customer acquisition and retention

Online retailers, no matter what their industry, share one common denominator: to sell products/services. However, consumers now have a 21st century attitude to any sales pitch: they demand better customer service and are certainly more selective about who they give their business to. Online retailers cannot ignore this fact and need to adapt quickly or see their customers move to competitors.

Driving Customers to your Site
The first objective in customer acquisition should be driving customers to your website. This can be done in a number of ways (listed below) but one key element which is overlooked on many sites is:
Update your website often (daily /weekly).

Keep the homepage looking fresh. You won’t be enticing customers to view your store if it looks the same as the last time they visited.

Word of mouth marketing – people recommending their site to friends/family via conversation, internet blogs, email etc.

Viral Marketing:

Driving people to the site via online games. Regular internet and email users regularly receive “Friday afternoon emails” which, whilst hidden as work avoidance, also build brand awareness and do drive traffic to the website.
Recently, The One Account released a viral marketing game aimed at those looking to re-mortgage. It is based on the old space invaders game where the space ship is a house and the bullets are actually smoke from the chimney.

Brand Awareness:

People visit a website in search of the individual brand name i.e. Levis, Barclaycard, American Express etc. Brand building exercises are driven by offline marketing as well as online marketing. It is normal for a retailer to have a multiple pronged marketing strategy involving both online and offline marketing. But this falls flat – and can harm a brand seriously – if the web site is not easy to use and does not offer solutions, services and products required.

Paid for search
Bidding on keywords with search engines like Google.com so your adverts are only shown to those people who are already looking for your products/services.

Sponsored Search Words – Google.com
Natural Search
Having a listing on the first or second page of a natural search is a major objective of most online retailers. Web surfers rarely go beyond the second or third page preferring to refine their search and search again.

One of the ways in which websites are ranked is by how much content their website has. The more ‘relevant content’ the site contains the better the chances it has of outperforming competitors.

Natural Search Engine Results – Google.com
In financial services there are websites known as ‘aggregators’ – a web based comparison service where a consumer can research multiple providers for a personal loan, credit card etc.
e.g. www.motleyfool.co.uk and www.moneysupermarket.com

Many companies i.e. Abbey National (website = abbey.com) provide special rates to attract customers online. A personal loan rate may differ from the rate that is received in branches.

A personal loan with an internet only rate from Abbey.com
Servicing a customer
Websites may not provide a meeter/greeter when a potential customer visits the site although this can and should be set up for registered customers. However, the website still needs to provide excellent first-time customer service.
Some websites like amazon.co.uk require existing customers to register before they purchase. This offers the retailer the ability to add that personal touch: ‘Welcome back, Mr Smith. Last time you bought ________ book – perhaps you would be interested in newly launched _________ book’ i.e. develop targeted marketing campaigns. This can maximise the revenue generated.

The acquisition and retention of consumers should be embedded into the strategic goals of any online retailer. Web pages should be considered as valuable retail space; pages which confuse or are not adding value or generating revenue must be adjusted or removed.
Retention / Revisit exercises
The online retailer has the opportunity to take an individual’s contact details and store information on past purchases e.g. Amazon. However, what does the retailer do when the customer does not visit for a period of time?
The retailer prompts the consumer to return. Perhaps by an email:
“Hello. We’ve not seen you visit our website for a little while. Would you be interested in hearing about a special deal we’ve got on televisions?”
If the consumer does not come back after receiving the above email then the retailer could re-email the consumer with a targeted special offer.
“Come back to our website and get £30 off a new microwave when you purchase £50 of your favourite popcorn” (which was a previous purchase of the consumer).

Another way of persuading the consumer to re-visit is by sending a targeted customer survey (available from www.confirmit.com). This can ask the customer why he/she has not used their website and can then implement changes in accordance with customers’ wishes. This can be a subtle mixture of market research and offering the customer what he/she wants, underlining the company’s respect for that customer’s opinion.
Initiatives should be in place for attracting customers to the site and servicing them and showing them they are valued when they are there. Customers will not revisit a site where products are hard to receive or where “value-added” elements are not available.

For example, a European based in-car entertainment provider would benefit [i.e. increase customer base, customer spend] by providing chat-rooms for individuals who modify their cars - best practices in installing did screens into the headrests of seats, errors made and reported to warn other people either in a chat-room or on a product blog. This sense of community would certainly put the brand directly in front of those who have the highest propensity to purchase. This could be maintained for a fraction of the cost of annual direct marketing campaigns.

Summary
To summarise, the basic rules of marketing are totally applicable to the web site. Value your customers, make the website relevant to the customer and, ideally, make the website interactive and responsive to the wide variety of customers who will use it. The young single, the silver surfer will have different needs and differing practical approaches to onscreen information and offers. But both categories are valuable potential customers. The web site has the ability to offer a one-to-one relationship with customers. Ask customers what they want from the brand and give them a sense of belonging.