Background
The client was a successful eCommerce business with nearly $1,000,000 monthly revenue. They had consistent daily active customers but they were not growing their business at the pace they were looking for. They had identified that they had two main problems. They were not hitting daily registration targets, and they believed their retentions were not quite where they wanted it to be (the eternal problem for even the most successful of businesses). They offered a more niche product that their target audience was passionate about, but because they offered mostly commoditized goods they were not well differentiated versus their competitors and had no strong unique value that a customer couldn’t get from a competitor.
Challenge
The customer did not have a developed lifecycle marketing system, and the marketing automation system they used did not capture the analytic information that was needed. Previous marketing efforts had been focused on email messaging only and messages were sent in an inconsistent fashion with little segmentation or personalization for the user.
Solution
My strategy was to create a basic lifecycle automation messaging system that took users from first registration, walked them through basic content and how to navigate and use the website, and build specific milestones throughout the customer lifecycle. From registration -> 1st purchase -> 1st purchase follow up -> 2nd purchase -> 2nd purchase follow up -> 3rd purchase -> loyalty & advocacy. This was broken down into a few different automation programs aligned to these lifecycle stages but also using a stand-alone program built to measure inactivity and specifically engage inactive users and bringing customers back to the site to make further purchases. Finally, an additional monthly calendar was developed that sent out standalone newsletter-like messages that included a targeted high-value promotional offer. This offer was large enough to catch the attention of their customers, but was dynamic and personalized, and based on where the customer was in their lifecycle they would get a unique offer that made sense for them to progress them forward in the expected customer life cycle (i.e. from 1st purchase to 2nd purchase). I also recommended moving to another automation platform and outlined why the current platform had shortcomings based on a lack of data capture and missing analytic information.
Results
Within months of launching our lifecycle automation program initiatives, this customer saw a large uplift in returning customers making additional purchases. Within a 12-month period purchases from inactive users had increased by 267% in January 2021 & 387% in February 2021. With the restructured email system and the reallocated promotional offers, there was an increase in promotional offer costs (+23%) but this was more than made up for with the increase in raw purchase revenue, and the client was very happy with the net revenue from these additional sales.
More remarkably, when we launched the monthly targeted high-value promotional offer there was consistent growth each month the offer was given. One that grew from the momentum of the previous month. Customers were coming back and we were building a behavioral pattern of making 1 or more purchases each month as this program was designed to target those previous customers who had not made a purchase in the last 21+ days and tiered the offers given based on how far it had been since their last purchase, and where they were in the expected customer lifecycle. This eCommerce retailer had been stuck with a consistent threshold of unique monthly purchases that held steadily month over month for the last 2 years. Within 3 months of our launch of this consistent monthly offer we started to see the first signs that the cycle was breaking, and in January & February 2021 they reached a new all-time monthly high for unique monthly purchasers. This also translated into February being the new all-time revenue month, which is wildly out of the norm for an eCommerce retailer which has historically seen their best performing months during the Nov/Dec holiday season.
Learnings
Our main take-aways from this project was how powerful a consistent message & offer can be to shape customer behaviour and bring them back to the brand. With the right tools & expertise to build accurate segmentation, I was able to target valuable customers that had shown engagement with the brand, bring them back to the site with a powerful offer, and consistently perform this exercise for 6 months thereby growing the wallet-share the brand had with customers and build a behavioral pattern to turn these inactive customers into loyal monthly customers who made consistent purchases.
If your business could benefit from an advanced segmentation engine with a personalized lifecycle marketing strategy and you are looking for an expert digital marketing to understand your business and build a unique tailored solution for your brand get in touch with me and let’s chat about how I can provide a solution for your business.