The last two years have seen a significant increase in consumers’ interest in health and wellness products. And a noticeable shift in the way consumers buy these products – online.
Immunity boosters, superfoods, vitamin supplements, online yoga and meditation subscriptions, diet plan memberships, etc. have seen a huge demand and supply.
With new brands and online stores springing up, competition is fierce. And everyone’s trying to attract and retain customers.
A key strategy for health and wellness eCommerce stores is Shopify store credits.
In this blog, we’ll tell you how you can use store credits for your Shopify health and wellness store.
PS. To start using these strategies, you will need to install the Flits app for Shopify customer account pages.
How health and wellness eCommerce stores can use store credits
1. Offer store credits on newsletter sign up
In the health and wellness industry, email is one of the most-used and effective ways to educate your audience. One way to keep your customers aware and educated about health and your store offerings is through reading.
That’s where newsletters come in. One way to keep your customers engaged is to ask them to sign up for your newsletter.
Now, they may not want to sign up because they don’t want an inbox overload. But the chances of them signing up can be increased with the help of an incentive.
That’s where store credits come in. You can offer them store credits in return for signing up for your newsletter.
There are many benefits of doing this:
- You can stay connected with your customers in between purchases
- Share updates, news, new product information, etc.
- Subscribers will buy from your site at some point as they have store credits
2. Offer store credits for signing up for a customer account page
There are many benefits for customers who sign up for a customer account page. And so, you should always urge them to sign up.
When it comes to health and wellness products, customers usually prefer to stick to one brand or one product. Which means they keep buying the same product at regular intervals. Having a customer account page makes this repeat buying process a breeze.
Besides, there are many more benefits of having a customer account page:
- Customers can find all their purchase details on the customer account page
- They can easily keep a track of their orders and shipments
- They can make purchases faster with just a few clicks
- They can avail benefits such as points and rewards
For your Shopify stores, the customer account page is a data mine. You can gather data about the customers’ shopping patterns and use it to send personalized deals and targeted promotional messages.
Here’s an example from Campus Protein. The moment a person lands on their site, they make the offer clear through a pop-up: sign up and receive rewards and perks.
3. Offer store credits on customers’ first purchase
Customers are always vary about buying from new brands or buying from an online store for the first time. They have several doubts and find it difficult to trust a site when buying for the first time. And hence, it takes a while before a person makes their first purchase from a site.
Here’s a graph that gives a peek into customer trust quotients and how it affects their purchase behavior.
As a health and wellness Shopify store, you’ll have to work towards building your customers’ trust.
One of the first steps to this — entice shoppers to make their first purchase from your site by offering them store credits.
Here’s how it will help you:
- The incentive of store credits can help drive new shoppers to make a purchase from your store
- You get to build a long-term relationship with the customer as they are more likely to come back to your store to use those credit points
- You can improve your sales once your first-time customers turn to returning customers. Returning customers tend to spend 3X more compared to one time customers
4. Offer store credits on the next purchase
Another way to use your Shopify store credits is to offer customers credits that they can use for their next purchase. That way, you are making sure your customers return to your site.
To begin with, you will have to communicate to your audience that they can earn credits if they purchase from your store. How will you do this?
For customers who have already signed up for a customer account page or whose details you already have, it’s easy. You can send them an email, SMS, Facebook Messenger message, etc.
But for those who haven’t, you’ll need to reach them through channels such as online ads, social media ads, social media posts, etc.
Then again, just because you gave them free store credits, doesn’t mean they’ll easily return to your store. You might have to nudge them to come back with more incentives. Or better still, switch to a psychological game – create urgency and FOMO.
How do you do that? There are many ways to do so:
- By offering a discount
- Creating fear of missing out
- Creating urgency
5. Offer store credits on subscriptions
Health and wellness are ongoing needs of consumers. And so, it’s common for people to buy from the same site/brand or the same product at regular intervals.
For example, people buy vitamin supplements on a regular basis. It is, most often, not a one-time purchase.
Many health and wellness stores offer subscriptions – monthly, quarterly or yearly. This makes it easy for customers to receive the products they require to maintain their health and wellness.
For stores, subscriptions help to ensure regular sales, as well as in better inventory management.
In fact, some countries have seen a flood of subscription startups in the health and wellness industry. (In 2020, the global subscription box industry totalled $18.8 billion.)
