How To Develop Customer Retention Strategies
Customer retention is important for any business, traditional or online. If you are planning to start a home-based business that involves drop shipping, it is important to think of strategies to retain your customers. Attracting customers in an online business is a difficult task and involves application of specific strategies. Once you have a steady customer base, getting them to visit your site and order from you repeatedly is crucial for the success of your online venture.Choosing to sell niche products is one way you can hope to get repeat visits from your clients. However, only the right type of niche product can do the trick for you. Contrary to common perception, niche products are not drying up. Every product has a specific growth phase. Once that phase is over, it settles into a steady growth graph. Your endeavor should be to identify products that have the potential to register growth continuously.Is your product list dominated by one-time purchase-type products? In that case, you are not exactly headed in the right direction. They might qualify as niche products, but these are not going to be beneficial for your business if your customer is going to come back for purchase after a few months or years. Of course, if there are add-on products or replacement parts to be sold, it might make a slight difference. But, generally such products are not the right type for a home-based drop shipping-driven business.Products that need rapid replacement-ideally every 30 days or so-are the best products to sell online. Such products will help you get repeat visits from your clients more frequently. There is every possibility that on such frequent visits they might be attracted to some newer products displayed on your website. Products that need to be replaced more frequently should make up the major portion of your product list. It is one of the best strategies to help retain existing customers.Another great way to retain customers is to engage them. Communicating with them and letting them know that they are valuable to your business is a good customer retention strategy. Engaging your customers sends out a very strong message that you care for their opinion and value their orders. You can even involve them in helping you find ways to serve them better. Customers who are made to feel that they are a part of your company will definitely develop a deeper sense of attachment and belonging. They are most likely to order their products from a company that makes them feel good and important.Engaging customers undoubtedly increases their loyalty toward the company. It helps establish a natural connection where the customers are more likely to listen to your sales pitch and strategies. Research in this field has proved that an affinity develops when you employ the strategy of engaging your clients.The strategy can work both ways. As a supplier you can also have direct insights into your customers’ needs and requirements. You can incorporate these suggestions into your product selection and supply process to keep your clients happy and coming back to you repeatedly.
