If there were any questions about whether e-commerce is here to stay or not, COVID 19- the global pandemic has put an end to that debate. E-commerce is widely popular, and the competition is immense. So, how can e-commerce businesses differentiate themselves in such a crowded space? Great customer service and experience, like that at a brick-and-mortar shop, isn’t always enough to keep customers coming back! You must go beyond mere customer service to aim for customer loyalty but how can brands with e-commerce businesses start this? But how to make your customers loyal?
The online marketplace is transforming due to the shutting down of physical stores and is encouraging potential customers to shop more routinely online. In the digital era, hundreds of e-commerce stores across the web sell appealing products with marvelous services. And the list of options that your customers have where they can explore and rejoice is ever-increasing, making it tough to retain customers for lengthy periods. So, if all you’re thinking about is how marketing can fix this, go for it. But, trust us, you’ll need much more to improve your retention and conversion rate. Well, it’s no rocket science. One of the best ways to survive the intense online competition is by creating a loyalty-driven e-commerce strategy for your business.
Why Loyalty Programs Have Become A Necessity For Ecommerce Businesses
E-tailers launch loyalty programs to encourage repeat business by rewarding customers for sticking with the brand. Loyalty programs are critical for e-com businesses as the cost of customer acquisition (CAC) is high. The same can be recouped only if the customer stays with the brand for a significant period of time (Customer Lifetime Value). Given the fierce competition in the digital landscape, building brand loyalty for e-commerce brands is challenging.
Challenge for eCom brands while planning an eCommerce Loyalty Program
Usually, loyalty programs rely heavily on DATA (like transactional, demographic, and behavioral data ) to reward customers on a real-time basis, provide the ideal customer experience, and run relevant coupons, campaigns, etc. All this data is readily available to eCom businesses. However, the biggest challenge here would be transmitting this data to the loyalty layer seamlessly.
Ecom platforms are inherently complex tech infrastructures with multiple third-party integrations. If brands opt for another integration, especially with a third-party loyalty platform, it would be time-consuming and challenging. It may also potentially slow-down overall site speeds, resulting in loss of business. Hence, e-commerce businesses need a platform that offers a native loyalty layer that ensures minimal challenges in integration, and without impacting the existing business operations.
The Future: An integrated e-commerce and loyalty platform
Repeat customers have a higher lifetime value, which means that you can predict a high return on investment over the customer’s projected buying time with your brand.
| For example, if you spent $10 to earn a new customer and you know that over the course of time, they are likely to spend about $500 with your brand, then you’ve got a great lifetime value to CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) ratio! |
The most significant benefit of a loyalty program is that it has the potential to align your whole business with your most profitable customer segment. Successful e-commerce businesses are aware of the need for launching a customer loyalty program. With an objective to minimize implementation risks, they are looking out for full-stack e-commerce providers who offer an integrated CRM + E-commerce solution. Capillary’s Anywhere Commerce+ with its full-stack e-commerce model (native platform + growth marketing + operations management) helps businesses make E-commerce work. . Successful brands are increasingly focusing on building their brand and owning the customer relationship while entrusting e-commerce to full-stack partners such as Capillary’s Anywhere Commerce+.
The combination of integrated CRM and full-stack e-commerce proves to be significantly beneficial for marketing & loyalty management teams as they can drive a seamless customer journey, unleash full platform capabilities due to native integration of loyalty and e-commerce layers, and reduce time-to-go live. Further, businesses can also shorten the learning curve as the integrated CRM and full-stack e-commerce partners such as Capillary’s Anywhere Commerce+ bring onboard significant intellectual properties gained from running E-commerce and loyalty for leading brands across multiple geographies. Also, it is cost-effective due to the bundled nature of the offering.
At Capillary, we’ve helped marquee retail clients like Indian Terrain – a leading men’s fashion brand, in integrating their e-commerce & loyalty layers to drive tremendous growth in a very short time. “The partnership with Capillary to deploy a full-stack e-commerce solution has been very successful to help us scale up very quickly as customers move to a digital environment. The uniqueness of this model is that it allows us as a company to focus on brand, product, marketing and consumer understanding while quickly scaling up e-commerce with all operations being managed by Capillary. This ECO-SaaS( EComm Solution as a Service) will offer brands and retailers a very quick and efficient pathway to scaling up their e-commerce businesses,” Charath Narasimhan, CEO, Indian Terrian.
Watch the video here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlHOtcTagBE
Unveil the entire success story of Indian Terrain here.
