Three ecommerce personalization tactics to boost customer loyalty

The customer journey doesn’t stop once a shopper buys something from your store. When it comes to retaining and reconverting existing customers, it pays to give them the tailored experience they deserve, rather than treating them like one of the crowd every time they come back to your website. In fact, research shows that acquiring new customers can cost five times as much as retaining existing ones.

To engage your returning customers, you’ll need to combine a new set of CRO tactics with some of the tactics you used to convert them initially to craft a tailored customer experience. And with more browsing and past purchase data up your sleeve, you’ll be able to really personalize the journey to the individual.

Read on for three ecommerce personalization tactics to boost customer loyalty.

1)  Product recommendations

The concept of product recommendations is nothing new and most of us have received helpful suggestions from sales clerks when shopping in store. There’s a reason why retailers have been using the tactic for so long. Product recommendations work. In fact, product recommendations can generate sales uplifts of up to 11%.

But with several types of product recommendations to choose from, it’s important to use the ones that resonate most with your customers and align with your goals.

Once shoppers have found products that work well for them, they’re likely to develop preferences. Recommending products based on past purchase and browse data enables retailers and brands to inspire their existing customers with products that are most likely to appeal to them. This in turn increases loyalty and boosts conversion rates.

Try using customers’ purchase and browse data to tailor your homepage with personalized product recommendations. By only showing them what they’re interested in, you’ll increase your chances of moving the customer through to a product page.

Product recommendations also work well in post-purchase emails. Try sending customers an email to recommend products that they are likely to want and need directly after their original purchase. Your brand will still be fresh in their minds, making it the ideal time to foster loyalty and encourage another purchase.

2)  Dynamic content

Dynamic content gives marketers the power to personalize every step of the customer journey to an individual’s preferences, behavior and real-time context. Each user sees content that is timely and relevant, which in turn encourages clicks and sales.

Try using dynamic content on your search page to help returning customers pick up where they left off with a personalized call-to-action including the criteria of their last search.

Dynamic content can also be effective when used to highlight specific brands in the website navigation bar. Since customers tend to prefer brands or products they have seen multiple times, ecommerce stores can harness the power of familiarity for returning visitors by tailoring the brand suggestion to the customer’s most browsed or purchased brand.

3)  Triggered emails

Triggered emails help marketers deliver personalized, real-time content to shoppers at the moment they are most likely to convert. With triggered emails, customers who take a pre-defined action are automatically sent an email that nudges them towards a next action.

Cart abandonment emails are probably the most well known type of triggered email. But when it comes to boosting customer loyalty, there’s another type of triggered emails worth trying – replenishment emails.

For frequently purchased consumer goods, send customers replenishment emails to remind them that the time to reorder is approaching. These helpful reminders foster customer loyalty and increase the likelihood of repeat purchases.