Why Ecommerce Retail Should Shift its Focus for Future Success
You’ve read a lot about the instability of traditional retail worldwide. One study reported that 50,000 stores in the US are expected to close by 2026. Already leaning towards Ecommerce retailers, consumers intensified their love of online shopping during the pandemic. The habits created during this two-year period make the challenge for brick-and-mortar retailers even more intense.
The news continues to be positive for Ecommerce retail, with projections of 25% sales growth compared to a meager in-store growth of just 4%. But achieving this high growth rate “delta” demands a shift in business focus for most Ecommerce retailers.
As Ecommerce becomes increasingly popular and competitive, customer retention is becoming more relevant than ever. As an example, most direct to consumer retailers – the biggest disruptors in the category over the past five years – were overwhelmingly focused on customer acquisition throughout their initial growth cycle.
It’s clear that focusing on attracting new customers to your online store is no longer enough to guarantee success. The leaders in most DTC categories, whether luggage, jewelry, financial services, or mattresses, have all attracted copy-cat competitors and the need to focus on retaining existing customers and building longer term relationships will be the strategic theme for many Ecommerce retailers over the near future.
Just as in any retail business, it is much more cost effective to retain customers than to acquire new ones. To create an effective retention strategy, your business needs to define its own metric to measure customer retention rate (CRR) and then build a promotional strategy to strive towards objectives.
This article from Comarch Loyalty Marketing outlines the top 8 Ecommerce customer retention strategies that will help you towards achieving your objectives and offers practical tips to build a solid retention strategy for the future. Read the entire article here.
