Post-purchase retention is a key way to increase further customer conversions and brand loyalty, but is often overlooked.
Once a shopper has become a customer, what does a brand do? Quite often, not very much. They may make sure the customer is on an email list for sporadic updates or notifications of sales, but other than that, often don’t reach out to their customer once the sale has been made.
This is a mistake.
Post-purchase retention is a key aspect of the shopper journey and should be just as important to the brand as making a sale in the first place. It’s been seen that a 5% boost in customer retention increases profits by 25% to 95%. In fact, businesses miss out US$1.6 trillion from losing customers to a competitor. It’s also known that acquiring customers costs five times as much as retaining existing ones.
So, when a brand has gained a customer, post-purchase retention measures are essential.
For brands seeking to increase their post-purchase retention measures, here are five ways:
5 ways for cross-border ecommerce brands to increase post-purchase retention
- Maintain clear communication post purchase
- Make shopper tracking clear and portals accessible via phone
- Equip customer service with value adds
- Reward the customer
- Create wow moments for super loyal shoppers
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Maintain clear communication post purchase
Clear communications are essential throughout the purchasing journey – from website, to email communications, and FAQs or returns policies. Maintaining a high level of communication after the sale, whether by text or email alerts for tracking, or offering a variety of ways to the customer to contact support (such as email, Messenger or text), will increase satisfaction by making it easy to reach out and have any issues addressed by the company in a reasonable timeframe.
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Make shopper tracking clear and portals accessible via phone
Tracking a parcel should be easy for the customer, and utilise their preferred method of communication. For some that will be email, and for some that will be text. Any processing or delivery delays should be relayed to the customer as soon as possible with an update to the estimated delivery time.
According to SendCloud, 8 out of 10 shoppers say they ‘regularly open and read their shipping status notifications’ showing the importance of tracking notifications. These can be used not only to alert customers to the status of their delivery but also as a way to engage customers, and potentially make them aware of additional offers.
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Equip customer service with value-adds
By equipping customer service representatives with discretionary powers to address problems without having to refer it to a manager before a certain point, and allowing them to permit immediate refunds or discounts, will expedite and possibly mitigate some complaints or issues the customer has and give them confidence that their concern will be addressed as soon as possible rather than being pushed up the chain interminably. This will increase shopper confidence in the brand as often it’s not the customer having an issue with a product that can be the problem, but how the business responds to it.
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Reward the customer
91% of consumers are more likely to shop from brands who recognize, remember, and provide them with relevant offers and recommendations. Brands that send personalised recommendations to shoppers, recognising their likes and dislikes and making them feel like a valued customer who’s appreciated by the brand will find that their customers become repeat shoppers.
By knowing their likes and tailoring discounts or other incentives – even just alerting them if their favourite brand or product goes on sale, for example – the customer knows the brand cares about them and is more inclined to purchase again.
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Create wow moments for super loyal customers
For customers who are exceptionally loyal or reach a certain milestone such as ten purchases, it is worth creating ‘wow’ moments to show them their loyalty is appreciated. Wow moments can range from meetups with influencers either physically or, as is more likely in current times, online, to in-store events (or a pandemic-safe equivalent) or exceeding their expectations – whether that’s a once-off significant discount (eg 25%k instead of 10%) or an unexpected free gift with purchase.
Conclusion
Post-purchase retention is an often-overlooked element of the customer experience, and one that cross-border ecommerce brands can easily improve in order to create an end-to-end shopper journey that has customers becoming repeat purchasers and brand advocates.
