PODCAST: How Do We Build Profitable, Long-Term Relationships With Customers?

In their fourth Ecommerce Lifecycle podcast, Keir and Ross turn their attention to the subject of retention. This focuses on ways in which we can get customers to continue coming back and purchasing products. Having long-term relationships with customers who have already purchased from you can be highly profitable as your “cost per acquisition” reduces.

In part three of “The Ecommerce Customer Lifecycle,” Ross and I discussed "fulfillment" — how do merchants get products (both physical and digital) into the hands of customers? We looked at how a positive fulfilment and returns process can set you apart from your competitors, which apps and technology can help you achieve this, as well as discussing Ross’s four key stages of fulfilment mapping for new clients.

In our fourth episode, we turn our attention to the subject of retention. This focuses on ways in which we can get customers to continue coming back and purchasing products. Having long-term relationships with customers who have already purchased from you can be highly profitable as your “cost per acquisition” reduces.

You might also like: How Building Customer Relationships Will Help You Create a Million Dollar Business

Topics covered on retention

• How offering great support is essential to your business

• Ways loyalty programs can encourage repeat purchases

• How to use referral and affiliate programs to increase sales

• Approaches to automating your email marketing

• The impact of social media in marketing your products

• The role of brand ambassadors in encouraging new and repeat sales

• Ways of sourcing interesting customer testimonials and stories

Up next

In our final episode, we will cover the subject of Measurement and how we can use analytics and data to ensure all of our ecommerce customer lifecycle activities are profitable. When it comes to Measurement for ecommerce companies, there are two key concepts we'll explore: Gross Profit per Visitor (GP/V) and the Customer Hub.

GP/V is a metric ecommerce companies can use to understand the profitability of each visitor and visitor segment (i.e. geographic target, demographic target, specific traffic source, etc.) which in turn can be utilized to calculate the ‘drivers’ behind the profitability of their business.

The Customer Hub is the concept of creating a centralized 'profile' of your customers that aggregates data on your customers from the various platforms with which they interact, such as email, support, shopping cart, social, etc.

As always, please feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.

To hear more

• In Part I of “The Ecommerce Customer Lifecycle,” Ross and I focused our attention on the “acquisition” phase and asked the question: “How can we get potential customers to visit our sites?” Tactics discussed included social media, paid advertising, influencer marketing, among others.
• In Part II, we moved on to discuss “conversion” which focuses on getting the visitors of your website to actually purchase products. This step is where user experience, design, branding, content and your on-site strategy are crucial.
• In Part III, we turned our attention to the often overlooked topic of fulfillment. Whilst on first glance you might think that it's a simple case of putting a product in a box and adding a postage label, there are plenty of other factors to consider — many of which will help your clients showcase themselves and their brand values.
• In Part IV, we focused on retention. This includes ways to get customers to keep coming back and purchasing products. Having long-term relationships with customers who have already purchased from you can be highly profitable as your "cost per acquisition" reduces.
• In Part V, we discussed all things measurement and asked how to use analytics and data to ensure that all ecommerce customer lifecycle activities are profitable.