What you need to know about the new direct marketing guidance note
Nadine Mather and Chloë Loubser
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To keep customers coming back, get personal
As the economy continues to decline, retailers are fighting a fierce battle for a share of the consumer's wallet. Every customer counts, but the loyal customers are particularly valuable, especially when your competitor is just a click away.
The Web gives consumers access to far more options than were available in pre-Internet days, but even with that explosion of choices, consumers don't pick a different vendor every time they make a purchase. They often don't pick the cheapest source either. That is, they have preferred merchants.
Not that they always buy from those merchants, but they prefer them, even when those merchants aren't the cheapest. Price is just one metric, and it's often not the most important thing to the consumer. Customer loyalty can be measured by a customer's willingness to purchase from a retailer a second time, or their unwillingness to purchase from another retailer.
According to retail industry analyst studies, customer experience can have a profound effect on loyalty - particularly affecting repeat buying behavior. Recent studies have shown that improvements in the quality of customer experience can lead to an increase of millions of dollars in revenue for a large retailer.
