Table of Contents
The previous chapter of our CVO Guide answered an important question, “What are RFM groups?“, showed you how Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value (RFM) groups could be split and we detailed how you can keep Soulmates – the most valuable customers for every eCommerce business.
Let’s explore another important RFM segment – Lovers, see their characteristics and how Lovers can be nurtured into Soulmates.
In Reveal, the RFM analysis results reflect the fact that the Lovers segment can be split into several subsegments.
Your Lovers don’t have a perfect RFM score like your Soulmates do, but they represent a valuable segment for your business and they are very promising. In order to keep them, you must build trust, generate loyalty, and identify what keeps them coming back for more.
Lovers have bought recently (4-5 for Recency), they show signs of loyalty but there’s room for improvement (3-5 for Frequency score) and they don’t spend as much as Soulmates do (3-5 for Monetary Value).
Your goal is to nurture Lovers into Soulmates. So, you need to analyze this RFM group’s behavior and identify successful tactics that can be replicated.
How can Lovers be nurtured into Soulmates?
In the customer segmentation through RFM analysis, Soulmates represent about 1% of your total customers, while Lovers are quite numerous and have the biggest chances to grow into Soulmates.
Generating repeat customer purchases from your Lovers segment and increasing their average order value allows you to add new customers into the Soulmates group – the most valuable RFM group of an eCommerce business. Let’s see what you can do to nurture this numerous RFM segment and what tools help you in your retention efforts.
Loyalty programs
With so many aggressive tactics from your competitors, it’s hard to keep customers loyal to your brand. But people want more than quality items and discounts. They want to feel important and appreciated.
To increase Lovers’ lifetime value, you can mix various elements that we often see included in loyalty programs: rewards, tiers, perks, gamification, exclusive/ VIP benefits.
Reward your loyal customers for every purchase, writing a review for a product they bought from your store or recommending your brand to friends. Remind them to redeem points. Also, think of unexpected and memorable rewards, such as a birthday present or limited edition items.
How to do this?
Use customer behavior insights from REVEAL to design a unique loyalty program based on a story that resonates with your Lovers. As email marketing is one of the most effective channels for loyalty programs, you may want to connect REVEAL with your Klaviyo or Sendgrid account. Lovers automatically appear in a dedicated list that is updated periodically, thus allowing you to send the right message to the right RFM group.
Improves: Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value
Cross-selling and upselling
Cross-selling and upselling strategies are effective when you let customers see the added value they can get.
With cross-selling, you allow them to discover complementary products that satisfy a need or improve the overall customer experience. For example, if a customer orders a pair of suede shoes, you can suggest a waterproofing spray or a brush dedicated to this type of leather.
With up-selling, you let customers understand the added value they get by ordering a higher-priced item. Product comparison is very useful in this case. An e-commerce store that sells a wide range of shoes could offer a comparison between natural leather boots and ecological leather ones.
How to do this?
In REVEAL, you can see the buying habits of the RFM group and then see what items or brands are more popular among Lovers. This should give you a better understanding of what they love most. With EXPLORE, you can include the products you want to up-sell or cross-sell in the add-to-cart page, during the checkout process or as a pop-up.
Improves: Recency, Monetary Value
Subscription-based purchases
This tactic is perfect for increased lifetime value. Subscription-based purchases are ideal for eCommerce stores that sell FMCG or seasonal products that rapidly sell out. It’s an alternative that takes the burden off your clients’ shoulders and allows you to have more predictability. By using subscriptions, you create a buying-habit and therefore repeat clients that can become Soulmates in time.
How to do this?
REVEAL’s integration with Shopify allows you to add RFM group tags directly in your Shopify CRM for all customer segments. REVEALS features combined with Shopify’s new capability helps you detect your Lovers and show them the subscription-based alternative in the checkout stage.
Improves: Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value
Free shipping threshold
Another way to increase the average order value (AOV) is to offer free delivery if the cart reached a certain threshold.
To make this offer profitable for your business, you first need to know that is the average order value of your Lovers. Then, you need to decide how much you want to increase AOV. This number will be your free shipping threshold. Make sure this perk is visible throughout your site.
How to do this?
In REVEAL, you can see the average value per acquisition for each RFM group and each sub-segment of a group. You might want to offer free shipping to Lovers who had a score of 3 or 4 for Monetary Value. To set a free shipping threshold for your customers, you can use the custom variables available in EXPLORE to set the minimum cart value that allows the customer to benefit from free shipping.
