Online business owners and merchants: now that you have traffic driven to your website and your services are available for all to see, the next obstacle to conquer is to be able to make that sale, over and over again. Attracting customers is relatively easy compared to building a loyal customer base; however, with a little creative marketing and profit flexibility your business can have a repeat consumer clientele by trying these indispensable retention methods.

To start, as a business, you will want to be able to make your product or service as well-known to the largest audience possible; while avoiding out-of-pocket costs. Consider promoting a special on your site offering a certain percentage off of the first purchase (usually 10%) for customers who sign up for your email lists. Additionally, you may wish to include a notation on the email list, when sent, that an additional 5 or 10% off a future order is available when a customer is referred, places an order, and uses their name as the referrer. You can generate a specific code or manually look-up a customer’s order to verify details and send an online coupon code to the intended referrer. This method is an excellent way to retain customers while expanding your customer base by using word-of-mouth marketing.

Another way to retain long-term customers is to offer a loyalty program. Loyalty programs can vary but the premise is after a designated number of orders, or by spending a specified amount of money, a customer is eligible for an incentive, usually in the form of a certain percentage off of the next order, a fixed dollar amount off of the next order (ex. take $5 off of $50 order), or a coupon for the next order to either ship free or have upgraded shipping. Depending on the type and nature of the goods or services sold, all businesses can accommodate loyal customers by offering one of the suggested loyalty rewards.

Above all, remember that the customer is number one. If conducting business in the virtual world, just as with a brick and mortar business, keep in mind that a customer’s first-hand experience can either help or hurt a business. More importantly, in the online world, word-of-mouth can travel faster and reach more people than ever; so be sure to excel at customer satisfaction and your consumer base will be around for a very long time.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 3:06 pm and is filed under E-Commerce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.