How to drive customers to repeat purchase in China?

Long-term marketing strategies have been challenged lately, and brands are today switching back to real-time marketing operations to sell fast. They are facing extremely high competition though, and acquisition costs are reaching high levels again.

(Source: based on the marketing fee per new customers, extract from annual financial report from Alibaba, Pingduoduo, JD.com and Vipshop)

70% of the online customers spent considerable time with BBAT (Baidu, Bydance, Alibaba, Tencent) in the last years. The cost of gaining consumer attention on these platforms is getting higher and higher because they have the choice to spend their time on different platforms. Their attention has been fragmented, which makes the new customer acquisition more and more costly and difficult for a brand, and the profit from new customers very limited.

Repeat business is a very serious alternative to the acquisition challenges, especially within a very silo-organized online ecosystem such as the Chinese ones. From the moment your customers start to repurchase, there is a way to make your brand remain profitable and your customer relationship alive and durable. Plus, the cost of repurchase is low for a brand and ensures a better product margin.

The brand experience is key to drive customers to repeat purchase. It is not only about the product itself – the functional benefits, but also the experiences that the brand offers that start from purchasing motivation until the order is completed.

Here are 5 tactics to drive quick repeat purchase:

1. Know your customers by consolidating and binding your customer data (transactional and interactional) through your multiple on/offline touchpoints

(Source: Splio platform)

2. Monitor the data and learn from data

Data can provide a better experience by putting yourself in your customers’ shoes. Design your user journey by considering your customer data. You may realize that some customers stopped engaging with your brand in the last months, so, it’s important to reactivate and re-connect regularly with your customers at the right moment to promote your product package or relevant new product line.

3. Be customer-centric & engage fastly

Align omnichannel customer interaction with the mobile, digital, location-based methods in a timely manner. Whenever customers put a product in their shopping car, it is essential to send them targeted messages and what-to-choose tips right away to help customers make their decision easier and faster.

4. Create value

Maintain a longer relationship with your customers by providing the relevant information to meet your individual customer needs. Do not always push the same products but also push them your suggestions to accompany their needs. If you are a pasta company, once you spotted some customers’ first-time purchase with only pasta, it’s added value to provide them with additional sauce sachet, in order to generate more potential sales.

5. Move to a new loyalty program

Loyalty drives customer engagement and repeat purchase on all channels.

(Source: Bond Brand Loyalty&Visa: 2019年度忠诚度报告)

Splio is a New Loyalty Platform that combines Omnichannel Data Management and New Loyalty engine to shape up single customer knowledge from multiple on and offline touchpoints. Based on customer knowledge, the Splio platform enables you to reach high conversion rates from each customer lifecycle to meet your business goal.

(Source: Splio platform)

If you want to know more details about the Splio platform, please can contact us and leave your questions. To get regular insights on how to develop and strengthen your Loyalty strategy in China, you can also scan the QR code to follow us on WeChat!