An omnichannel approach to increase your average customer lifespan

As a Shopify merchant, you need to build strong relationships with your customers. An important metric that measures the strength of these relationships is the average customer lifespan. Customer lifespan is the amount of time a customer continues to engage with your brand after making their first purchase. 

An omnichannel approach is an effective way to increase your average customer lifespan. This means that you integrate all your sales channels (including online, in-store, and mobile) to provide a unified shopping experience for your customers. For instance, you can build a mobile app that integrates with your existing website and provides one-tap access to your entire store.

In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of the omnichannel approach and the key strategies you can use.

What are omnichannel strategies?

Omnichannel marketing is an advanced version of multichannel marketing that involves integrating all sales and marketing channels. The goal is to provide a seamless customer experience where all channels work together in harmony. 

For example, when a customer adds a product to their cart on your website, their cart on your mobile app should update automatically with that product. They should also be able to checkout and complete the purchase through the app

The goal is to create a cohesive experience for customers, regardless of where they are interacting with your brand. This creates a more personalized experience for customers. In the long term, omnichannel marketing strategies can lead to a longer average customer lifespan.

For Shopify merchants, adopting an omnichannel approach provides many other benefits like an increase in customer engagement, retention, and repeat purchases - all leading to a higher lifetime value. An omnichannel approach can also help you gain a competitive edge in the market by creating a unique shopping experience. ‍

Best omnichannel strategies to increase the average customer lifespan

Let’s explore some of the best omnichannel strategies you can implement to strengthen your customer relationships and the quality of your customer journey.‍

1. Build a dedicated mobile app

The vast majority of your customers are likely interacting with your brand via a mobile device. That means that you must provide a tailored, specialized mobile experience for these customers. Mobile apps are the best solution here.

Let’s look at some practical reasons why a mobile app can increase your customer lifespan.‍

A mobile app increases engagement and retention: ‍

A dedicated mobile app is an excellent channel to understand customer preferences and engage them on a personal level. You can provide tailored recommendations based on their past purchases. 

For example, Carol’s Boutique implements product recommendations on their app’s product display page in the form of Related Products and Recently Viewed.

This level of personalization can help build a stronger connection between you and your customers, leading to a longer customer lifespan and providing upselling opportunities for you.

A mobile provides a more convenient shopping experience:

Customers can browse and purchase products from anywhere, at any time with ease. Mobile apps also eliminate the need to login multiple times and can provide features such as one–click checkout, social login, and the ability to save payment information, making the checkout process faster and more convenient. This convenience can lead to increased customer satisfaction and higher customer retention rates.

You can send hyper-targeted push notifications: 

Mobile apps help send targeted push notifications to customers to promote new products, offer discounts, or notify them of upcoming sales. This is a great way to increase customer engagement and encourage repeat purchases. Vajro integrates with marketing automation tools like Klaviyo and WebEngage to help you interact with customers across all your channels–email, SMS, and push notifications–based on their behavior or actions.

2. Social media integration and live selling 

Millions of users are active on social media. Odds are a significant percentage of your customers are too. Focus on using your social media channels like Instagram and Facebook to create a cohesive online presence. 

Integrate social media with your website and mobile app:

Create direct shopping experiences on social media and set up social advertising. Implement “Buy” buttons and shoppable posts to drive sales from these channels. Think about engagement, feedback, and promotions. 

Use social media data to get insights into your customer preferences. Look for trends and patterns and develop targeted marketing strategies to improve the overall customer experience. 

Here’s an example from Simply Me Boutique that adopted a creative way to integrate social media into their mobile app. When they saw huge traffic coming to their mobile app, they linked their Instagram Reels to the app to enable app users to buy from their Instagram account.

The live selling advantage: 

Host live sales to sell limited-time offers or new products to engage your customers better. Create hype and launch a new product during the session, exclusive to your live audience. 

Vajro enables brands to go live from their mobile app and Facebook at the same time, with rich features like:

• Automatic invoicing to customers
• Adding additional inventory to the live on the go
• Reservation of products or cart hold
• A replay of past sessions to shop from
• Countdown timers on the app
• And a lot more

Here’s an example from Opal & Olive where they introduce their product - a Chunky Wood Bunny - during a live session on their app built with Vajro.

3. Create an omnichannel loyalty program

An omnichannel loyalty program is another powerful tool for Shopify merchants. You can use it to increase customer lifetime value and build long-term customer loyalty. If you reward customers for their loyalty, you encourage them to make repeat purchases. This can also lead them to refer their friends and family to your business. That means more sales and growth for your Shopify business.

Understand your customers before you reward them:

To build an effective omnichannel loyalty program as a Shopify merchant, you need to understand your customers. What are their needs and preferences? What motivates them to shop with you? Once you understand this, you can determine the types of rewards and incentives that are most appealing to them. Then, you can design a loyalty program that is valuable, relevant, and increases engagement.

Get creative with your rewards for the best returns:

Vajro integrates with top loyalty programs on Shopify like Loyaltyion, Smile, and Growave. In addition, Vajro enables you to set up automatic discounts and gifts when your customers meet specific criteria. For example, you can automatically add a gift for purchases over 100 USD. This will tempt your customers to return to your app. 

Learn more

GNC India applied this strategy by enabling Buy 2 Get 1 Free (the free product is automatically added to the cart). This improved their returning customer rate to over 80% from 65% in under 3 months.

Another way you can use Vajro to reward your loyal customers is by using Shopify customer segments. Once you segment your customers based on their behavior or actions, display specific product pages to specific audiences.

For example, show a 15% discount coupon on the product page ONLY to your most loyal customers. This is how you can make them feel special and valued. 

Offer an omnichannel shopping experience with Vajro

If you are looking for omnichannel methods to maximize the revenue you can generate from your existing customer base, you need Vajro. Vajro is a powerful app builder for mobile loyalty that helps you create a customized experience for your customers. Plus, it also integrates with many other omnichannel tools like Klaviyo, WebEngage, and more.

Explore Vajro to discover comprehensive insights into increasing your average customer lifespan. Sign up for a free trial. You can also get a demo to understand how to craft a mobile app that enables you to make lifelong customers. 

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