And so, to encourage shoppers to buy subscriptions, you can offer them store credits in return.
Here’s an example of Bulu Box:
6. Offer store credits on repeat purchases/reorders
As we discussed above, in the health and wellness eCommerce space, customers tend to make repeat purchases and reorder the same items multiple times.
To entice customers to make repeat purchases, you can offer them store credits. That way, they will want to use the store credits and are more likely to shop from your site again.
Let’s look at The Man Company case study to understand this in detail.
Grooming products are a recurring need. The Man Company set up a tiered rewards programs, wherein customers can climb tiers by buying more from the brand. This helps the brand keep their customers engaged.
You can set up a similar store credits program on your Shopify health and wellness store with the help of Flits app. The customer account page app offers store credits as an add-on paid feature.
7. Offer store credits for ratings and reviews
95% of customers read reviews before purchasing a product online. Recall the last time you ordered a product on Amazon or ordered food online. You must have definitely looked at the rating on the items before placing the order. Didn’t you?
Health and wellness is an industry that thrives on reviews and ratings. Hence, it is essential for you to encourage your customers to share reviews and ratings if you want to grow your
Shopify business.
Store credits can help you get more reviewers as well as make sure that these reviewers come back to your store to buy more.
8. Offer store credits for referrals
- 92% of people trust referrals from people they know
- Shoppers who are referred by friends and family are 4X more likely to make purchases
- Referred customers’ lifetime value (LTV) is 16% higher than the normal customers
The above statistics make it clear that referrals do work for online stores. And that a referrals program is a must for your Shopify store.
Here’s how you can use store credits for your referrals program.
- Offer store credits to your existing customers for sharing referrals
- Credit the points to their account only when the referred customers make purchases
- Make the referrals program exciting by offering variable credits – For example, refer 1 friend and earn 30 credits. Refer 2 friends and earn 70 credits
9. Offer credits to try new and high-value products
When it comes to health and wellness, people are always skeptical to try new products, more so, if they’re expensive.
But when brands launch new health and wellness products, they need people to try it. Only when people will try it, can they write a review.
Here’s where store credits can help you. You can offer store credits to customers who purchase products from your new launches.
Another way to use store credits for your health and wellness Shopify store is to offer more credits when customers buy high-value items or when their bill value crosses a threshold.
That way, you can increase the sale of new and high-value products.
10. Offer store credits for filling feedback forms and surveys
When health and wellness brands want to launch new products or collections, there’s one thing they do – gather consumer insights. This helps them get a sense of the market and consumer preference.
And this is where store credits can help you a great deal. Offer credits to your existing customers as well as non-customers for filling feedback and survey forms.
That way, you increase the chances of your existing customers coming back to your store. Moreover, you can entice new customers to shop from your site to use the credits they earned for filling the surveys.
11. Keep your store credits program exciting
Today’s consumers want new experiences. They tend to get bored often. To keep your customers engaged, you can make your store credits program exciting in many ways.
Moreover, the way you promote and present your credits program will have an impact on its success and on the overall success of your site.
Let’s look at the example of Rocky Mountain Oils, an essential oils online store.
The brand runs multiple promotions within their loyalty points program. This keeps their customers engaged and coming back to buy more. Here are some promotions they ran:
- They had a surprise and delight campaign, where they gifted all their loyal customers 500 points as a way of appreciation for their continued support.
- They run limited-period promotions, too. For example, on one weekend they halved the cost of the points. So, instead of customers having to wait to earn 500 points for a voucher, customers with 250 points could also get the same reward. But only on that weekend. The result: customers who were nearing 250 points, made purchases to benefit from this promotional offer.
You can think creatively and come up with other exciting ways to keep your customers excited about earning more of your Shopify store.
Final thoughts – Get your Shopify store credits program started today!
So, now you know how important and effective a store credits program can be for your Shopify health and wellness store.
Store credits work best when you combine it with your customer account page. That way, you can make it an intrinsic part of your customer account page, which customers can access and track every time.
And that’s exactly why Flits offers store credits as an add-on feature with the customer account page.
Setting up store credits within your customer account page is a breeze with the help of Flits Shopify store credits app.
Install the Flits app today and put store credits to work for your success!
