Imagine an ideal scenario.
Your e-commerce has no trouble attracting customers, whether because of a relevant brand, a highly appealing product, countless blogs talking about your product, or those influencers hired to talk about you. In addition to all these people speaking positively about your brand, your ads complement the positioning and help give that final push toward your online store: that is ACQUISITION.
When your customer makes their first purchase, they are delighted. The product is amazing, the order arrived super fast, and the customer service is very cordial. You “won” the customer, and from now on, every time they think of a product like yours, they will buy from you. You send personalized messages to those who have already purchased and maintain a close relationship with your customers—it is a loyal two-way relationship: that is RETENTION.
Now forget the ideal scenario. You are not in it, but rather pursuing it, so you need to know where to invest your initial effort. But of course, depending on the type of product, you will need to choose to prioritize one over the other. The product life cycle, purchase frequency, and even the product value must be taken into consideration.
For products with a low purchase frequency, you should focus on acquisition. Those with a high added value should be given special attention to branding, after all, this will be your acquisition and relationship strategy. For products with a high purchase frequency and low or medium added value, it is recommended to focus on retention.
In short, it all depends.
Do I start with acquisition or retention?
If you open an e-commerce today and focus on retention, who will you be retaining?
It is important to generate enough demand for retention efforts to be worthwhile, and for this, I suggest starting with acquisition strategies. Many retention tactics can be used in the future, leveraging data from customers who have already purchased or pre-populated remarketing lists. The great advantage of revenue through retention is that the acquisition cost was already spent in the past, and from now on, this customer will only increase the LTV (lifetime value) and not the CPA (cost per acquisition).
In the beginning, look for simpler acquisition alternatives such as partnerships with blogs, portals, and influencers, but never forget to install the Facebook conversion pixel and the Google remarketing tag to start populating the lists. It is also worth testing some audiences in Facebook ads and gradually learning from the tests.
As your store gains momentum, acquiring customers and delivering orders, you need to start some retention activities. This way, you can ensure the sustainable growth of the store that we will see in the next topic. In an ideal world, we would start with retention strategies right at the beginning, but in the real world, things are very different.
Retention is seen over time
Don't think that sending a newsletter once a week will increase your retention by 10%. If only!
Email is one of the best tools for retention. Send various types of content, preferably personalized, product recommendations, blog posts, and brand news. With more advanced tools, you can automate all these emails and put them on autopilot. The idea is to send messages, so you can diversify by using other features such as push notifications in your app, SMS messages, and even notifications via Facebook.
A points program or loyalty program is a powerful tool. In it, you will always offer the customer a discount or a pending offer. Each purchase or recommendation generates small discounts that will be available to the customer and will certainly be taken into consideration when buying a product from the same category: Do I buy from store Y or from store X where I already have an account, 5% off, and a loyalty program?
Customer service, in real time, is a great retention tool. Especially if your system is well integrated with the e-commerce and you can identify among internet users who is and who is not a customer. Open the chat automatically for those who have already purchased from you and take advantage of this fact to sell even more.
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