A reselling business like eBay has a very volatile market and floating customers because they may need a product only once and if they find it they may not purchase it again. If you are running a reselling business like eBay, you should know how to retain customers to make them loyalists.
Before we unearth the strategies to have a sustaining eCommerce business like eBay let’s discuss it and its performance on the global stage.
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eBay Inc: It is a multinational eCommerce company started in the year 1995 with its headquarters based out of California. They host a website to help Customer – Customer and Business – Customer operations that allow people to sell, buy and resell any product that comes under the company guidelines.
And they have operations in 182 countries around the world with total revenue of 10.42 billion USD as of 2021. They have a total of 182 million customers worldwide and provide their service in some way to help them make more sales on the global platform.
As we have briefed about eBay and its current status in the eCommerce market. Let’s discuss the strategies that they use to retain customers to be so successful among their competitors.
Retention Strategies:
- Have A Exemplary Customer Service:
A theory called the paradox theory in marketing states that customers are more satisfied when they face a problem and reach out for service and when they have a successful service they are more satisfied with the product and the brand.
So the best way to satisfy a customer and make them a loyalist is by having real exemplary customer service that can solve any problem they face with the product or the service that they bought from your brand.
You should have one motto for your service: “react as soon as possible and solve the problem” to retain more customers for a long time.
- Focus On Quality:
To retain customers the best and most important focus you should have is Quality. Provide maximum quality for the product you list in your business and make sure you assure the product reaches the customer with the quality mentioned on the product page.
eBay has a policy that helps them filter products easily so that the products they sell have very good quality as assured on their product page. They have a quality check done in person before delivery to maintain maximum quality service provided from their end. Make sure you provide maximum quality in your online business.
- Retargeting Strategy:
Analyze your data regularly and find when your strategies and the targeted market reach an obsolete point, the best way to sustain a profitable business is by retargeting your target audience and adopting new strategies and techniques based on market trends to gain new customers and generate more profit.
Conduct market research and identify the new and possible markets you haven’t penetrated yet. Use this data to create a strategy and retarget markets and audiences to grow your revenue even more.
You can retarget by the following ;
Already purchased from your business, Abandoned after adding product to cart, Viewed and left, Visited your site once.
- Gratify Your Customers:
Make sure the customer feels that you are thankful for completing a business transaction with your customers to make them feel gratified. So, to achieve this provides small messages that say thank you or small discounts and offer at the end of a transaction.
- Conduct A Email Campaign:
Capture email from your customers using an opt-in page to collect data and also use data from whistles and cart data and send emails to remind them of your business or product and promote offers to make a conversion and retain them easily.
- Collect Feedback and Act On It:
The best way to know what the customer really wants is by conducting marketing analysis and by collecting feedback from your customers and acting based on it to provide them with what they actually need from your business.
Use this data from feedback to identify your business’s weak points and the areas that are strong so that you can create new strategies and ideas that are unique and still satisfies your customer on a global stage.
- Have A Simple Yet Rewarding Loyalty Program:
You can also retain customers using rewards and loyalty programs that will give them a way to make a new purchase for a discount and you get a chance to sell a product. Research conducted by eBay said that 69% of customers’ purchases are influenced by the loyalty program.
You can use the following to retain more customers for any of your business models and size;
- Loyalty Cards
- Coupons
- Monthly Offers
- Early Access To Sale
- Point System-Based Rewards
- Offer Discounts:
The best way to make customers want to purchase more from your business is by providing them with new and great discounts for limited days to make them want to make a purchase immediately.
- Maintain A Strong Social media Presence:
The best way to reach more customers easily is where they spend most of their time. And that is the social media platform where people have their presence on a daily basis.
So have a very strong social media presence and make sure your products and business are seen by people all over the world and come up with new strategies to attract more people easily.
- Personalize Experience:
Use your customer’s data and create personalized promotions and offers so that customers will have another reason to buy from you. This will also provide a safe and comfortable environment where the customer can make decisions to buy new products.
Also provide some personalized promotions and reminders based on your customer activity so that you can create an intention to make a purchase.
- Maintain Consistency:
Make sure your service and business always provide the customer with what they want and maintain assured quality so that they will continue to make more purchases later from you.
- Offer Easy Return Policy:
One of the most important factors that will give your customers more trust in your business is an easy return policy just in case the customer isn’t satisfied with the product.
The product cycle should be easily reversed and reach the supplier in case of a return. So, construct an easy and reliable return policy to connect with the customers even more.
- Offer Free Shipping:
Don’t ignore the power of free shipping is the moral many eCommerce businesses follow to attract more customers and make their purchases through free shipping.
So frame a flexible logistics and delivery policy to adopt rules and regulations that are applicable based on the product, the category, size, and other dimensions that are taken into account.
Have a well-established relationship with your delivery partners so that you can make sure you can provide free delivery based on some aspects.
And also make sure the product reaches the customer at the right time as mentioned on your product page to maintain trust with your customers and retain them easily.
To wrap up the bog, the above-mentioned strategies are used by eBay to retain customers and make sure they have a sustained performance that you can use for your online marketplace. The revenue is generated by retaining customers and attracting new customers using updated strategies. So you can use the above strategies based on your business model and the size of your business to retain more customers.
