Customer Acquistion/Retention: Three Tips to Acquire, Please and Retain Customers

It’s often been said that it’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an old one, but in an ideal world, you’d be able to do both. Executives at multichannel lingerie merchant Bare Necessities explained their strategies for doing just that during a session at the recent eTail conference held in Philadelphia. Following are their tips on how to acquire new customers online and keep them coming back:

1. Split the workload. Bare Necessities’ marketing team is split into three separate divisions: acquisition, merchandising and retention. Each has its own director, resources and budget, said director of Web merchandising Gretchen Wahl. Having a divided marketing team with non-competing resources allows each group to focus on its mission, not at the expense of the other teams, she noted.

2. Work with niche partners. Potential customers are all over the Web, and getting them to your site often is the hardest part, said Director of Customer Acquisition Kiera Lim. In addition to a comprehensive search strategy, Bare Necessities partners with content and comparison shopping sites within its vertical to drive traffic. A recent partnership with fashion info site Glam.com consisted of a co-branded survey that led surfers to find out what type of underwear best matched their style. After providing an e-mail address, the survey taker was brought to a special section of the Bare Necessities Web site, and offered a discount and an opportunity to sign up for the merchant’s e-mail newsletter, Lim said.

3. Use buying guides for new and old customers. Wahl stressed the importance buying guides can have in the life cycles of old and new customers. Bare Necessities’ buying guides contain information on how to buy the best-fitting bra and which types of panties work with which outfits. “These guides reinforce our authority on our products,” Wahl said. “The guides allow new customer to understand our product and old customers to research different styles that might interest them.”