Customer Retention

Building strong relationships with your customers is key to long-term success. Here are some simple yet effective methods for customer retention:

• Reward repeat purchases with points or discounts through loyalty programs.
• Listen to customers and make improvements by implementing a feedback loop.
• Stay in touch through fb, ig, tiktok channels to maintain consistent engagement.
• Use email and SMS campaigns to send relevant messages and promotions directly to customers
• Push notifications

‍

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most underrated sales channels.

It's probably the most profitable customer retention method one can use.

Here, we will discuss four main aspects of email marketing.

• Gathering email subscribers
• Building well-segmented email lists
• Sending email campaigns
• Creating Automations (Flows)

1. Gathering email and SMS subscribers can be done in a few different ways.

‍
The most effective methods include using pop-up forms, dedicated email newsletter sign-up forms, and checkout email forms.

Pop-ups should be designed to minimize visitors frustration and can be triggered by exit intent, a timed delay, or a percentage of the page scrolled.

Offering a discount on the first purchase for joining the email list is advisable.
‍
If you also want to collect phone numbers for SMS marketing, consider adding a second step to the pop-up (with the email input as the first step).

If your email open and click-through rates are low, consider automating the sending of a promo code to their email after they submit the pop-up form to improve deliverability.

If your deliverability is good, you can provide the promo code immediately after the pop-up to move them closer to conversion.

‍
2. Segmented email lists

‍

Segmented lists: Unlike traditional subscriber lists, segments are groupings of contacts defined by a set of conditions. Lists are static, meaning they grow as people subscribe or are manually added.

The crucial segmented lists for exclusion and inclusion are:

Segmented lists you should include for sending in campaigns are:

• IN | Active with no purchase (Opened Email or Checkout Started or Added to cart or Viewed product or Active on website)
• IN | All buyers
• IN | Engaged last 60 days (Opened email at least once in the last 60 days or Clicked email at least once in the last 60 days)
• IN | First time buyers
• IN | VIP's (Placed order at least X times over all time or Ordered X amount of revenue over all time)
• IN | Repeat buyers

Segmented lists you should exclude for sending in campaigns are:

• EX | Bounced (became non valid email adresses,
• EX | Refunds
• EX | Unengaged (Recieved at least 10 emails over all time but opened zero times over all time)
• EX | Unsubscribed
• EX | Sunset (Haven't done any engagement in the past year)

You should only send emails to people who have explicitly agreed to receive them. Else, your email domain can get blacklisted.

3. Email Campaigns

There are a lot of tips for email campaigns but here we will write a couple of them that could be helpful

Prepare a campaign calendar at the start of each month.

Send campaigns 3 times per week

Test long vs short subject lines (this may have an impact on your opens).

Utilize "smart send time" to determine when recipients are most likely to open your emails.

Ensure that images in your email do not exceed 500kb in size (with 1mb being the maximum limit on occasion, though it's best to avoid this whenever possible, and 1mb serves as your ceiling).

If experiencing low open rates, consider sending emails asking recipients to reply or forward the email to a friend.

Resend your best-performing non-sale campaigns with a fresh look after some time has passed.

Implement "Plain text, email from founder" campaigns for a personal touch.

Always check deliverability of your mails, spam and unsubscribe rates as well.

‍

4. Automations (Flows)

Klaviyo has the most advanced automations in the game right now.

In Klaviyo, an automated flow is a feature that triggers a specific action or experience in response to a particular behavior, milestone, event, or subscriber data.

If you've used other marketing tools, you might also know automated flows as “automations” or “drip campaigns.”

There are 5 main flows e-com business should have

• Welcome flow (Series of welcoming emails, which can be customized based on user actions on the website)
• Abandoned cart flow (Series of emails offering better deals to customers who have abandoned their shopping carts)
• Browse Abandonment flow (Series of emails to users who have visited product pages but haven't made a purchase)
• Post-purchase flow (Series of emails sent after a customer makes a purchase, offering them better offers to increase their average order value (AOV)
• Win-back flow (Series of emails to customers who haven't placed an order in a while, with the aim of re-engaging them and encouraging them to make a purchase)

Push Notifications

Push notifications can be an effective tool for engaging customers, but it's important not to overspam your recipients.

There are several apps available on Shopify for managing push notifications.

These notifications are powerful because they allow you to acquire subscribers without them needing to provide their email address.

Many push notification software also offer flows that track customer behavior, such as browsing, adding items to cart, and abandoning checkouts.

These flows track users by their IP address rather than their email address, making it easier to send targeted campaigns.

Sending too many notifications can annoy recipients and create a bad experience, so be cautious when sending those.

‍

This is just a small peek into the wide world of Email and Customer retention. If you need further assistance for this field , feel free to reach out to us by clicking this link.