Moving the customer life cycle online has completely changed how you must grow and continue relationships with customers. It’s also become so much more vital.
Customers have millions of other options in terms of online stores and brands to shop from and limitless information to make buying decisions. There are many more factors now that can affect the customer life cycle as well; for better or for worse. If your customer has a bad experience, it’s highly likely they’ll find an alternative but if they have a great experience, they are very likely to advocate for your brand and that can be powerful for you.
Finding new customers and building loyalty is a bigger challenge than ever. Keeping and retaining customers is up to five time cheaper than going out and trying to attract new ones. Improving and lengthening your customer life cycle is more important than ever.
Check out these 5 tips to improve the customer life cycle online:
Creating a personalized experience with targeted content.
Customers online expect personalization. They don’t want to go out of their way to find what is relevant to them. Their attention span for web pages is low. You have less than seven seconds to get someone’s attention and keep them engaged to begin the process of converting them to a customer. You need to make sure that there is something there for them right away. A few ways to do this are:
- Creating targeted content on your homepage
- Using targeted landing pages
- Targeting content based on what data you have on customers
A really easy way to create targeted content on your page with no extra trick or tools is to narrow down your top target audiences and creating content around their top problems and questions. Display this on your homepage so that customers coming into your site see that what you offer is relevant to them. Hubspot does a fantastic job at this. Check out Hubspot for an extreme example.
We did this at Beamer by simply creating guides for each of our target customer groups:
Only bother them with things they are interested in.
Customers know what ads look like and where they pop up. They’re sick of ads. They don’t respond like they used to. But they don’t hate that you reach out to them with offers. In fact, 77% of users “wish there was a way to filter ads instead of block them”. To get the best results and build a better relationship with potential and repeat customers, only create ads and email campaigns focused on what they want to see. A really easy tool for targeting ads based on past behavior is AdRoll. You can retarget customers and potential customers only with products and offers they are interested in based on their demographics and past behavior. People are much more likely to engage and re-engage with your brand if your ads and the way you reach out makes sense.
Build in perks that differentiate you.
There are just little perks and details that customers expect in online shopping experiences these days. Offering them will win customer trust and appreciation but it’s also becoming expected. A few you should add to your buyer’s process are:
- Free shipping and returns
- Remembering customer data
- Saved shopping carts
- Wish lists
Free shipping and returns sounds expensive but you should build it into your pricing model. 88 percent of consumers would be more likely to shop at a site online if they were promised free shipping. It’s worth it. As for returns, 92% of customers say they would buy something again from an online store if they had a positive return experience. If you have customer data saved, they are more likely to checkout faster and not abandon their shopping cart. If they do, make sure everything they wanted is there when they come back. These little details can significantly improve your customer life cycle and create loyal customers.
Send updates in ways they will be noticed.
Getting repeat customers back is one of the most valuable things you can focus on. A great way to keep customer excited and coming back is to show them that you are continually creating things that they want and appeal to them. Reach customers with updates on new products and deals in a way that is engaging. One great way to update and engage customers is Beamer. Beamer is a an interactive news feed that sits right within the interface of your website. You can create updates for anything: new products, new deals, etc. Anyone can open a feed of updates from any page on your site by clicking a “What’s New” tab or an icon in your interface. You can add images, videos, GIFs, and actionable CTAs to get customers engaged and exploring updates. You can configure Beamer to send you updates as web push notifications to those who have opted in but are off your site.
Ask for customer feedback.
Customers feel much more apart of the process and catered to when you ask for feedback actively. You can do this by sending out surveys using SurveyMonkey. It’s best to do this after purchase. You can also add ratings and comments to your products like Amazon and keep them displayed both on your product pages and Google for better results. An even easier method: using Beamer, you can collect customer reactions and comments to your updates right on your website in your Beamer feed. After collecting feedback, make sure to show customers it was acknowledged by making changes and responding to comments, etc. publically. You can even take it a step further and offer rewards for feedback such as discounts. When customers feel heard and appreciated, they are much more likely to stay loyal and advocate for you.
Improving the customer life cycle not only helps you increase the lifetime value of your current customers, it helps you organically grow with the support of loyal and happy customers; something invaluable in today’s eCommerce world. Help engage and build a relationship with customers right away on your site with Beamer today.
