E-commerce Tips & Tricks

7 min read

26 Oct 2020

How To Use Relationship Marketing To Grow Your Ecommerce Store

How To Use Relationship Marketing To Grow Your Ecommerce Store

The success of your business whether big or small has always centered around the word 'customer'. No matter what you make, how much you produce, the quality, price, and channel of delivery you choose would have no value if you can't catch enough customers. It wouldn't help if you don't have a bunch of loyal customers who keep coming happily to shop from you. 

Experts say that 80% of what a business earns is from 20% of the prospects. In addition, the cost of acquiring a new buyer is much more than keeping an existing prospect satisfied and happy. Around 80% of companies believe that retaining customers is much cheaper than acquiring new ones, which is only possible by pumping more money into marketing. 

Even if you've apportioned a hefty marketing budget, grabbing attention and tempting new prospects to respond with action is just the start. You need much more than this. You may want to think long-term and focus on building an enduring relationship with your customers. So, you both stay connected and mutually benefit each other!

What Is Relationship Marketing?

Relationship marketing could be defined as building strong relations with customers to benefit each other. Relationship marketing is possible through building brand trustworthiness. It centers on providing quality service and products to customers. 

Customers after perceiving the brand as a quality service provider are likely to spread positive word of mouth, which in turn, will help the brand to communicate a positive brand image and attract more prospects. The idea behind relationship marketing is to make your customers feel special. Make them realize that you care for them! 

Why Relationship Marketing?

You may want to stick to relationship marketing tactics to boost your business. Investing in your existing customers can grow your sales and profitability to an astonishing level. Unbelievable? 

Well, a survey conducted by Harvard Business Review revealed that brands that had grown their customer retention by only 5 percent, had accumulated 25-95% more profits. A quarter to a whopping double growth! 

In addition, as an e-commerce brand, you do count on customer satisfaction. However, you don't only have to navigate your prospects effortlessly to help them fulfill their needs. Instead, you ought to keep them happy and give rise to a promising, and enduring relationship. 

Happy customers will always turn to you for future purchases. Plus, the online competition is stiff. So, you have to keep your customers fully happy. Their feedback is your key to e-commerce growth. Make sure your service and quality outweigh all alternates in your customer's eyes. 

Besides, working with relationship marketing strategies allows you to make smooth transitions. Your new services and products are most likely to be purchased by the top 20% of your existing customers. So, consider strengthening ties with them. 

Tips For Building Powerful Customer Relations 

Tips to Building Powerful Customer Relations

We have compiled some powerful relationship marketing ideas to help you boost your e-commerce business. By following this guide, you can be certain that you will not only attract the best customers but develop a bunch of highly profitable prospects within no time!

Enhance Web-Design And Shopping Experience

When we talk about the fundamentals of relationship marketing, it is essential to know that the service and product need to be tailored to suit the likes of the customer. You may want to enhance the design or work more on the outlook of your website. A web page that has an aesthetic landing page has the potential to create a powerful impression. Moreover, to connect with customers on a more personal level. 

You may want to use 'Welcome Back', 'Miss You', to remind the customers that they have landed on your site before. In addition to this, you may want to ignite the shopping experience with the most amazing products and offers. There's no shortcut to quality relationships with customers without providing an amazing shopping experience.

It's the shopping experience that will make your customers keep coming back. So, include a range of products, get the variety, and ensure that you have quality customer support available to address all the concerns of your customers and fulfill their demands seamlessly! 

While focusing on creating an amazing shopping experience, you may want to focus on mobile-friendly design. Also, if possible, you may want to have your own mobile app. Shoppers online have moved on to the mobile platform and the traffic on a mobile device is ever-increasing. 

You don't want to miss out on this. So, make a mobile-friendly design your top priority!

Besides, your next focus should be on after-sales service. Your relationship and the responsibilities that come with it do not end with the deal being closed by the customer. 

You ought to take feedback for the quality of the product or service. That's how you commit to a profitable customer relationship. So, another important tip is to show interest in the feedback of your clients. 

Increase Social Media Presence

Having an E-commerce store is not all. Your brand authenticity speaks from your social presence. Brands that have social media presence today are seen as the most trustworthy and doing perfectly. Social media is where you connect with customers and build strong relationships. 

Remember, the social media presence of your brand is the essence of successful relationship marketing. Setting up social media campaigns will help you to connect with a larger audience and market boldly. Plus, connecting with customers through social media also allows you to benefit from their word-of-mouth.

New prospects reading reviews by peers, friends, or recommendations from influencers on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook will certainly draw forward to check the brand and take action. 

Besides, to strengthen relationships, you can leverage the power of social media to increase the popularity of your loyalty programs too. Apart from this, social media use might really help you to boost your e-commerce business.

You can read our guide on "Ecommerce Social Media Marketing" to learn how to make your social presence and use social media for growing your e-commerce Shopify Store. 

Personalization

Another key focus is personalization. Your marketing efforts need to be more personalized. Also, remember that personalizing is also not only limited to the home page. Allowing personalizing themes and notifications will also draw the customer more towards the brand, thus allowing you the chance to strengthen the bond.  

You can collect data from your customers and analyze it to recommend the products that would intrigue them the most. You can address the customer by their name. This really helps and communicates a powerful message to the reader! 

Roll Out A Loyalty Program

Reward programs are what shopaholics look for. Exciting discounts and amazing offers are what they search for. You may want to roll out a loyalty program as more than 60% of customers are more likely to make purchases from a brand that approaches them. 

In addition, given the stiff competition in e-commerce, you may want to value the loyalty of your customers and provide them with special discounts. The shopping experience for online shopping could be better enhanced with the rollout of a loyalty program.

Distribute reward points and entice your customers to purchase more by announcing amazing discounts. You can also consider setting up tiers for loyal to most loyal customers. So, rely on loyalty programs to enhance customer satisfaction and strengthen relationships with your clients.

Perform Targeted Email Marketing

Perform targeted Email Marketing

Addressing with names could also be a powerful tactic when performing targeted ecommerce email marketing. When addressed with a name in an email, your prospect is likely to show interest and respond positively. Besides, remember, you ought to focus on the most relevant bunch of prospects and tap them intelligently. 

You can't afford to waste resources on seemingly uninterested people. Instead of going all out and investing in bulk email marketing efforts. Be more specific and targeted. Seek out customers who are interested in your services. Use email marketing to launch promotional offers on products your prospects have shown interest in buying. Send emails of reminders for season clearance sales and others. So, be specific and targeted with email marketing! 

Make Your Customers Feel Special

One of the best relationship marketing ideas is to make your customers feel that they are dearest of customers to your brand. 

This may seem difficult, but efforts could get you gold! Consider wishing birthdays with an email to your top customers or sending them birthday cards on their birthday. 

Also, you can ask them of their favorite colors and send them their orders in packages with their favorite colors. You can include ribbons of their favorite colors wrapped on the package or write a handwritten note. Remember, all this effort may seem like a lot of hard work. But, it all counts as nurturing a strong bond between the customer and the brand. Plus, it's all about being different in service!

Conclusion

In conclusion, relationship marketing is possible through building brand trustworthiness. It centers on providing quality service and products to customers.  We hope this post has helped you understand the importance of relationship marketing for your e-commerce store.

For further queries and feedback, feel free to use the comments section below. We'd love to hear back!

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Ricky Hayes

Ricky Hayes is the CEO at Debutify. He is a passionate entrepreneur running multiple businesses, marketing agencies, and mentoring programs.

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