Keep ‘em coming back: The simple strategy you may be missing for customer retention

Everybody in ecommerce, marketing, or sales knows that it’s not just about the 1st sale–you want customers to come back—a lot. On the surface level, it seems fairly simple to understand why. #MoreMoney 💸

Return customers liked their first interaction with your company and product so much, they’ve returned to purchase from you a second time. There’s no set schedule to when they’ll return again, and they may only make one more purchase. 

Repeat customers are loyal customers who keep coming back again and again. Think of loyalty program members, monthly or yearly subscribers, punch pass users, or people who’ve had a great experience with you. This distinction, although subtle, is one that we need to get out of the way before we really dive deep. 

🤿 Put on that scuba gear, ‘cause here we go!

The impact of return customers

Repeat customers play a massive role in whether your business flies high like a majestic unicorn 🦄 or crashes and burns like a train wreck you can’t look away from. 

According to Alan E. Webber of Forrester Research, acquiring a new client costs five times more than retaining a current client.

Repeat customers spend more and have a higher average purchase value over time. A study by Bain & Company and Mainspring found that the longer customers maintained a relationship with an online retailer, the more they spent. 

For instance, in the apparel sector, repeat customers spent “67% more in months 31-36 than they did in the first six months. In groceries, spending increased by 23% over the same period.” The report continues, stating that in ecommerce apparel purchasing, a customer’s fifth purchase was 40% larger than their first, and the tenth was nearly 80% larger. Their spending increase was driven by more frequent shopping and larger transaction sizes.

Why do they come back and spend more?

Repeat customers like you. 🤗 You’ve provided value in your products and created a positive experience for them. They know they can count on you to deliver on your promises. They may love you and your brand so much that they become brand evangelicals and freely promote your brand. They’ll tell their friends and family and post about you on their blog or social media accounts, bringing in new customers. They’ll keep coming back and spend more money than new or “return” customers. 

So, the next question is, how do you create the best possible experience for your customers and gain their loyalty? There are many ways you can go about this, but since we’re an address company and this is our blog, let’s see how you can use address tools to make your customers as happy as dairy-free kids with an endless supply of coconut ice cream. 😋🥥🍦

Foster customer loyalty at three checkpoints

Use address tools to make a splash at a customer’s first purchase, renewal purchase, and in your products, services, and deals. 

At first purchase

Every customer wants to be treated like a king or queen. 👑 Roll out the red carpet and make every purchase step from your brand super easy. We live in a curated world. With technology embedded in our daily lives, your customers expect a smooth shopping experience. Yet, according to the Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate is 70.19% due to a complicated checkout process. 

Put yourself in a customer’s shoes. How often have you tried to buy something online only to be frustrated by a complex checkout process? Perhaps you're like us and inevitably begin yelling, "I just want to give you money. How hard does this have to be!" No wonder people abandon their carts.

Having an address autocomplete tool on your signup and/or billing forms can create a quick and positive checkout experience for your customers. Filling out the 5-7 address fields in most websites takes about 1-2 minutes. With autocomplete, customers can find their address within as few as 5 keystrokes from a drop-down menu, reducing their effort and decreasing input time to mere seconds. Whoo hooo! 🥳 

Not all autocompletes are created equal. If you want your customer’s orders to be sent to the correct location, choose an address autocomplete that only suggests verified addresses (locations that actually exist). It may sound strange, but some autocomplete tools have inaccurate data. To learn all the ins and outs of what to look for in an address autocomplete solution, check out this article. 

Now, diving into renewal.

At renewal

If your business model includes subscriptions (if it doesn’t, seriously consider adding that to your strategy), having your customers confirm their address information again when signing up for a subscription or during their renewal window makes sense, especially if they’re on an annual plan. Your customers understand; addresses change, and a lot can happen in a year. 📅

Autocomplete can be used again in this stage to suggest relevant addresses to your customers, but your main goal here isn’t driving them to checkout. There’s a faster and better user experience tool for this. Rather than making them type in anything, customers only have to press 1 button to confirm their data if you implement address verification. 🙌 Address verification will then double-check their information against an authoritative database to ensure it’s accuracy and validity.

Another added benefit of using address verification is that if a part of a customer’s address has changed without them knowing, address verification will catch it and correct it. For example, If the city renamed a street from "Dracula Lane" to "Transylvania Road," your customer won’t have to type in their address again. 🧛

A good address verification tool will know this and link the city name change to the address. If your customer has moved to a different city, state, or even a new country, providing USA or International address autocomplete now will build upon the already excellent customer experience you’ve created. 

Time to submerge into the next and final depth. You’re still good on oxygen, right?

In your products, services, and deals

When your loyal customer inevitably talks about your amazing and life-changing products, you’ll equally impress their friends and family by using address data to localize all of your products and services by geolocation.

Here's an example of what that looks like.

Sally tells everyone that you have the best lawn care on the planet. But Sally doesn’t live near her family and friends. She lives three states away from the people she loves ever since she married Steve, who she met online and moved after just 2 months of dating. Friends begged her to stay and to take things slower, but no. She insisted that Steve was her soul mate… even though her parents didn’t like him, her friends didn’t like him, and the neighbor's dog didn’t like him. Her mom tried to reason with her, but she packed up the essentials and moved to Wyoming because Steve dreamed of becoming a “Wind Wrangler” (someone who pretends to control or redirect wind gusts) at county fairs. Surprising only to her, after a few years, Steve left town to join a pyramid scheme disguised as a business opportunity. Now she's all alone with a house, two kids, no dog, and a huge lawn that’s getting browner by the minute. 🏡

Sally had more important things to worry about than her lawn until the neighborhood busybody very loudly stated that Sally was ruining everyone’s property value. She knew she had to do something. That’s when she found your website, which promised to bring her lawn back from the brick of death.

Your service was efficient and gave her one less thing to worry about. From the moment she found your website, you amazed her by providing easy-to-understand services with before and after photos of lawns of all shapes and sizes. Sally quickly found her address with your address autocomplete tool and was delighted to discover an exclusive discount offer for her area! 💰

Your technician arrived on time thanks to address verification, which ensured Sally’s address was valid and accurate) and US Rooftop Geocoding, which helped your teams plan effective routes and service areas. The technician detailed their proprietary process for fostering thriving grass and offered tips and hacks Sally could do herself if she wanted. In less than two weeks, her lawn was ready for her kids to play tag and jump through the sprinklers. Sally was elated. She signed up for a year-long service and excitedly shared her experience on social media.   

Luckily, your business is nationwide. So when Sally shared her story, anyone who gave your brand a try will receive curated deals in their areas and experience your always excellent service. Noice! 🌟

Conclusion

You may feel a little dizzy as you resurface from our deep dive into using address data to build customer loyalty. That was a lot of information. Thankfully, our stellar support team can help clarify any questions that may have arisen due to the change in pressure.

Of course, there are so many ways businesses can encourage return customers, but it really comes down to providing the perfect customer experience, and using address tools can help you do just that.

As Bain & Company and Mainspring said, “The company that over-invests in marketing or advertising at the expense of fulfillment and basic site functionality may succeed in drawing customers to its site, only to lose them forever.”

Smarty excels in providing legendary support and simple US & international address autocomplete tools to help you create repeat customers. With the right tools in place, your organization will delight your customers, earn their devotion, and get them coming back again and again.