Customers are faced with many opportunities to buy from brands with similar products as more merchants keep entering the subscription market in huge numbers. Providing customers with various options might be one way to increase retention, but another key element to retention is personalization. This is so your customers can handle the options.

What Is E-Commerce Personalization?

E-Commerce personalization is a process that involves tailoring recommendations, content, and offers in a way that customers understand. This is usually driven by individual preferences based on customer data, demographics, browsing behavior, and purchase history.

In other words, E-Commerce personalization is a way of suggesting, recommending, and offering products that customers will be interested in and more likely to buy. This way, shoppers will be more satisfied as they only have to search for what they want. This process is helpful to both businesses and customers.

5 Ways E-Commerce Personalization Can Increase Retention

eCommerce websites can be personalized in many ways so customers can have unique personal experiences.

Personalization’s benefits include generating customer loyalty, which in turn leads to retention. Below are five ways that adding E-Commerce personalization can increase retention.

1. Provide customers with flexible options

Keeping customers engaged and excited as an online business owner can be challenging. This is in addition to developing strategies to increase customer retention and reduce churn. Customers may have accumulated your products because they have not used them much. It could also be that they are tired of using a particular flavor or product.

For all these, there is the risk of churning, especially when there are no options to customize the customer experience. You can avoid this by giving your customers options to swap out a product, skip a shipment, or add a product to their regular order.
This way, customers feel they are in control and valued. Since every subscriber craves a personalized experience, your customers are likely to keep buying from you, resulting in increased retention.

2. Make use of zero-party data

Zero-party data offers many opportunities to E-Commerce businesses. However, you must understand the data you collect and their sources before acting on them. There is first-party data, second-party data, and third-party data.

• First-party data: This is the traditional data collected from customers through the filling of forms. The information collected here may include the customer’s address, phone number, and email address, as well as their web activity and demographic information.
• Second-party data: This data is often collected through data marketplaces or from a trusted partner. Second-party data differs from first-party data only through the collection means.
• Third-party data: This data can provide snapshots of industry insights and market trends despite being the most removed. However, it is the least reliable even if it helps understand the market’s wider preference.

The customer preferentially offers the uniqueness of zero-party data. It differs from first-party because the customer proactively offers the data, and the data collected from customers can create product customization to improve customer experience.

3. Provide offerings

Providing offerings at different stages of the customer’s purchase process can help increase customer retention. A customer might have decided to get a product from you but chose not to follow through after researching your E-Commerce site or another website. As a business owner, this must be avoided.

The key to ensuring this does not happen is to provide your customers with information and valuable content from start to finish. However, do not linearly present this information. A great way of capturing your customers’ interest is by having content on your website that educates and speaks to your customer base in a meaningful way.

By providing them with enough resources, you show up in their browsing history and eventually become a trusted source of information. This helps whether they are aware of your offering or have not heard of it.

4. Communicate with customers through different avenues

It’s crucial to produce personalized content for your readers, whether you’re using your marketing automation tool to send emails or an SMS service to send messages. Online retailers have long relied on email communication as their preferred method of correspondence, but due to the daily deluge of emails that the average consumer receives, they sometimes need help finding them.

Offering customers different ways to hear from you is a great way to boost sales and build brand loyalty by getting people involved with your business.

As soon as your customers have specified how they would like to be contacted, you should also ensure that you are providing them with content specifically tailored to their preferences to make them feel special. Your target audience will be reached by personalization through communication, which will help to maintain their loyalty and retention.

5. Create personalized retargeting campaigns

It’s crucial to personalize your website. So, when creating your retargeting campaigns, you must decide how to give your customers a personalized experience. You should have systems to target visitors once they leave your website to continue engaging with them, for instance, if they visit your online store and browse a very specific range of products.

When developing personalized marketing campaigns, it can be difficult to strike the right balance between being too creepy and being exactly on point. Giving customers a deal directly related to the selections they were looking at is a great way to re-engage them.

Conclusion

The E-Commerce industry will keep expanding, so brands will need to develop inventive and distinctive experiences to keep customers. Personalizing products and customization can take you far. The real differentiation lies in creating a tailored shopping experience at each stage; your content, data use, and engagement opportunities will further encourage subscriber loyalty and retention.