While it’s great to always strive for new customers and place some focus on acquisition, there is a huge opportunity with one-time buyers. These customers have already engaged and bought from you, so the next purchases should get increasingly easier and less expensive from there.
Watch the full webinar recording above or read summaries of the discussion and key take-outs below.
Head of Digital Marketing, The National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS)
Aisha shared how a recent research project to review a user journey across their website developed to become a full omni-channel review of every customer touchpoint.
The charity partnered with an agency and used focus groups, surveys and digital data. They have now created multiple user journeys and personas and gained insight that led them to start developing an MVP for an app, a chatbot and explore a range of user-centred services and products. They have big plans to create lifetime engagement with members, map the overlap between audiences and evolve to a more sophisticated segmentation and personalisation strategy.
Aisha is excited about the possibilities and strategic journey NDCS is taking.
- When people give to charity they want to feel good about themselves so use language that indicates generosity and kindness.
- People need to be able to trust the charities they donate to so it is vital for retention to think of ways to demonstrate they can trust you.
- Bring your audiences with you on the brand journey - make them a part of the story and create a community to increase loyalty.
VP Media & Publishing EMEA, MPP Global
To turn one-time buyers into repeat customers Ana said businesses need to consider their brand as their most valuable asset. They must develop recurring revenue streams around the brand focus, and in this way, organisations can create a sustainable future - customers will have more reasons to engage and build habits.
She emphasised that the relationship with customers must demonstrate a value exchange. Organisations must be able to communicate the value they offer in exchange for customers' data. She agreed with Aisha that trust is very important - if users trust the brand they will be happier to give their details and continue to engage in a relationship.
Ana also shared that personalisation and technology play an important role in retention and MPP have been experimenting with dynamic pricing and personalisation with lots of success for their clients.
- Encourage customers to build habits around your brand - the goal is to increase recency and frequency of engagement.
- Collect more first-party data and ask your customers for feedback - let them guide your product strategy.
- Look at how you can create a frictionless customer journey - one-click registration or express checkout are popular with Publishers.
Senior VP Mid-Market Business, Glassbox
Paul explained that digital customer experience is about to take over price and product in terms of the hierarchy of importance to customers - there is a huge opportunity for brands to gain competitive advantage in this space!
His experience at Glassbox has shown what really matters is the perception customers take away from each and every experience with a brand – be that on mobile, desktop, an app, chatbot etc.
Questions to ask are; is the process frictionless for your customers? Is it delightful? Experiences that elicit emotions will shape buying patterns and brand loyalty.
- Creating smooth digital experiences – and executing struggle-free, frictionless journeys for online customers is key to getting customers back to your website to make repeat purchases in the future.
- Glassbox is a great way to gather customer data, it can detail why customers are leaving, and the journeys across the website from repeat customers. This enables you to optimise every single part of the customer journey and increase customer lifetime value.
- When gathering first-party data, on average 2.5% of customers give their email on the checkout page for the right kind of incentive.
MD, Daydot
Osh explained the importance of understanding your customers. Your data tells you what customers are doing but it doesn’t tell you why! Brands need to find the right research tools, speak to their customers, and triangulate the different insights gathered to make a better experience for those customers.
It’s important to have a very clear prioritisation framework when looking at what elements to fix or test first in your customer journey. Brands need to think about: What is the impact of doing this test/fix? How complex is it going to be? What is the commercial impact? What’s the revenue impact?
Revenue impact and return on investment are important when you start looking at the digital customer journey. We often help new clients with a proof of concept first test. This helps build a business case for further investment in digital testing and an optimisation roadmap.
- If you don't have the biggest budget for the best tech and tool stack don't use this an excuse, get a better understanding of your customers using whatever tools you have available.
- Find out what motivates customers, what anxieties do they have, why do they come back, why are they using your products. Use some of these insights to better inform the way you communicate and deal with your customers.
- The first 30 days are crucial to encourage customers to build habits of engagement so look at your onboarding process of customers. This plays a key role in making sure that customers come back.