Customer loyalty may be reaching an all-time low in traditional methods, which is why new ones have become so instrumental for customer retention. Although many businesses attempt to use loyalty cards as a shortcut for customer retention, these loyalty cards may be cutting needed revenue due to loyalty discounts rarely being necessary to close a deal or due to perceived lack of value to customers. While loyalty cards have the potential to hurt brick and mortar stores, online transparency is doing the same to customer retention for e-commerce. Today, people are comparing prices online with ease and rather than choosing a loyal brand; they’re choosing the best price and how can you blame them? While advancing technology has created the problem in customer retention and loyalty, it is also the solution.
Personalization Leads to Loyal Customers
Customers switch between websites to find the best deals; it’s your job to create the best deal suited to their needs that continually gains customers’ interests. Personalization in e-commerce includes a multitude of offers and formats. This includes but is not limited to:
- Product pricing.
- Special offers.
- Landing page images.
- Product pages.
- Amount of text on the page.
- Free shipping or free 2-day shipping.
- Product promotions.
If you’re wondering how businesses decide how to give different offers, there are also multiple factors involved in this. For example, the type of device a person is using may alter the price. It’s a known fact that iPhone users tend to spend more than Android users when it comes to mobile shopping. In fact, according to a report from IBM Commerce, nearly 40% of all online traffic the day after Thanksgiving came from iOS, Apple's mobile operating system for iPhones and iPads, while only 17.3% came from Android. Another factor in determining offers is the zip code of the online shopper. This information helps uncover potential spending habits of the customer, but also whether free 2-day shipping is a viable offer based on the distance and shipping costs. Although there are many factors involved, businesses make sure not to discriminate based on race, gender or religion.
Gamification Acts as a Motivator for Customers
Merriam-Webster defines gamification as “the process of adding games or gamelike elements to something (as a task) so as to encourage participation.” Gamification in business can be key in cross-channel loyalty as well as an intrinsic and extrinsic motivator for the customer. Typically, gamification in business is used for increasing the productivity of employees, but it is also used to promote customer retention and communication through competition, strong behavioral cues, and compelling narratives.
Although you may not have noticed gamification in these companies, it is both prevalent and successful:
Nike+
In 2006, Nike developed Nike+, a way to track running distance, speed and time as well as monitor users’ progress. It also allows users to compete with others’ running distances on leaderboards over different time frames. When Nike launched Nike+, they controlled 47% of the running shoe market, but in 2007 this number became 57% and then 61% in 2009. Between 2007 and 2013, Nike+ members grew from 500,000 to 11,000,000. In this case, gamification worked wonders for Nike and the running community.
Coca-Cola’s Chok! Chok! Chok!
In 2012, Coca-Cola released its most successful advertisement in 35 years in Hong Kong, China. The “chok” entails of viewers using their smartphones to “chock” bottle caps flying across TV screens. Catching the cap on the screen allows users to earn points that can later be used for sweepstakes entries. Within a day, the app became the number one app in the App Store and within a month, the app was downloaded 380,000 times. Altogether, this ad exceeded 9 million views, whether it was on TV, YouTube or Weibo.
Gamification can be the perfect way to not only retain customers but obtain new leads and create ads that work. Check out more examples of businesses using gamification and give gamification a try for your business today!
According to Gartner Group, a 5 percent increase in customer retention can increase business profits by anywhere between 25 percent and 125 percent. With customer retention being such an important factor to profits, give these innovative methods a try to increasing your business’s profits today!
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