Yesterday, I got to attend Retention Marketing Event held by Yotpo in Melbourne. (30th May 2023)

Retention has been a huge focus of mine whilst trying to increase acquisition efforts. I’ve been dabbling with many retention apps but have decided to go with Yotpo (by the time I am writing this, our loyalty program was announced to our email lists 🤙 Keen to see how it performs).

Here are my observations from this event (Note: It’s a mix of things I got from the talk and networking.)

Loyalty

Points could be a great way to kick-start your retention campaigns. But another good way to incentivize retention could be adding a non-transactional reward based on tiers. These events are a great way to interact with customers face-to-face.

• e.g. plant a tree (suitable for sustainable brands)

• participate in our next photoshoot (an example of Bangn Body)

• invite to a winery event (thinking of this for Paire)

Priscilla (CEO of Bangn Body) mentioned that Bangn was able to leverage its loyalty program to increase repeat purchase frequency rather than through a sales event. There was a concern that loyalty programs would aggravate sales events even more.

This was a good sign for Paire as we are staying away from sales. Sales events allow you to move dead stocks but your margins are decayed. So we were battling if loyalty points would have a similar effect as sales. But loyalty doesn’t always mean dollar value or % discounts.

Reviews

I am currently using judge.me for review collection. They are one of the cheapest alternatives in the market and they are easy to use. But I was fascinated by how Yotpo allows customers to filter reviews based on keywords.

For a skincare brand, it looked like this:

• Customers could filter reviews based on their skin problems (acne, rosacea, etc). Allowing customers to have that personalized review rather than going through endless pages of reviews. (This is me with online shopping, I go through 50 reviews prior to purchase 😅)

Keen to try this out once after the initial launch of our loyalty program. I think this will be great for the product team as well as they will be able to refine existing products and curate ideas for NPD (new product development).

Another takeaway I got was that 1st-page of our review page needs to have an impact rather than getting users going through endless reviews (e.g. going to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pages of our reviews😵‍💫) leaving them confused or feeling unanswered about their concerns.

I believe Yotpo’s review filters allow personalization based on keywords which can instill confidence in the buyer’s journey.

Setting CX Expectation

I expect CX tickets to arise regarding our new retention incentive. It’s simply due to the nature of our demographic.

• e.g. how do I use points? when do points expire? So CX team needs to be informed and take their own time to learn Yopto documentation

SMS

There’s been a strong push around SMS in eCommerce because it is a channel where it isn’t saturated.

Currently, we only use SMS for order confirmation and shipping confirmations. We rarely send out campaign SMS (probs one every quarter). Will be adding more steps into the flow so that SMS send-outs feel normal to our customers.

Overall Retention Efforts

What Bangn Body did well was talking to customers. Their iterations on product and marketing didn’t come from assumption. It came from real conversations.

For example, they asked how the loyalty program would look like it was to be launched. This way, customers feel like they are part of the journey.

To-do list on my end is to set up recurring events to allow the product and marketing team to have 1-on-1 or one-to-many interviews with customers. We do have customers come into our store but the conversations are quite short. It could be more insightful if we can have dedicated time to talk about our products, their experience, etc.

Another thing I observed was that Paire should be more open about ups and downs, and share the progress of where the brand is going.

A good example was a post by Rex where he shared how no-show socks’ quality improved over time by refining multiple times. Our core customers appreciate vulnerability (?) and openness. It creates a stronger bond. And this journey should be amplified over email and organic for further brand building and emotional connection.

Rex’s post is below:

So if I was to summarize what retention is in one sentence:

Build an emotional connection/investment with your customers to combat churn.

This is such a great way to keep top of mind other than sales campaigns.

Other notes:

Retailers are wanting to move online. Online retailers are going to wholesale and retail. Seems like omnichannel is very important (outside the concept of expanding paid channels). In a certain way, offline or online is a segway to increase loyalty.

Customers want to feel the products that they want to buy.

How heavy is it? How light is it? How does it feel on my skin? What’s the smell like?

These senses can not be transferred online. And offline is able to provide this experience paired with customer service.

It’s a very exciting time for eCommerce right now. Keen to see how brands push retention.

How are you navigating retention? Let me know your thoughts.