The real work starts after Black Friday: Year-round customer retention strategies

Anja Bojic | 15. 11. 2024.

In the rush to prepare for Black Friday, businesses often focus on attracting as many new customers as possible. With deals, discounts, and marketing efforts reaching a fever pitch, the holiday season becomes a sprint toward single-day sales success.

But while the surge in purchases is exciting, true growth goes beyond the initial sales. After the Black Friday dust settles, you have a real opportunity to turn these first-time buyers into loyal, long-term customers.

Moving from a “single sale” to a “relationship-building” mindset is key to cultivating customer loyalty and lifetime value. Nurturing relationships throughout the year will build connections that bring back customers, create ongoing revenue, and avoid expensive lead acquisition costs.

Read on as we explore practical, effective strategies to retain and engage your customers long after Black Friday, so that this season’s rush does indeed get converted into some meaningful and sustained growth.

Why customer retention matters year-round?

Customer retention has very significant advantages when it comes to long-term growth.

Did you know that, after buying from an online store for the first time, a customer has a 27% chance of buying again from the same brand? After a second purchase, there’s a 49% chance they’ll buy again. And after a third purchase, the likelihood increases to 62%.

In fact, repeat customers often come with a very important accessory: lower acquisition costs. Namely, they already know your brand, believe in what you offer, and are predisposed to spend more money over time.

This yields immediate financial returns, while loyal customers give a reputation to the brand and contribute to its value. These loyal customers act as ambassadors of your brand by speaking well about its products through word-of-mouth. Usually, this can be far-reaching and more powerful than your marketing.

When you focus on the year-round customer retention of your customers, you can establish a culture of loyal customers, avoid unnecessary expenses in customer acquisition, and eventually find a firm base that may enable continuous future growth.

Post-Black Friday: First steps for re-engaging new customers

The time right after Black Friday is a unique opportunity to re-engage new customers and turn one-time buyers into loyal brand advocates. It starts with easy, simple follow-ups:

• Thoughtful thank-you emails can set the tone for all further communication,
• Personalized onboarding guides can familiarize customers with new products, features, or tips on how to make the most of what they purchase.
• Product recommendations can keep the engagement going by introducing customers to complementary or related products they might not yet have considered

These keep the initial excitement of the experience and extend it beyond a single transaction. Moreover, with Things Solver’s Segmentation Studio, you can take this engagement to the next level by enabling the identification and segregation of new customers based on their purchase habits, interests, and purchase history.

Equipped with such knowledge, you can subsequently design segmented campaigns that provide relevant follow-ups and customized messages to connect with each customer group on their preferred channel — e.g. email, SMS, or Viber.

This data-driven approach can help you optimize your re-engagement for stronger, more personalized connections from the beginning and build loyalty regardless of the time of the year.

Personalization as a key customer retention strategy

When we talk about effective customer retention, personalization is considered a no-brainer. Many businesses connect with their shoppers on a much deeper level by showing them experiences tailored to their individual tastes throughout the year.

Considering the many choices customers make every day within the market, personalization and hyper-personalization are the glue that can hold their interest and loyalty beyond the initial sale.

For example, recommenders can play a vital part in your shoppers’ personalization journey. By assembling products, content, and communications based on their unique interests and past behaviors, you will prove to them that you understand and genuinely appreciate them no matter when they decide to shop from you.

Depending on the type of recommender you choose to rely on, they can equip you with insights to come up with not only tailored content but also more personalized product recommendations and more effective communication strategies.

Therefore, different types of recommenders in e-commerce can boost your customer retention not just on Black Friday but throughout the year. With Things Solver’s recommenders, you can create different types of recommendations for your shoppers:

• Customer-driven recommendations: These understand each customer’s unique tastes and past interactions and allow recommendations that accord with their tastes or drive product discovery as a way of cementing loyalty.
• Product-centric recommendations: When there are certain products that you want to promote, you can use recommenders to find customer segments most responsive to the product. In this way, conversions are maximized because the right audience is targeted with your high-priority offerings.

