Speed is often touted as the most important factor in online delivery, but research suggests that aspects like reliability, convenience, and cost are more valuable to today’s consumers.
Ongoing profit from a customer’s lifetime value is generally much higher than any one single transaction.
However in order to achieve higher customer lifetime values (CLV) you need to have some strong customer retention strategies.
If you do this, you’ll also find that it’s much cheaper to retain a loyal customer than it is to constantly acquire new ones. 82% of companies asked in our Cross Channel Marketing report agree that customer retention is cheaper than acquisition.
Customer retention is a must for any business where its goals are for long-term success. Here are some of the ways that you can achieve this.
We’re well aware that free shipping can work well as a sales driver, but the extent to which shoppers will go to qualify is very interesting.
Stats from a UPS study show that 58% of customers have added extra items to their shopping basket in order to qualify for free delivery.
So what does this mean for retailers, and how should they approach this issue?
As less forward-thinking retailers have gone under in the past couple of weeks, John Lewis has been a high street success story, thanks in no small part to its multichannel approach.
The retaier achieved a 44% increase in online sales over Christmas, so what lessons are there for other retailers?
I’ve been asking John Lewis’ Head of Online Delivery and Customer Experience Sean O’Connor abut the secrets behind its success…
It proved to be a fruitful Christmas for John Lewis, with like-for-like sales up 13% in the five weeks to December 29 compared to the same period in 2011.
And the news from its ecommerce store was even more impressive. Online sales grew almost three-times faster at 44.3% and now account for a quarter of all group sales.
In fact it reached more than £800m in annual sales through Johnlewis.com in December.
So how has John Lewis managed to pull off such a massive increase in online sales? Here’s a run down of some of the reasons behind its continued success…
This post highlights a simple, useful feature that’s crept onto most of the UK’s largest e-commerce sites over the last couple of years, with no real coverage.
“The promo strip” is not new, but has slowly caught on to the point it’s almost standard for high street retailers, yet still fairly rare on smaller sites.
It’s a very useful addition from both the customer perspective (quickly informative without being overbearing) and from the brand perspective (conversion orientated without being overbearing!).
There are 12 examples below, including variations on the central idea.