How to Retain Your Shoppers After the BFCM

You went through tough shopping-frenzy days and successfully made it through the BFCM. However, hard work is not over, and it’s time to think about how to retain your shoppers after the BFCM. Retaining your seasonal shoppers might not be an easy task, but retaining a customer is always more cost-effective than acquiring a new one.  

According to a Shopify report, for 64% of merchants, shoppers acquired during the BFCM have a lower lifetime value, rather than those acquired at any other time of the year. 

It is essential to make sure that your customer will stick around after big sales and return to your business for the next purchase. There are different strategies that you could implement to retain those customers. In this article, we will talk about five strategies that can help you retain your BFCM shoppers. Let’s dive in!

Loyalty and Rewards Specials

It is essential to keep the holiday shoppers engaged with your brand and run a double point week in January to keep their life-time value high. It will encourage shoppers to stay loyal to your brand. 

Additionally, reward your customers with extra points when they are visiting your website during January sales. You can offer a gift with purchase or a free item for customers making their orders during January or February. 

You probably know what it feels like to have the loyalty points expired in your favorite shop. Many customers do not like it when their points expire; therefore, credit loyalty and rewards points to your customers. Make sure that you credit them enough points to get their next reward. 

Introduce Tiers

Over 70% of customers say that they will stay with a brand offering a good loyalty and rewards program. Adding tiers to your Loyalty program can be an engaging way to retain your holiday shoppers. Create a branded loyalty program with customized triers and creatively name your points. Many companies have successful tier-based loyalty programs. 

For instance, Uniqso has launched a personalized tier program with unique names to keep its customers engaged and increase the retention rate. Uniqso’s customers can earn a point for every purchase and claim their rewards when they move up the ladder. Additionally, customers get notified once they moved up a tier or have available rewards to redeem. 

Generally, loyalty programs offer more generous rewards in the higher tiers for their customers. To engage the most “at-risk” customers, you could bump them up a tier in your loyalty program. When the customer discovers that they have been moved up in a tier will increase their chances of staying with your brand.

Run Email Campaigns

In building a relationship with your customers, it’s necessary to launch your campaigns with great email ideas. Start with a “thank you” email and confirm their purchase. Set up post-purchase loyalty and rewards emails where customers can see how many points they gained from their purchase and how close they are to their next tier. By doing this, you will build a relationship and trust with your customer and increase their likelihood to stay loyal to your brand.

Also, send your customers reminder emails about their loyalty and rewards member status whenever they receive a reward. It is essential to keep a conversation going and engage with your holiday shoppers. Focus on sending your customers simple reminder emails with one clear CTA to encourage them to redeem their points. 

Unlike promotional emails such as “Get 15% OFF”, reward emails have different psychology and remind them not to forget to redeem what they worked for to earn. It is essential to keep loyalty and rewards emails personalized to your customers. You can use several email marketing app to achieve this, such as Klaviyo or Omnisend.

Retargeting Ads

Launching retargeting ads for your BFCM shoppers can be a great way to stay on top of customers' minds upon Christmas and New Year sales. You could do so by placing a Facebook pixel on your store. Start sending retargeting ads to the customers that reached a checkout page on your store. You do not need a huge budget to start your retargeting campaigns. You could start with a small budget for your ads and grow it once you see that you accomplish your goals. 

If you launch a new sale, promote it to your customers to get the advantage of deals. Send your BFCM shoppers an announcement of a new product that they might be interested in purchasing. Offer your shoppers a limited time coupon if it's hard to win them back. It will grab their attention and urge them to make a purchase. Additionally, you can use web push notifications to recover abandoned carts and encourage your customers to come back to your website and complete their purchase. You can use apps such as Omnisend, PushOwl, or Ako Retargeting to send notifications to your shoppers. 

Nobody likes to receive the same ad on every social media or website that they visit. Therefore, set up your ad frequency so that you will not overload your customers with a bunch of ads wherever they go. If your remarketing ads are too aggressive, your shoppers might not purchase again from your store in the future. 

Outstanding Customer Support

The hard work does not stop after making a sale; you will need to ensure that your customer stays satisfied with their experience with your brand. According to the Glance report, 78% of customers have backed out of purchase due to poor customer experience. Therefore, you will need to make sure that your customer support is top-notch and ready to answer any questions after the big-haul weekend. Hire extra staff if you think that you might need an extra hand in resolving your customers' issues if they occur. 

Train your customer support reps on how to communicate with customers. According to the Right Now report, 73% of customers fall in love with a brand and remain loyal because of a friendly support team. Set up processes and workflows for your team to follow to provide a consistent experience to your customers. 

To offer self-help to your customers, update your FAQs section, and answer all possible questions that they may ask. Alternatively, you can set up a chatbot on your website to answer basic questions or forward a request to a customer service rep. 

Wrapping Up

Retaining your seasonal shopper might not be easy. However, it is crucial to prepare ahead and put all your effort into turning them into loyal customers. If your strategy is planned right, you will retain tens or hundreds of new customers. We hope that this article helped you to get some ideas for your post BFCM strategy. 

Stay tuned for our future blog posts, and have a great one!