The outcome is value-for-value: customers receive curated offers that mean something, and you can drive revenue while nurturing long-term loyalty.

Leveraging multi-channel engagement to stay top-of-mind

The more you can keep customers engaged on various touchpoints, the better positioned your brand is for top-of-mind awareness and brand loyalty.

In this age of rapid digitization, the ability to reach your customers on varied touchpoints such as email, SMS or Viber, means your brand will always be relevant and accessible, no matter where your customers are or when they decide to buy from you again.

Let’s say you use email to introduce them to some new products. Then, you move on to SMS or Viber to remind them of an exclusive offer or maybe give a limited discount. This kind of seamless multichannel presence keeps your brand on their mind and increases the chances of repeat purchases beyond holiday sales.

Things Solver’s Broadcast Studio is designed to give businesses efficient multi-channel engagement where messages and other personalized content are delivered timely, right in front of the customer.

Our solution enables you to create a tailored message that best fits each customer’s particular needs and preferences at any point during the year.

This helps that the communication with your customers stay relevant and personalized. Whether it’s seasonal promotions or personalized recommendations, Broadcast Studio makes reaching customers over the platforms they frequent the easiest, turning touchpoints into meaningful connections that will continue long after Black Friday.

Nurturing long-term relationships with loyalty programs and exclusive offers

Loyalty programs and exclusive offers are highly effective for building long-term relationships, as they tap into customers’ desire for recognition and added value. In fact, data shows that more than 90% of brands have some form of loyalty program and about 85% of consumers say they are more likely to keep shopping with a brand if it offers a loyalty program.

As you see, offering personalized rewards and perks helps you:

• Create a sense of belonging and appreciation,
• Make customers more likely to return and engage with your brand repeatedly,
• Encourage repeat purchases by giving customers tangible benefits for their ongoing support, and
• Transform your shoppers’ experience into a rewarding journey.

Our AI-based solutions, like the Segmentation Studio, can indeed help you take your loyalty programs further and improve customer retention rates even after the busy Black Friday season.

By analyzing customer behavior and tailoring rewards based on individual interactions, Segmentation Studio lets you reward loyal customers with offers that reflect their preferences and shopping history, creating a more meaningful, individualized experience.

By using data to understand each customer’s past interactions, you can strategically offer

• Exclusive discounts,
• Early access to new products, or
• Special offers for milestone purchases.

This way, you can improve both customer retention and satisfaction but also foster an emotional connection that keeps customers coming back long after Black Friday.

Proactive customer service for customer retention and satisfaction

Last but not least, proactive customer service saves you from dissatisfaction or churn by solving issues even before they start. Actually, 73% of consumers will switch to a competitor after multiple bad experiences with a brand.

In giving the customer service team the power to recognize and solve upfront the most common pain points of your consumers, they can prevent small frustrations from snowballing. Smoothening the experience like this may keep customers coming and ensure they keep shipping with you year-round.

For example, a follow-up call shortly after the purchase, or easy accessibility to resources such as frequently asked questions and product tips, can ease a lot of their frustrations.

When you do your best to identify areas where customers may need assistance, such as through frequent questions, returns, or troubleshooting, it allows you to provide responses with solutions that improve customer retention, satisfaction, and loyalty.

Your shoppers want to feel taken care of and heard, so don’t forget to use potential issues as an opportunity to get closer to them and reconnect.

Final thoughts: Build connections that will last beyond seasonal sales

Black Friday might mark the beginning of a customer’s journey, but long-term relationships are forged in the steps that follow. It’s time to move beyond that seasonal sale mentality to customer retention throughout the year; which truly takes care of loyalty and ensures continuous business growth.

With the right customer retention strategy supported by the solutions provided by Things Solver, you can drive purposeful engagement with customers for repeat purchases and long-term loyalty.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we can assist you or simply want to explore partnership opportunities, you can book a free demo or reach out to us directly at ai@thingsolver.com. We’d love to help drive home the value of making every customer connection count.