How to win loyal customers for your omnichannel retail business

Are you also wondering what could be the one strategy that can transform an omnichannel retail launch into long-term revenue and stability?

Well, it has to be loyal customers!

Now if you are trying to win your customers’ loyalty, you need to put on the plate what they expect you to – An impactful shopping experience.

Consumers expect brands to be present across channels and engage and interact with them whilst providing a unified shopping experience along with incredible customer care. And businesses are breaking channel barriers and going all out to meet their buyers wherever they are!

And brands have every reason to do so.

Did you know that a 5% increase in customer retention rates raises the profits from 25% to 95%? This means 95% of a brand’s attention should be on keeping the existing customer base happy and satisfied. This balance done right canl give your omnichannel retail a cutting edge over your competition.?

Wondering how to keep customers coming back to your brand?

Let’s explore how you can build strategies to keep your customers loyal and plan growth like never before:?

Importance of customer loyalty in retail

The Pareto Principle, commonly known as the 80-20 rule is applied in businesses. This implies that 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the inputs. When you contemplate this in regard to your customers, you will find it interesting to note that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your existing customers. Do you need any more reasons to retain your customers when you build an online store??

We thought so!????

Here are the reasons to focus on customer loyalty:

It sure is expensive to acquire new customers?

The cost of acquiring new customers exceeds the cost you incur in getting your existing customers to buy from you again. A smart retailer is one who invests time and money in customers who are loyal and won't defect from their brand.

Loyalty gives the best word of mouth referrals?

One loyal customer can direct ten new customers your way with word-of-mouth publicity. Customer reviews and referrals are still the most effective forms of marketing as customers tend to have more faith in peer reviews than your ads.?

It is easier to sell to your customers

When you build omnichannel retail, you connect with customers at multiple touchpoints. However, customers are not willing to make a purchase just at their first point of contact with the brand. It is easier to sell to a customer who has already made his first purchase.?

It makes your marketing economical

You can cut your marketing budget as your old loyal customers are already familiar with your products. While you build an online store , you can use the list of your existing customers’ data (contact information) for retargeting, email marketing, and loyalty programs.?

Loyal customers help in increasing sales

You can achieve a higher return on investment if you focus on customer retention strategy. Once your customers love your products, they are more likely to make a second purchase, then a third, thus increasing your brand revenue.

How to win customers' loyalty with effective strategies?

Now that there’s no denying that customer retention strategies work wonders for omnichannel retail, what is going to be your next step? Let’s put our thinking caps on and look at the top 5 customer retention tips that yield the best results.

1. Seamless shopping experience

Customers are looking forward to an omnichannel experience such as social media interactions, searching for products on mobile apps, instant support with live chat, or a visit to the retail store. To implement all of this, you need seamless integration from one touchpoint to another, giving your customers an extraordinary shopping journey. You need to break down the walls that separate multiple channels and allow your customers to interact with you.

With StoreHippo, you can seamlessly integrate all the mentioned touchpoints - social media, app, PWA , website, offline store, payment solutions, shipping etc. The headless commerce solutions allow you to personalize your customers’ journey. Mapping of this journey across all platforms from website to social media to app, can be done seamlessly with various tools available at StoreHippo.?

2. Customer loyalty and referral program

While working on omnichannel retail strategies, make sure you encourage customer loyalty by supporting customer loyalty programs, personalization , and collecting data from various channels for analytics. It helps you as a retailer to connect with your customers by retargeting the brand across multiple channels and providing the best customer experience at all levels.?

By offering omnichannel rewards, you can incorporate customer activity across all channels and create a complete customer profile. Through this, you can develop customized rewards for your customers. You can develop a customer loyalty program that can be encashed on any medium - online and offline. These rewards include free samples, discounts, free products and depend on how much a customer is willing to spend, thus driving up your sales value.?

StoreHippo’s discount engine lets you create offers, discounts, or promo codes, limited period offers for your loyal customers.

3. Proactive customer service

91% of the customers are more likely to make a second purchase from the same brand after a positive customer service experience. With omnichannel retail customer service , you can give your customer a strong and integrated customer experience that allows them to switch across multiple channels yet receive quality service. This means, your offline store and your online website offer similar services to the customers. Since this is convenient and effective for your users, you boost your brand's image and credibility.

Automated tools and features from StoreHippo like social media, live chat, email, SMS notifications , feedback, etc help you connect with your customers across channels.?

4. Building relationships with the customers

You wouldn't disagree that maintaining a good relationship with the customer is key to building a solid business with significant growth potential. Right?

While you build an online store with omnichannel marketing, you seamlessly integrate various touch points like branding, messaging, and online and offline. This allows your buyer multiple channels to interact with your brand - social media and customer service hotlines, ensuring that they have a positive experience on each channel:?

• Consistent brand tone and vision
• Personalized messages as of buyers' interest?
• Branded content based on buyers’ journey

StoreHippo’s ecommerce platform allows you to create various targeted landing pages for various types of customers. With the help of inbuilt templates and SEO tools , it is quite easy to promote your content on all the touchpoints.?

5. Using data and customer account

Who doesn’t want to create a long-lasting relationship with its customers, but are you familiar with the users you are targeting? You should be able to put together the user persona, products, and channel fit in order to build a true omnichannel retail strategy.?

Let’s take the example of the luxury fashion brand, Burberry. The brand is well known for pioneering numerous omnichannel retail strategies to deepen relationships with customers and driving sales. Burberry launched a new product line specifically on social media channels for the Gen Z and titled it Series B. The twist here is that these products can only be bought in a single 24-hour time frame on the 17th of each month. This campaign proved to be highly successful and made way for many such activities across multiple channels, which resulted in the deepening of their relationships with the customers.

With StoreHippo, you can grasp the customer journey from multiple touchpoints to graph out a personalised experience. When you build an online store with StoreHippo, you are able to collect data from across all channels to meet your customer's expectations. Provide them with an omnichannel retail experience and send them personalised messages and content using inbuilt tools from StoreHippo.?

Conclusion

As the market is growing more and more competitive, retaining loyal customers is no piece of cake. With the rise in their expectations and shopping experiences towards omnichannel, you have to build an online store with only a credible ecommerce platform. StoreHippo, with its gamut of benefits, supports omni-channel selling allowing you to grow your business and retain customers. Start your 14 days trial to keep your customers coming back to you again and again.??