Getting started with retention marketing

Overview

This guide is intended for eCommerce brand operators and marketers who are new to retention marketing, welcome!

You're here because you know retention marketing requires way more than sending emails. We're here to help you go beyond the basics and develop a retention marketing program that builds and sustains long-term customer relationships.

This guide explains the core principles of retention marketing and how to execute them with your Sendlane account.

What is retention marketing?

Retention marketing is the strategy of increasing customer lifetime value by encouraging repeat purchases, building loyalty, and improving engagement over time.

This is not the same as simply acquiring customers; acquisition is step one in the retention marketing journey, and the most expensive step by far. It's much cheaper to retain an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one.

Existing customers place larger orders and provide a path to sustainable growth that isn't totally dependent on ads or other paid media.

Here's how Sendlane’s tools are built for retention, not just acquisition:

• Forms - When acquiring contacts with Sendlane's forms, you can go beyond simply adding their email address to your audience. You can add contacts to as many lists as you want apply as many tags as you want to their profiles, all on form submit. Capturing preference data right from the start is a great way to forge long-term relationships with your customers.

• Email and SMS campaigns - Campaigns can be sent exactly when contacts are most likely to open them, and all tracking links include the ability to apply a tag of your choice when clicked. You can gather multiple preference points from just one campaign!

• Customer segmentation - Segments are dynamic lists of contacts that update every time you use them. You can create logic based criteria for super targeted segmentation.

• Behavioral automations - Automations do the heavy lifting for you. You can create automations based on dozens of behavior and preference data points stored in contacts' profiles.

• Dynamic personalization and coupons - Insert contact specific personalization or unique coupons with templating syntax.

Core components of a healthy retention marketing program

We highly recommend all of the following for a robust, revenue-producing retention marketing program.

Click the links in each item to see detailed guides!

1. Welcome automations - First impressions matter and welcome automations aren't just a way to send a bland "thanks for signing up" email. They are a preview of what contacts can expect from your program moving forward. Welcome automations should delight your customers and keep them coming back for more.

2. Post purchase automations - Post purchase automations function like digital thank you notes that can heavily influence customers' decisions to continue buying from you or switching to a competitor. Post purchase automations should thank customers for spending money with your business and provide an incentive to return (which doesn't necessarily mean a coupon!)

3. Abandoned browse and abandoned checkout automations - Reminding website visitors to complete a purchase, especially if you sweeten the deal with a small discount, makes abandoned browse and checkout automations some of the highest revenue generating automations around.

4. Segmentation - It is absolutely critical to send the right message, at the right time, to the right people. Dynamic segments based on preferences and past behavior make it simple to target content.

5. Purposeful campaigns - Blasting generic campaigns is a great way to inspire a customer to click "unsubscribe," or worse, "spam." Engaging campaigns tell customers something they don't already know or provide enticing offers.

6. SMS engagement - SMS is great for time sensitive promotions and other calls-to-action that are more pressing than usual. It's easy to overdo it on SMS; most people don't get pinged every time they receive an email but notifications for all SMS messages are common.

7. Forms - Capture website visitors' contact information with eye catching popups and embedded forms.

What next?

If you're ready to get started with your own retention marketing program, check out 📄 Getting started with Sendlane for a step by step guide to setting up your account!

You'll find other getting started guides for specific areas of the platform at the bottom of that article or in the getting started section of our knowledge base.

Welcome, and have fun!