It’s been a busy few weeks for our Parcel Perform team! Last Wednesday, we partnered with Shopify Partners ReferralCandy and dotmailer to organize our first Shopify Meetup! Together with the fantastic team at WeWork, merchants OliveAnkara and PerroCo, our attendees enjoyed an evening of interacting with like-minded e-commerce merchants, the Singapore Shopify team and our partners. As we are well into the month of November, our speakers focused around a question that keeps many merchants up at night: how do I retain my customers after all the effort, time and money spent on acquiring them during the peak season?

Our experienced presenters Darren, Murdo, and Dana were well-positioned to offer their perspectives on the topic from different stages of the customer journey. If you didn’t attend our Meetup, no worries! In this article, we’ll summarise the key takeaways from our speakers on this topic.

1. Word of mouth recommendations is a trusted source of information

With 92% of people trusting recommendations from friends above consumer opinion and editorials, Darren from ReferralCandy shared the benefits of word-of-mouth marketing as a way to get your message across to your customers effectively above tactics like social media and email marketing.

Social proof, using time-sensitive offers, using gift guides and influencers to supplement your marketing strategy were just some of the strategies he shared in his time on the stage.

Key takeaway: Traditional marketing channels like email, social media and PPC ads are saturated during the holiday season. You don’t need to compete with retailers with larger ad budgets and mailing lists. Instead, use word-of-mouth-marketing to get your message across to your customers.

2. Analyze and understand your customer data

Dotmailer's Murdo Wallace approached customer retention from another angle - remember the customer experience and understand your customer’s data to create hyper-targeted, personalized marketing campaigns.

He highlighted several fascinating customer journey tips in your e-commerce shop to drive a fantastic customer experience and increase repeat purchases.

1. What happens when a customer looks at a specific product or service multiple times but doesn’t add to cart?

2. Use abandoned cart opportunities to automatically send an email providing more information on returns, delivery options and some unique points about your company

3. Personalize post-purchase email communications - if a shop assistant helps your customer make a purchase in a brick-and-mortar shop, use the shop assistant’s name to personalize subsequent follow-up emails  

4. Automate the customer journey across multiple channels with SMS, social media or push notifications.

5. Create urgency to drive sales

Key takeaway: Analysing customer data and behavior can yield immense returns for your e-commerce conversion rates, drive sales and customer retention. Use these opportunities to have personalized conversations with your customers at scale.  

3. Delivery experience and the after-checkout experience matter in customer retention

Last but not least, our founder Dana rounded up the evening with a sharing on a topic that is dear to us - optimizing the delivery experience and after-checkout customer experience to drive customer retention during the peak season.

How you select your logistics carriers and how you construct your store’s post-purchase experience are factors often neglected in the customer journey. But, this is where the biggest gains in customer lifetime value are to be made.

Data from ecommerceIQ Asia indicate 29% of Southeast Asians don’t order online as they’re worried that delivery takes too long or returns are difficult. It’s, therefore, the retailer’s responsibility to choose the right carriers for peak season:

Ask yourself these questions to optimize your carrier setup

• Do you have carriers with enough capacity for peak season?

• How many cases of expedited shipping can your carriers handle?

• Predict your historical volumes & prepare together with your carriers and teams

Dana also emphasized the importance of the after checkout experience. With data from MetaPack’s State of eCommerce Delivery Report showing that 53% of consumers won’t return if the delivery experience was unprofessional; it’s definitely crucial to invest in parcel tracking.

A parcel tracking service reassures your customers and keeps your customers informed on the status of their delivery as often as possible. Get started with our Shopify app and enjoy parcel tracking updates across 600+ carriers in 30+ languages! 

Key takeaway: Peak season typically sees higher delivery volumes and harried customer service staff. Ensure your carrier setup is robust enough to handle these stressors. The after-checkout experience is also crucial to driving customer retention and customer lifetime value even after the peak season.

We also had a fantastic sharing and panel discussion with fellow Shopify merchants OliveAnkara and PerroCo on their experience with the peak season and what advice they would give to merchants to thrive during the peak season.

Parcel Perform and Shopify meetup

In Closing:

Thank you to all our attendees, partners and collaborators for making our first Shopify Meetup such a fruitful one! We hope that you’ve taken away some valuable tips and strategies to thrive in the peak season and met a new friend at the event!

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