How to engage VIP customers to keep them for longer

Published by Dimira Teneva in Metrilo Updates and Use Tips, Retention marketing. 6 mins to read.

VIP customers are invaluable for ecommerce brands, bringing about 60% of revenue on average. They are loyal, shopping repeatedly from you, which means lower costs and higher profits. VIP customers are also involved with the brand, checking in often and spreading the word about you.

Every brand would be aiming at getting an army of VIP customers who share its values, who shop without being tortured into it and who vouch for it. The VIPs are your biggest fans. They deserve to be treated specially because you can rely on them for recurring orders. Special attention will make them even more loyal and engaged, driving even more revenue, community spirit and referrals your way.

This article is about finding your best customers and getting to know them better so you can engage with them and keep them for longer. You’d be reaping all the benefits of a positive customer relationship.

How to identify VIP customers?

First, who are your VIP customers?

You can answer in many ways, depending on your products and business model. For online grocery shops, these will be the frequent shoppers with many orders. For fashion brands, they might be the ones with high customer lifetime value. For products that don’t enjoy much of customer retention like mattresses or bridal dresses (how many times do we buy those things?), VIPs would be customers who bring in others or leave social proof to help acquire new ones.

So decide what works for your brand and filter your customer base by:

Above average number of orders
Many sessions (browses)
High CLV
People referring others (using a personal referral code)
Feedback score given above 8

Generally, VIPs are the customers who have consistently shown interest in your brand and shopped quite a lot from you. Let’s be realistic – you cannot expect anyone to be shopping only from you, so a reasonable number of orders for a VIP is above 3-4 a year.

Filtering customer base to identify VIP customers by certain criteria

After you’ve decided on your criteria and segmented your VIP customers, tag them. This will make running email campaigns for them faster and easier. Then, dive deeper into customer behavior to understand better how the shop and how you can influence that journey for the better.

Any interaction with your brand can turn into an engagement opportunity. Explore how they choose, how they react to your marketing. This will give you many ways to keep the relationship up in a meaningful way. Here are some ideas.

Product interactions

It’s not enough to know that people placed X orders. To engage them properly, you need to know how they interact with your products.

Based on their behavior, a few different campaigns to run are:

What products they bought – this says so much about a person. Even your ideal target group has varying tastes – tag people accordingly to send them only relevant offers.
What products they viewed but didn’t buy – send a coupon for next order to nudge them a bit; or offer more info about the products (more pics, a consultation with a stylist)
Abandoned products – repeat customers know your shipping terms, it’s probably not that. Send them similar yet different products to try and close the sale.
Products inducing loyalty – if a VIP client hasn’t bought one of your products that drive most loyalty, expose them to it via remarketing or email. This will strengthen their loyalty.

Retention analysis by product: how different products impact the loyalty of customers who bought them

Content consumed, email interactions

There’s no point in flooding your customers with emails that they don’t read. Learn from their reactions – opens, clicks and conversions to emails – what works and what doesn’t.

Create different newsletters. Maybe some people open only promotional emails and others want information. Divide them to conquer.

More ideas: Emails that drive CLV up

Tailor content. Explore what of your content they consume and try to tag according to interests (Metrilo shows which articles on your site each customer read). Weight loss? Or training for a marathon? Or getting back in shape after a pregnancy? Sending curated content to your subscribers will build a better connection, showing that your brand truly understands their needs.

More content marketing ideas

How to use your brand story for marketing

Used coupons

It’s interesting to see if your best customers use some of the coupons you give out. They’re likely to be familiar with your free shipping or next order codes. But what else can you find?

Exploring if VIP customers used specific coupons

Do your VIPs apply holiday coupons or any other special campaign you have?
What kind of copy seems to work best for driving overall revenue and AOV?
Do VIPs use discount coupons or perks coupons if you have any?
Which coupons brought most loyal customers?

Customer retention by coupon – see which one brings most repeat orders

If it turns out that those people still love discounts, maybe you can think of special markdowns for them as a token of appreciation.

Or maybe they don’t care about discounts at all and only use the personalized coupons you sometimes send for a freebie? Whatever you find, use it to make those people like you even more. Give them what they like because they have been helping you immensely with their repeat purchases.

VIP customers who have not used a coupon ever

Bonus tip

After you’ve segmented your VIP customers, look at the acquisition source that stands out. Where did most of them first come to you? This is the channel to double down on if you want more customers like them.

Another bonus: Use the created segment as a lookalike audience in Facebook to attract more people with similar interests and mindset.

Feedback given

It’s normal that your best customers think highly of your brand. But have you asked them? A simple feedback request might result in a huge referral campaign. First, steal the words they use to describe your products for your copy.

Second, when they give you a 10, ask them to become brand ambassadors. It’s easily done with their own referral code to share with friends on social media – no need to be real influencers. Even better to engage authentic users and fans!

Customers who gave high review scores + the products they bought

Related: Tracking referral codes

Perks to offer to VIP customers

If these ways of engaging your VIPs are not to your liking, here are some that don’t need you to dive so deep into ecommerce analytics. But really provide those perks to regular and valuable customers only to make them feel very special and appreciated.

Priority support
Priority (free) shipping and returns (super important for keeping people shopping again and again!)
Always better discounts – tag and segment for every campaign
Add special freebies/ samples/ vouchers for complimentary brands and service in packages only for them – once they start getting them, they’ll want more

Involve them in product creation, ask their opinion (Native did it and it was a huge success)
Offer them limited edition products/ pre-orders of new items
Gift wrap for gifts for free
Supplies (like shoe cleaning kits if you sell shoes) at discount
Maintenance/ guarantee

All you need to execute these ideas is good ecommerce analytics that show you what your customers do individually on site so you can engage them in a relevant way. All this is available in Metrilo. Learn more about how it can help your ecommerce brand grow here.

About the author

With experience in FMCG and marketing, Dimira writes to help the brands of tomorrow succeed and believes passion is a key ingredient in any business.