Episode 16 – Customer Retention Strategies

Why is India seeing a lot of traction in the last few years on customer retention?

ECommerce has significantly grown in India in the past couple of years. The industry has experienced 7-10x growth since 2016 compared to other developing economies. With the availability of internet at affordable cost, numerous internet users have been registering with ecommerce websites. This has seemingly attracted many international brands and ecommerce companies to India. And for competing with them, an eCommerce website needs an effective customer retention strategy. 

How to build a custom retention strategy? 

The fundamentals of building a customer retention strategy start with customers. Following are a few steps that can help you in building a successful strategy: 

1. Aggregating and analysing customer data.
2. Building cohorts based on customer behaviour on your platform.
3. Measuring the performance of your website through A/B testing.
4. Allotting tasks to a digital marketing team to run campaigns based on customer cohorts.
5. Identifying the perks and privileges that can be provided to fine-tune your campaigns.
6. Building a strategy with reward/loyalty/subscription programs to make customers stick to your brand.

How can new ecommerce companies build customer retention strategies?

Ecommerce companies have seen exponential growth in the past few years. Majority of companies have gained 60-70% revenue from existing customers and 30-40% from new customers. 

Here are certain things new companies need to consider while building customer retention strategies:

1. Identifying your loyal customers and tracking their buying behaviour. It is essential to know how and why they purchase certain products on your website.
2. Be it offers or discounts, you need to know what new customers are looking for.
3. Research what your competitors are not offering to their customers and implement those features on your platform. Give a reason for customers to stick to your brand.
4. Making customers feel valued. For example, if a customer buys bulk products on your website, you should provide them with coupons or discounts. A reward program makes them feel valued.
5. Coming up with a strategy where you can ask customers for word of mouth publicity by posting pictures and videos of purchased products and tagging them on social media.
6. Making limited-edition products available for loyal customers. The fear of missing out (FOMO) factor will help in directly motivating non-programs customers to sign up.

Hacks for getting more than one order from a customer. 

Delivery experience of the very first order is very much significant as it talks volume about your brand. If you get that right, new customers are more likely to buy more from your website. On average, if customers are satisfied with their first delivery, they will place their second order after one to two days later. So, it is necessary to make sure that the delivery experience is of premium quality for all customers. 

Also, you need to make sure that you provide perks and privileges to your customers so that they can buy more products from your site. For example, coupons and reward points are some of the best options for customer retention. 

Myntra’s growth story before Myntra Insider loyalty program

Before the Myntra Insider loyalty program was introduced, the company increased the share of existing users by 2-3x using organic search. They followed the basic framework of Recency, Frequency, and Monetary (RFM) value model along with five dimensions they specifically created for the company. 

Here are the five dimensions that Myntra followed for their customer retention strategy:

1. Customer Engagement: Analysed how customers engaged with their product or category pages.
2. Performance: Recognised the buying behaviour of customers and how they selected their desired products on the platform.
3. Purchase Intent: Studied customers’ intent of buying their desired products.
4. Offers & Discounts: Understood whether their customers were looking for discounts or reward points during checkout.
5. Satisfaction: Contacted their customers for their feedback and to know whether they were satisfied with their purchase or not.

Myntra also performed A/B testing and ran ad campaigns on different social media platforms that led to a 3.5x increase in their return on investment (ROI) in a year or two.

The objective of Myntra Insider Loyalty Program?

Myntra’s objective of building the Myntra Insider loyalty program is to attract new customers and retain them for a longer time. They follow certain things to gain exponential growth on the platform:

1. Identifying the number of Myntra app installs, how many customers register on it, how many make single purchases, and how many make repeat purchases on the platform.
2. Making customers use the app as a “habit”.
3. Making the loyalty program available for everyone without extra cost.
4. Incentivising people for exploring myntra catalogue and categories.
5. Adding games on the app for customers to engage more with the platform.
6. Introducing exclusive tiers to the program where the members are required to have specific reward points to upgrade to the next tier to avail more exclusive offers and discounts.