In the world of loyalty programs, customer retention is not a new term. In fact, it’s the foundation behind why loyalty programs came into existence: the ultimate tool to keep new customers coming back for repeat purchases. Sounds simple, right?
Loyalty programs are an effective way to incentivize the shopping experience to build retention. And there’s another powerful tactic to bring customers back to your store – personalization.
Personalization goes beyond greeting customers by their name. Results-driven personalization is about learning who your customers are (from contact information, preference data to demographic data), and using that information to ensure every interaction with your brand is tailored to each individual customer.
The question is, how can brands collect this data? Let us tell you about a new tool your business should invest in, called an ecommerce quiz!
Why brands should invest in an ecommerce quiz
An ecommerce quiz is an on-site tool that asks customers about their likes, dislikes, preferences and needs. With every question answered, the quiz calculates which products in your catalog are best-suited for that customer’s needs. At the end of the quiz, it recommends a product, bundle of products or content to help that specific customer.
The best way to think about an ecommerce quiz is to relate it to the experience of talking to a store associate. Just like when you enter a retail store and ask the associate questions about what products are right for you, a quiz gives brands the ability to offer that humanized experience online.
Aside from acting as a personal shopping assistant, an ecommerce quiz is a great way to collect customer profile data. For example, the questions you ask customers throughout the quiz tell you valuable information. You can learn so much about different groups of customers, such as their age, concerns, lifestyle, habits and contact information for you to use when creating campaigns on Facebook Messenger, email, SMS or ads. This data collection is the key to building personalized customer journeys, which in turn boost your retention with exceptional customer experiences.
How to use a quiz to personalize the customer journey
We mentioned it above, but a quiz is the ultimate data-collection tool. You’ll quickly discover who your most valuable customers are, which customers need more attention and where your business can better its services to increase sales. Once you have that data, the next step is to learn how to use it. For a loyalty program, you could segment your customers by the VIP tier they’re in, and your messaging for each tier should be crafted around relevant rewards, benefits, and the perks, points and incentives offered in that specific tier.
Let’s take a look at how to segment customers and create tailored campaigns. Considering 59% of customers say personalization influences their shopping decisions, this data is key to influencing customers to purchase from your store.
Use collected data to segment your customers
Aftering collecting customer profile data, the next step is to organize your customers into lists. This will help you plan campaigns that are personalized to each segment. Here are a few types of data you can collect using an ecommerce quiz:
Demographic data includes segmenting customers by age, gender, location or the source from which they discovered your brand.
Engagement data tells you how a customer is interacting with your business and the touchpoints they take. For example, you can segment customers by their quiz drop-off rate, the products they click on and other engagement data.
Attitudinal data is what customers think about your business. Are they satisfied? This information can be collected by using the Shop Quiz to create a post-purchase survey. Segment your customers based on their level of happiness.
Qualitative data is what tells you about a customer’s preferences, pain points and motivations. This type of data shows you how your customers feel about your products and what the most popular solutions are.
Descriptive data includes customer lifestyle habits and behaviors, family details, career details or any other information that helps you understand their habits and intents.
By understanding the various data buckets, you can understand where each quiz user fits in these groups and build personalized campaigns. This level of personalization increases customer retention because it provides a one-of-a-kind experience that shows each customer you’re listening to their individual needs.
Create tailored campaigns and flows for each segment
Intelligent targeting comes from harnessing the buyer profile data you have. All the groups of data we mentioned previously are what you’ll use to build emails, SMS and Facebook Messenger flows and ad campaigns that are tailored to your persona groups. It’s true that 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that send personalized offers and recommendations, so doing this is critical to your business’ success.
To explain, here’s a scenario:
Imagine a customer visits your website to purchase a new bike. They’re greeted with a quiz to help them find the right bike. After answering questions about their intended use for the bike, they share their email and phone number with the brand to stay in touch. The business recommends a bike, but the customer chooses not to purchase right away.
Since that customer answered the questions and shared their preference and intents, the business can create an email flow, an SMS or Facebook Messenger series to retarget that customer with bike recommendations that match what they said in the quiz. The business can also create social ads and targeted website pop-ups for that customer that recommend a bike and offer an incentive to help drive the purchase.
This experience is extremely tailored to that individual because the campaigns they receive are based on the answers they shared with the brand, making every future engagement unique to them.
Why is personalization important for customer retention?
Personalization is important for a variety of reasons. For one, your customers prefer it. Check out these statistics:
- 87% of U.S. customers are willing to have various details of their activity tracked in exchange for more personalized rewards and brand experiences.
- 78% of U.S. internet users said that personally relevant content from brands or companies increases their purchase activity.
- 33% of consumers ended their relationship with a company because the experience wasn’t personalized enough.
It’s clear that customers want personalized shopping experiences, and that this personalization is a big part of the reason why they decide to stay loyal to a brand. But, let’s break it down a bit more. Here are some of the top reasons why personalization is important for customer retention.
- Keeps customers more engaged
When your customers are receiving personalized messages from a brand they previously interacted with, they’re more likely to engage with the message. In fact, segmented personalized automated email messages average 46% higher open rates than normal marketing messages. Check out this one by Doe Lashes that invites new customers to take their lash quiz, so that Doe Lashes can get to know them better.
- Individualizes the online shopping experience to feel unique
Engaging with your customers with relevant products, content and conversations is important to individualize the shopping experience. When you interact with every prospect the same, it can come off as spammy or salesy and not personal at all. To capture the attention of your customers, deep personalization from your buyer profile data is required and will make every engagement interesting.
Here’s an example of a personalized email campaign you can send to your customers on your loyalty program: send a bonus points campaign to your users in the top VIP tier. Congratulate those users for being important, thank them for their loyalty and offer bonus points for a period of time. Not only does this encourage more purchases, but it’s also a personalized campaign for an exclusive group of segmented buyers that are considered your top, VIP customers.
- Creates 1:1 relationships that keep customers coming back
When you learn who your customers are through a quiz and interact with them in a personalized way, you’re building a one-on-one relationship, similar to how it feels when entering your favorite retail store with an associate that’s helped you before. When you come back to the store, everything already feels familiar to the customer. They’re confident that you have the right product solution for their needs because of their previous shopping experience.
- Builds an army of brand advocates
Word-of-mouth marketing is still one of the top ways to acquire new customers, but you need a group of loyal brand advocates willing to share your products with their friends and family first. Personalizing the shopping experience for customers drives them to become loyal shoppers. Since their experience is so memorable and positive, they’re more likely to recommend your business to others as well. This drives retention and acquisition at the same time.
Summary
We covered a lot of information, so here’s a quick summary of what you just learned:
- Investing in a quiz helps you learn more about your customers
- Collect buyer profile data with quiz questions and segment your customers based on that data
- Use your new segments to create tailored campaigns and flows to individualize the shopping experience
- Personalization is key to increasing retention because it creates a one-on-one, memorable relationship with every customer
Now that you’ve learned about the ways you can use quizzes to boost customer retention, have you thought about getting a quiz for your store? Luckily for you, there’s someone who can help.
Octane AI powers an ecommerce product called the Shop Quiz. For Shopify and Shopify Plus brands, you can design beautiful quizzes like we’ve shown in this article and see amazing revenue and opt-in results. Chat with their team any time to learn more!
