Repeat Business is Online Retail’s Core Customer Metric

In a study released recently by MarketLive, research confirms the importance of repeat business to online retailers. Many online (and off line) retailers focus strictly on acquiring new customers, often in the mistaken belief that volume is the name of the game.

This work indicates that it’s the size of the online basket that makes all the difference. New customers buy 10% less than existing customers, and are less engaged with the retailer and the buying process in general.

Not surprisingly, marketing budgets for online retailers reflect this disparity, with more than half being spent on acquisition, and only about 20% being spent on retention or loyalty.

Yet another reason why knowing what’s best to measure is more important than traditional marketing methods or metrics.

The NEW MarketLive Intelligent Marketing and Merchandising (IMM) Suite™ is an integrated set of segmentation, personalization, alerting, email, and search engine optimization technologies that attract the right customers and reach individual shoppers with relevant emails and offers. The IMM Suite, built for the MarketLive Intelligent Commerce Platform ,enables personalized merchandising from the first email touch, through the first transaction, and across all interactions with the customer throughout the relationship. The IMM Suite dramatically reduces the time and resources required to design and execute effective marketing campaigns. It provides a consistent consumer experience resulting in stronger brands, increased conversions, more revenue and customer loyalty.

The MarketLive IMM Suite combines best-of-breed personalization, email and on-site content technologies that are informed by MarketLive Intelligent Selling best practices. The Suite powers effective marketing and merchandising with fewer marketing resources and without special expertise. It allows merchants to rapidly shift from generic, "batch-and-blast" promotional efforts to high-ROI marketing campaigns.

One-to-One Recommendations
A powerful built-in personalization engine profiles shoppers, identifies their preferences, and tracks the products they want. Real-time recommendations present the most compelling choices, designed specifically for each shopper. Real-time alerts keep consumers in the know with their favorite styles, brands collections and information. Merchants maximize cross-sell and up-sell impact for increased conversion, average order value, and revenue.

Early pilots show meaningful results. One leading women¹s apparel and accessories retailer achieved:

• 66% improvement in click throughs from recommendation-based emails

• 350% increase in email conversion rates

• 26% increase in average order value

One-to-One Email
The IMM Suite leverages email to drive higher quality traffic to the site and increases repeat business from each shopper. The value of every email is increased through segmentation that is built on purchase and campaign response behaviors. Relevant messages are then delivered to each segment with personalized offers extended to each shopper within that segment. Additionally, analysis of recency, frequency and monetary purchase values help retailers uncover hidden customer groups that can be reached with appropriate messages and offers. By combining purchase history and click behavior, retailers can build profiles for each buyer that can be leveraged in future campaigns. Transactional, promotional, and loyalty-building emails are easily developed, automatically delivered, and analyzed for optimal campaign management.