Improves: Frequency, Monetary Value
Gift cards
Gift cards keep your Lovers happy and close to your business, nurturing healthy customer relationships. They are a great way to increase both monetary value and frequency. There are plenty of opportunities to send a gift card: special anniversaries in the customer’s life or before big holidays.
To make this tactic profitable for you too, set a gift value that is generous enough to encourage future acquisitions, but you should make sure it doesn’t transform into a free purchase. When done right, gift cards can also help you reduce ad spend for campaigns such as those you create during lower seasons.
How to do this?
If you want to send gift cards specially created for your Lovers via email, our recommendation is to connect REVEAL with your Klaviyo or Sendgrid account so your list of Lovers is synced with the email marketing platform you’re using.
Improves: Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value
Buying in bulk
If your eCommerce store sells products that can be purchased in bulk, you could encourage this type of behavior by displaying the savings your Lovers are making with each extra item added to their cart. Identify the products that are usually bought in bulk but also the ones that could be sold this way.
How to do this?
In Reveal, customer data see the products and brands your Lovers love the most by looking at their Buying Habits. You can also use data about Top Brands and Top Products to push items that are popular among your consumers.
Improves: Monetary Value
Time-sensitive deals & limited edition products
Time-sensitive deals are a great way to reactivate Lovers that have a lower score in Recency. This is a useful tactic to boost sales during low or slow seasons. It helps you free up storage space at the end of a season, it creates urgency and it’s easy to create marketing campaigns and promote the deals to your customers.
If you look into marketing analytics, you’ll see that limited edition products have a positive impact on recency and add an extra purchase occasion for your Lovers. Plus, top fans would proudly share the news that they are among the lucky owners of this rare good.
How to do this?
You could set a bigger discount for products and brands that didn’t perform that well during the session. You can identify the products that are at the bottom of the list by looking at Top Brands and Top Products in Reveal. To signal your discount or limited edition campaign, you can use EXPLORE features such as website overlays and personalization.
Improves: Recency, Frequency
Valuable content
eCommerce marketers know that news, useful tips and personalized advice are what keep customers engaged between purchases. Design your marketing strategies and use your content marketing efforts to educate, inform and entertain your audience. It’s easier to keep your customer loyal (despite other retailers’ discounts) when you make it clear that your mission is to improve their life with your products.
You can help them make better decisions for their next order with a personalized guide or with recommendations based on customer data: their abandoned cart, showing a selection of complementary products that they are most likely to be interested in.
Improves: Recency, Frequency
Customer surveys
Individual customer satisfaction surveys are valuable for every action your Lovers take and they are more likely to answer right after purchase or after delivery. Lovers are more familiar with your site’s interface, so they can deliver valuable feedback that will help you improve the on-site experience for the entire audience. Send them a survey right after they placed the order. To measure customer experience, ask your Lovers details about their last delivery and make sure you’re proving that they are important for you.
How to do this?
By connecting REVEAL with EXPLORE, you can automatically match the groups and trigger a survey using the dedicated builder. If you want to automatically generate pre and post-delivery Net Promoter Score (NPS), you can connect REVEAL with Klavyio or Sendgrid, then create the NPS survey from templates. You will see the NPS score in your Dashboard and Customer Voice reports.
Improves: Frequency, Monetary Value
How to bring in more Lovers?
- Nurture customers in other groups defined by the RFM model: New Passion/ Flirting/ Potential Lovers/ Platonic Friends/ About to Dump You. Looking at their RFM score gives you a clear idea of tactics that are more likely to work for nurturing purposes.
- Create a lookalike audience based on the Lovers group. Use advertising platforms to target and attract similar people to your customer base and spend less on paid media efforts.
- Create RFM marketing campaigns by reiterating what worked best for the Lovers group. Use insights generated by the different tools you’re using for your store and design data-driven campaigns to generate offers your Lovers want and to get the most out of your efforts.
Your business is ever-changing and so is the distribution of your customer database. If you want to keep a close eye on all of your customers, REVEAL allows you to monitor and track your RFM customer segments‘ evolution in real-time. Having an RFM model approach and this automated tool for customer behavior analysis means that you have more time to focus, design and implement the right campaigns for your audience.
Drive meaningful change in your ecommerce
Monitor & improve what matters.
Check out our next chapter where we continue to write about another RFM group: New Passion!
Share The Ultimate CVO Guide with your fellow eCommerce entrepreneurs who want to build an RFM model for their eComm business.
Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or subscribe to our newsletter below!
Like what you’re reading?
Join the informed eCommerce crowd!
Stay connected to what’s hot in eCommerce.
We will never bug you with irrelevant info.
By clicking the Button, you confirm that you agree with our Terms and Conditions.
