As mentioned before, in order to achieve customer retention, an online store has to build up its own membership system so that customers can obtain the latest information and earn the unique special offers. Some may question–can an online store have VIP members just like the physical stores? What then, is the difference between the two of them?
Besides retaining customers, delivering the latest product information and special offers, collecting views and improving existing products, many of you might not be aware of the most important reason in using the membership system. It is mainly for the purpose of collecting customers’ digital footprints.
Why do I need to collect customers’ emails and digital footprint?
1. Retargeting Advertising
For example, let’s say that there are several customers who have visited your online store. However, they did not purchase any of the products due to the variety of reasons (in which we shall not list). When you run an advertisement on Facebook, you can, in fact, select this group of customers as your audience and attract them to enter your stores and purchase again.
2. Lookalike audience
Once you collect the email and digital footprint of customers, you can find similar audiences on Facebook of same interests, ages and sexes etc. Even if certain groups of them have never visited your online store before, you could still reach them by retargeting advertisements.
The above can accomplish customer retention, customer acquisition, as well as boosting the sales and brand image building.
After collecting the data of customers and converting customers into members, merchants could introduce a VIP programme. As its name implies, VIP stands for “Very Important Person”, setting this group of people apart from normal members. For example, VIP of your store can enjoy more and a wider range of discount. Limited edition products could be made available to them earlier. This can raise the loyalty of customers effectively. Undoubtedly, the requirements of being VIP should be higher than that of members, like accumulating certain purchase amounts or frequencies.