In almost every business, the key to ongoing success is building solid, long-lasting relationships with your customers. Of all the approaches you can adopt to encourage customer loyalty, relationship marketing is among the most effective.

What is relationship marketing?

Essentially, relationship marketing is a business strategy that focuses on customer retention, experience, satisfaction and lifetime customer value. Relationship marketing entails connecting with current customers and acquiring new customers through a combination of value-driven sales and advertising.

Relationship marketing builds brand awareness, fosters customer retention and makes your brand your customers’ foremost choice. The key to relationship marketing is helping in establishing a conversation with your customers.

Relationship marketing is different from traditional marketing. In transactional marketing, the customer might purchase but there is no guarantee that the customer will come back. Whereas relationship marketing focuses on increasing sales by fostering repeat customers.  

Given the power of relationship marketing in eCommerce, here are some tips to leverage it for your online business.

Tailor your information as per customer needs

You have to research your customers before you implement a campaign to make sure it resonates with your audience. Try and understand what your customers need and what they are interested in, so you can use that knowledge to give them valuable information. Assess what content your audience is interested in and what medium you have to employ to get your message across. For instance, some people are interested in reading blogs, while others are into marketing guides, videos and podcasts

Make your content engaging and use the right tone. Will humour work or is the need of the hour fact-based hard-hitting content? Be as interactive as you can be.

Use email marketing

Research shows that the median e-mail marketing ROI is 122%. That’s an incredible return on investment and is four times higher than any other digital marketing channel. A personalised e-mail marketing strategy has the power to build long-lasting bonds with your prospects.

A good way to keep in touch with customers is through e-mail newsletters. You could include in your newsletter important updates, promotions, contests, sales, and more. This strategy keeps your audience engaged and ensures top of mind recall for your store

Leverage easy-to-use, mobile-friendly designs to ensure that your e-mails get opened, clicked and shared.

Have a strong brand identity

To keep people excited and engaged, you must have a strong brand identity. Your customers must know why they should buy from you instead of looking elsewhere.

You have to make it easy for customers to be able to differentiate you from other brands and show them why they should pick your product. It all starts with the fundamental branding elements such as the slogans, logo, and unique selling propositions. Your sales and customer service must be exceptional. Make sure that you also deliver on every promise you make.

Create a loyalty programme

To boost customer retention, loyalty programmes play a vital role. As per a study by Accenture, 77% of consumers participate in a retail loyalty programme, so it’s an avenue worth exploring. Awards, points systems and VIP access passes are all effective loyalty pass models, and when delivered with personalised content, lead to good results.

Everybody likes to be recognised and rewarded for being a loyal customer. When you give your customers a reason to go back to your store, you increase sales.

Also read: How to create a strong loyalty programme for your customers?

Follow up after-sales

Once your customer makes a purchase at your store, ensure that you follow up to assess if they are satisfied with your service or not. You can request customers to give feedback, review or answer a survey. This will help you improve your overall customer experience.

Customer experience counts

According to a study, 70% of buying experiences are based on how a customer feels they are being treated. One must keep the customer at the centre when creating all content, ideas and campaigns. The Customer Experience (CX) entails offering a consistently impeccable experience across all channels and touchpoints.

Personalised social media strategies

Social media is critical to forging long-term bonds with your target customers. You need to conduct adequate research into your competitor’s strategy, your industry and how your audience interacts with other brands. Get to know your customers through analytical and industry research and based on this build social media campaigns that will engage, inspire and convert.

An effective way of ensuring your content is tailored to your customers is by creating accurate buyer personas.

In present times, a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy will no longer work. You need to create something personal, valuable, and unique to attract the right customers to your eCommerce business. Follow these relationship marketing tips to achieve lasting success in your business.

Also read: 3 Digital Mediums You Should Prioritise to Boost Your Sales

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