Marketing efforts aimed at acquiring new customers highlight only the beginning of the customer life cycle inside the organization. As the cycle evolves, companies must nurture painstakingly acquired customers into loyal, repeat purchasers.
For brands, the primary benefit of customer loyalty is its sheer cost advantage. According to Forbes1, acquiring new customers costs 5x more than retaining existing ones. Loyal customers help companies drive referral traffic through word-of-mouth marketing. These obvious advantages spur marketers to build a loyal base of customers, and with good reason.
The evolving user journey
Users are spending more time than ever on their devices. For brands, this means having more opportunities to tap into customers’ purchase potential – they need to know their customers better, and in particular, their user journeys, well. The digital environment is conducive for high-intent customers to drop off at any stage of the purchase process due to a myriad of distractions in the form of ads and social media.
Each user follows a purchase journey that goes like this, in no particular order:
- Looking up for products on search engines
- Reading reviews by subject experts
- Watching influencer recommendations on social media
- Hunting for deals and coupons
- Shifting brands to get the best prices
The presence of elements like social media, and competitor deals have made it difficult for brands to repeatedly drive customers towards their products, thereby making customer loyalty a challenge.
Increasing customer stickiness with coupon marketing
While changing consumer behavior has made customer loyalty harder to gain, ‘customer stickiness’ has emerged as a strategy worth marketers’ consideration. Brands can improve customer stickiness by creating an environment that builds a uniform narrative and guides users to purchase without any distractions. One effective strategy is for brands to regularly offer deals and coupons to boost loyalty and sales conversion rates.
A study by Forrester Consulting reveals that the right offer at the right time is as relevant as ever and can persuade a reluctant buyer to make a purchase. It says 77% of customers admit that discounts can influence where they shop. The most effective and easy coupon marketing strategies can leverage emailers, placing affiliate links on relevant websites, display ads, to name a few.
Offering customers coupons doesn’t negatively impact your bottom line; it’s an investment towards their loyalty or in acquiring new customers. In the day of the 3Ds – deals, discounts and distractions – coupons can help your high-intent customers stay on the path of their purchase journey.
Employ established tools that work
Instead of burning through more marketing dollars to build a new ecosystem, brands must use tools with a proven track record to enhance customer stickiness. For example, Site Discover is a ready-to-use, effective companion for customers during their purchase journeys. With partnerships with over 100,000 publishers, it nudges them towards purchasing a host of ‘buy now’ widgets, coupons, banners or native integrations.
Building trust among customers takes time and effort. However, brands would do well to use products like Site Discover to ensure their presence during purchase journeys. In the long term, nurturing customers as brand evangelists is a strategy that pays off handsomely.
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