Picture this. You own a business, and you want to see it grow, flourish, and be profitable. And the best way to do that is to attract more customers. So you invest a lot in promoting your products or services to gain new customers.
You start making some money, but you don’t even break-even. The consequence? You end up spending even more money to promote your business.
Now, what if there was a better alternative to that? Instead of investing more money to acquire new customers, why not focus on bringing back your existing customers?
Many brands believe that they can create loyal customers with a single purchase. However, that’s not true. Brand loyalty does not come easy. You need to think of strategies to gain the trust and loyalty of your customers. And that will help you convert your one-time shoppers into repeat customers.
The important question is, how can you convert your one-time shoppers into loyal customers? Let’s take a look at some of the best ways to do so.
1. Build a Solid Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing is a cost-effective and easy way to convert one-time shoppers into loyal customers. If you’re still not using email marketing to your advantage, you need to do so now. At Growth Hackers, we’ve helped brands turn one-time buyers into loyal customers using personalized, automated email campaigns that drive repeat purchases and increase lifetime value.
Create email content that’s informative and useful to your customers. You can send emails about your new product launches or share exciting offers. This can increase your brand awareness among your existing customers. You can even solicit feedback from your one-time shoppers in such emails.
However, there’s a catch. You need to send your emails at the right time. But how do you do that? You can automate your email marketing campaigns based on the actions or behaviors of your existing customers.
Through email automation, you can send relevant and personalized emails to your customers. Personalized emails will make them feel special and will motivate them to engage with your brand again. This can lead your one-time customers to visit your website and make a purchase.
Pottery Barn Kids uses email automation to send post-purchase emails to their customers. As you can see in the screenshot below, the email offers personalized product recommendations based on their recent purchase.
This can encourage one-time shoppers to revisit their website and make another purchase.
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2. Ask for Feedback and Act on It
Anyone who has ever purchased from you will have some type of feedback. However, not many of them will bother sharing it with you. So you need to reach out to customers proactively and ask for their feedback about their experience, be it negative or positive.
Instead of assuming what’s working and what’s not, it’s best to ask your customers. Their honest reviews will give you an opportunity to improve upon or enhance your services. And this can help you to convert them into your loyal customers.
But how will you do this?
You can use customer feedback tools like InMoment or Clarabridge and ask customers to share their experiences. If they raise any specific issue, then ask for some qualitative feedback. Such data and information can help you take the appropriate action efficiently and effectively. And this can successfully convert your one-time shoppers into loyal customers.
Uber has a simple yet effective feedback system. Ratings from customers also impact Uber’s drivers. This forces them to be at their best behavior when dealing with a customer. Drivers may even lose their affiliation with Uber if they get too many poor ratings from unhappy customers.
3. Implement Customer Loyalty Programs
Customer loyalty programs are one of the best methods to bring back one-time shoppers to your website. You can leverage rewards, customer referrals, or loyalty bonuses.
Loyalty programs can be very effective in boosting customer loyalty, provided you use them correctly. Acknowledge and reward your one-time shoppers when they recommend your services or products to their peers. This will make them feel special which, in turn, can encourage them to come back to you.
For instance, online footwear brand, Kuru, has a rewards program for their customers. If a customer writes a review or refers the brand to their friends, they can earn reward points. They can redeem such points on their future orders.
Some loyalty programs offer extra services and experiences to their members, to foster brand loyalty. Digital marketing in this case can be handy by pushing your online visitors to become loyal customers.
You can offer them in-store services meant only for loyalty program members. You can also provide them with early access to sales, priority billing etc. to improve their shopping experience and make them want to shop with you again.
For example, Sephora includes experiential rewards in their loyalty program, to enhance customer experience and loyalty.
4. Invite Customers to Join Your Community
Invite your one-time shoppers to become a part of your community. This can establish and build a strong relationship between you and your customers. The objective behind this is to develop a strong emotional connection between your customers and your community.
Once such a connection has been established, it’s likely to bring them back to your website for more purchases. But how do you create a community?
The best way to do so is through social media. Motivate your one-time shoppers to join your social media community and share their personal experiences. You can ask them to use your branded hashtags when they share such posts on social media.
In return, you can offer an exciting chance to get featured on your social media accounts. This tactic can boost your engagement rates too. It can also help you increase brand awareness among your prospects.
Black Milk Clothing encourage their customers to use their unique hashtags and post photos of their products on social media. They also feature some of their submissions on relevant pages.
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5. Offer Discounts or Promo Codes
You can also offer discounts or promo codes to your one-time shoppers to encourage them to become loyal customers. Many customers agree that relevant offers and discounts impact their loyalty towards a brand.
So provide personalized offers and discounts to your one-time shoppers. This can motivate them to visit your website again and make a purchase. For your one-time customers, you can offer a 10-20% discount on their next purchase.
According to Marketwired, there is a 54% chance that if a customer comes back for their second purchase, they will be back again.
Use Proximity-Based Marketing
You can also use location-based targeting or proximity marketing to offer deals and discounts to customers when they are somewhere near your store.
Many retailers use beacons and mobile apps to detect when a customer is in proximity to one of their stores. They send personalized messages and offers to such customers and nudge them to enter the store and take advantage of the offer.
One client struggled to get repeat purchases until Growth Hackers introduced personalized promo codes and location-based offers. Suddenly, one-time buyers started returning, boosting both loyalty and sales. Here’s an example of an offer from Old Navy.
6. Re-Engage Your Customers on Social Media
A lot of your social-media following is comprised of people who either shop form your brand or are interested in your brand. By engaging with your customers on social media, you can target both to become your loyal customers.
Following are some ways in which you can engage your customers on social media:
Showcase pictures of your customers using your products on your social media pages. This will incentivize them to post more brand-related content to get featured on your page. This will also enhance their experience with your brand, fostering long-term brand associations.
For example, Starbucks reposts pictures of people drinking Starbucks’ coffee on their Instagram page. This makes the customers feel good and develops positive brand associations that can lead to brand loyalty.
Conduct polls, contests, and quizzes to engage your customers. Using polls to ask simple questions like what new products or services they would prefer can help you gain customer insights. You can involve your customers in the process and ask for their opinions.
Contests are also a great way to engage your customers. You can ask them to perform a certain task and reward the winning entries.
In the example below, this brand’s contest not only engages customers but also promotes the launch of their new store. Also, asking consumers to tag their friends is also a good tactic that they have used to increase their brand’s reach.
Over to you to use post-purchase marketing to convert one-time shoppers into loyal customers
While it is great to get more new customers, getting repeat customers is better in the long term.
You need to focus on converting your one-time shoppers into loyal customers. Make them feel special and important, seek feedback proactively, and use email marketing campaigns.
Implement customer loyalty programs and invite them to join your community. This will encourage them to come back to your website and make more purchases. Or you can simply connect with them and engage them on social media.
Have you ever tried any of these tactics before? We’d love to hear about your experiences. If you know of any other tactics to convert one-time shoppers into loyal customers, let us know in the comments below.
Growth Hackers is an experienced eCommerce SEO agency helping local businesses, e-commerce stores, early-stage startups, funded startups, entrepreneurs and international brands grow. To do so, we use several growth marketing strategies such as social media marketing, digital advertising. SEO, content creation, email marketing campaigns and growth hacking.
