you have to offer when first visiting your website, returning customers probably don’t need to go through page after page and deal with all the upsells. It should be easy for returning customers to find their past orders and build upon their previous experiences every time they return; otherwise they may stop returning.
Be Proactive When Solving Problems
There are all sorts of problems that can arise when running an online business, ranging from issues on your site to shipping delays or damaged products. One of the best possible customer retention strategies is to solve problems before customers know they’ve happened, and be proactive in solving the problem when something does go wrong.