If you want to build a successful and profitable business, your customers are your main asset. There is extensive research that confirms that eCommerce retention is cheaper than acquisition when it comes to customers. But even though it costs 5 times more to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one, almost half of businesses still focus more on user acquisition.

The importance of Retaining Your customers

Existing customers are more responsive than prospects as they already have a relationship with your brand.

Your customers also tend to spend 31% more money than new ones.

Finally, happy customers act as brand ambassadors and help you with acquiring new clients.

These factors contribute to increasing your ROI when it comes to old vs new customers.

What is a Digital CRM?

Just like traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM), digital CRM is not just about technology. It is rather a comprehensive approach that focuses on providing a clear view of customers’ habits and preferences.

Properly done, the organization can strengthen the relationship with existing clients and build new ones.

Why Does Customer Experience Matter?

Almost 90% of companies report that customer experience, or the interaction between the client and the business, is a crucial factor for customer loyalty and retention.

There are 3 main reasons that we can outline why this is the case:
Customers tend to spend more money, which increases their CLV (customer lifetime value) if they have an experience that goes above their expectations.
Better experience naturally leads to higher retention as the customer is more likely to return for more.
Finally, the happier your customers are with their experience, the more likely they are to recommend you to their peers thus helping with new client acquisition.

Retention channels and programs

The digital channels that are most widely used for customer retention are email marketing (56%), social media marketing (37%), content marketing (32%) and referral marketing (26%).
Customer loyalty programs have also proven to be very effective for retaining and growing the customer base. Amongst those that have the highest success rates are a simple points system where users earn points every time they purchase a product or service such as air miles. Then comes the tiered approach which rewards initial loyalty then offers higher encouragement for subsequent purchases. Charging an upfront fee for additional benefits, such as Amazon Prime or budget airline ‘premium’ clubs, is also a very popular model. Even though it might sound counterintuitive to create additional barriers between you and your customers, these schemes allow you to include in your upfront fee programs the exact things that might make your customers leave in the first place, e.g. additional baggage fees or delivery charges if we take the above examples again.

Most importantly, in order to succeed in your customer marketing, you need to build an efficient bridge between your data insights and your marketing strategy. Only then you will be able to fully understand the needs and drive the behavior of your client base in the direction you require in order to maximize your revenues and be profitable.