In this article, you will learn about the win-back strategies you can use to boost customer retention on your Shopify store. With the Future of Commerce report stating the importance of customer retention, you need to read this blog right away!
When you start an online store, you focus on being able to reach as many consumers as possible. You want as many people to know about your brand. You want as many people to want to visit your store, explore your products, and possibly even make a purchase.
But as you grow, while you continue to acquire new customers, you also tend to lose out on a few that bought from you at the onset of things. Not because your products no longer hold value for them. Simply because just like you, they are new consumers for the many other brands coming online and they’re actively being pulled in all directions by these businesses.
As a result of which, you start to lose some of those consumers that already trust your brand. You’re losing out on customers that you could convince to buy from you again.
But there’s a way out – Customer lifecycle marketing.
You can win back these customers without having to pause your efforts to reach new ones by putting in place customer retention strategies for your Shopify store.
Before we begin, let’s give you a few reasons why you should focus on customer retention and setting up customer win-back strategies:
- 33% of market-leading brands use win-back campaigns
- Win-back campaigns see a 12% higher engagement rate
- 82% of companies agree that retention is cheaper than acquisition
- 56% of consumers stay loyal to brands that “get them” or show them they care
- 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers
Now that you know why we’re talking about this, let’s quickly talk about who your lost customers are.
Who are these lost customers you need to win-back?
Lost customers are basically consumers who have purchased from your store previously, but haven’t engaged with you in 30-60 days.
These are consumers who have basically either lost track of your brand, gotten distracted by the others in the market or are simply no longer finding value in what you have to offer.
No matter what the reason, these are consumers who have once trusted your brand to make a purchase. They can be won back with the right strategies in place.
Also, during the holiday season, you will see a number of one-time buyers on your Shopify store, if you don’t have a win back strategy in place, bringing these buyers back to you in the following months will be as big an effort as trying to convert someone for the first time. So let’s dive right into how to win back lost customers now with a win-back strategy for your Shopify store.
What is a customer win-back strategy for Shopify?
A customer win-back strategy basically refers to putting in place tactics and communication that focus on re-engaging a buyer who has previously bought from you. The idea is to tap into the fact that they know your brand, have previously displayed trust by buying from you and can be nudged into making another purchase easily.
Now that you know what it means, let’s move to exploring win-back strategies you can implement on your Shopify store.
Win-back strategies to bring back lost customers to your Shopify store
1. Give customers their very own shopping space with customer account page
First things first. Getting to know the consumer as much as possible, is the number one hack to keeping them engaged. Then comes in the winback marketing strategies!
With consumers becoming more conscious about the information they share online, the only way to get to know them is by offering them their own ‘shopping space’ on your store. You can do this by setting up a customer account page on your Shopify store with apps like Flits.
A customer account page essentially lets a shopper save their profile, delivery addresses, create a wishlist they may want to purchase from, view their recently checked out products, their order history, and much more. This makes it easy for them to shop online, making it even easier to re-engage them.
A win-back strategy that if you have in place from day one, will make it easier for you to re-engage lost shoppers at any point in time later. You can use the information they share with you to create personalized marketing campaigns.
You can also use the customer account page data to identify your lost customers based on when they last logged in or used it; to implement the next set of strategies.
2. Request customer feedback on previous interactions and purchases
If you haven’t seen a customer in a while, there is a chance they may have found a brand that offers more value than you. It could be in terms of the product range they have on offer or the discounts. But the only way to know why a customer hasn’t come back to your store is to ask them.
Reach out to the segment of customers who haven’t purchased from you in the last 30-60 days. Using a simple NPS or CSAT format, ask clear questions about their experience with the previous purchase they made or the overall shopping experience with your brand. You could even include a section asking them for comments on what they expect from you or hoped would be a good experience.
Knowing exactly how your customers feel about shopping from you, you can set up win-back campaigns to re-engage these shoppers with contextual messages. At the same time, you can ensure a better experience for your new customers.
3. Nudge another purchase with an incentive
One of the smartest ways to get a consumer to buy from you again is to incentivise the act and make a win-win situation. This means offering an exclusive discount along with a quick message on how you miss them.
You can also include a few product recommendations in the communication to help them pick up where they left off – this time, with a discount code that will make the purchase even more enticing!
But remember to at the same time, ensure that this is a one-time avail discount and you’ve created some amount of urgency around it to get these consumers to act faster. Here’s how Birchbox has set up their customer win back strategy:
4. Create a multi-channel engagement strategy for customer win-back
The next win-back strategy to have in place is a multi-channel campaign that consistently gets in touch with your lost customers over a given period of time. With the help of smart automations, automate your engagement messages over email, Facebook Messenger, web push, SMS, and even social media.
Start your engagement campaign from day 3 of a consumer making a purchase. Move the customer along a series of messages to understand how they felt about making the purchase, their experience with the purchase, requesting a review, asking them why they haven’t come back to your store when you’re at day 15 and so on.
The important thing to note here is that you don’t want to be bombarding your customers on every channel, unless you want to be marked spam.
So make sure you give your customers enough time to experience your brand and the products, see how they want to engage with your brand, and make sure the messages are spaced out to deliver a high-impact instead of just clutter.
5. Run retargeting and remarketing campaigns continually
As we move to digital platforms to make purchases, we are consistently active on the search engine and social media. These are channels where we consume content, gather information and discover new brands as they target us with campaigns.
That’s exactly why even after you have acquired a customer, you need to continually ensure you’re at the top of their minds. You can do this with retargeting and remarketing campaigns that are targeted at your lost customers.
Use these campaigns to ask for feedback, remind the shopper of the products they may have shown interest in and of course, offer exclusive, one-time discounts to re-engage them in another purchase.
Pro tip: Use customer segmentation to personalize your retargeting and remarketing campaigns.
6. Set up a loyalty program and offer store credits
Want to know a personal hack that we found to get online shoppers to continually remain engaged with a brand? Offering store credits for every interaction they make.
Win back lost customers by offering them store credits to review your products, subtly nudging them to explore other collections while they’re at it. Similarly, you can offer them store credits for making their next purchase, to encourage them to explore your store all over again.
Store credits essentially work better than cashback and points, as they are convertible and can be used to make a purchase – giving lost consumers another reason to engage with the campaign.
And this is easier to do as well! With an app like Flits, you can set up win-back campaigns to bring back your customers. Offer them store credits for re-engagement or create FOMO around the existing credits available – so much that they feel like coming back to use them.
Read how The Man Company saw a 41% increase in orders using store credits. They have one of the most effective customer win back strategies for Shopify stores set up.
Pro tip: Use gamification to boost your customer loyalty program performance.
7. Winback the customer even before they leave
Another way to ensure you don’t lose a customer is to reinforce the value you offer to them before they even leave the website. This means tapping into crucial moments such as the time someone makes a purchase – turning a moment where they have spent their resources, into a rewarding experience.
To tap into this key moment, Flits now enables you to display store credits on the thank you page of the website. By displaying store credits, you’re subtly pushing your rewards program to the customer – nudging the visitor to join and participate in the same, leading to higher engagement. It’s one of the best winback campaign examples we have turned into a strategy!
Should you focus on customer win-back strategies for your Shopify store?
If you ask us, yes.
While it’s great to acquire new customers, it is also important that you don’t lose out on those that have bought from you over time.
If you took resources into consideration, not focusing on bringing back lost customers is like letting those hundreds of dollars spent on acquiring them, go waste.
What is your customer win-back strategy?
Ours is to offer your store visitors a personal space of their own to save products they like, keep track of their orders and seek recommendations. And you can do it all with one app – Flits for Shopify customer account pages.
