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The Consumer is King: How D2C Brands Retain Customers Post Black Friday and Christmas Season Sales

The holiday season is an incredibly important time for businesses everywhere. As the adage goes, ’tis the season to be jolly – and profitable. For many eCommerce companies, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas are the biggest sales days of the year. Online sales during the festive season reached $9.2 billion in 2021. But what happens after the holidays? How can direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands successfully retain the uptick in customers even after the holiday season is over?

We’ve scoured the internet for the best D2C brands that have used various strategies to retain their customers post-holiday season. From innovative loyalty programs to incentivising repeat purchases, each of these brands has found a way to keep customers returning for more. Let’s look at their strategies and the results they’ve seen!

Creating a Memorable Customer Experience

D2C brands understand customer experience’s pivotal role in developing robust and long-lasting customer relationships. Through carefully crafted experiences designed to delight and surprise, D2C companies create greater loyalty by constructing memorable interactions between brand and consumer, setting a foundation for repeat business. 

Everlane’s customer experience has become a powerful asset to its success. By providing customers with an intuitive website and an easy-to-use mobile app, they have created an incredibly seamless shopping experience beyond the Black Friday and Christmas season sales – resulting in an impressive 50% increase in customer retention this year! We believe Everlane’s success in creating a memorable customer experience is a powerful example of how businesses can benefit from investing in customer experience initiatives

Using Customer Data to Personalize the Experience

Understanding the importance of customer retention, personalization has become a significant focus for D2C brands. By leveraging consumer data to provide tailored product recommendations and messaging unique to each customer’s needs, preferences, and behaviors, companies can communicate with them more meaningfully, ultimately establishing long-term loyal relationships between brands and consumers. Studies have shown that over 50% of shoppers actively prefer personalized messages from retailers during their journey – making this an essential part of post-holiday success for direct-to-consumer businesses.

Glossier’s savvy use of data has enabled them to craft a uniquely tailored shopping journey for each client, securing exclusive discounts and custom product recommendations. This strategy proved so effective that the brand experienced an impressive 40% boost in post Black Friday/Christmas season retention rates – demonstrating its success as a powerful tool for crafting meaningful relationships with customers over time!

Focusing on Quality

It’s easy to forget that customer retention is as important, if not more so, than acquisition. After all, quality is the name of the game when it comes to providing great experiences and results in repeat business. One company with a stellar track record for driving high-quality products and services? 

Casper – this online mattress provider has turned heads due to their attention to detail on product development (and perhaps savvy marketing too). This expertise was greatly evident by 2021’s Black Friday/Christmas sales report, where an impressive 35% increase in loyal customers was reported – proving there can be long-lasting rewards from investing in delivering excellent goods!

Incentivising Loyalty

Creating loyalty programs is another excellent way for D2C brands to attract and retain customers. By offering exclusive rewards and discounts for loyal customers, D2C brands can incentivize customers to continue coming back. 

Warby Parker is an inspiring example of this success – the company offers exclusive rewards and discounts to its loyal shoppers through its loyalty program, resulting in an impressive 30% growth in customer retention post Black Friday sales last year. With such enticing incentives for return purchases, it’s no surprise that Warby Parker has continued to experience long-term success throughout 2022.

Creating Community

Another popular strategy used by successful D2C brands is creating a sense of community. This involves connecting customers through forums, social media, and other online platforms. By creating a sense of community, D2C brands create an environment where customers feel comfortable sharing their experiences and creating relationships. This helps customers feel more connected to the brand and more likely to make repeat purchases.

BOAT’s community strategy is quite impressive. They hosted an online forum for customers to discuss their experiences with the brand. Customers were invited to share their stories, ask questions, and get advice from one another. This created a sense of community and connection between customers, allowing them to build relationships with one another and with the brand. BOAT also hosted weekly webinars and Q&A sessions for customers to get more information about the brand, its products, and its customer service. By creating this sense of community, BOAT has been able to retain customers post holiday season.

Building Long-Term Relationships 

Establishing profound connections with customers is vital to keep them investing after the Black Friday and Christmas rush. This requires forging an ongoing relationship by providing helpful content, adding value through every interaction, and being honest in all communications – like Chewy’s transparent pricing model that promotes trustworthiness among its loyal customer base beyond traditional promotional periods. With such strategies, brands can extend relationships from months into years, crafting longer partnerships instead of fleeting ones!

Providing Exceptional Customer Service

Providing exceptional customer service is a great way to retain customers throughout the year, especially after the holiday season. This can be done through live chat, phone support, and even offering free returns. One of the most successful brands to do this is Away, a travel brand.

Away has provided exceptional customer service to its customers by offering free returns and a 24/7 customer service helpline. They increased their  This has helped to build trust and loyalty among its customer base. As a result, Away has seen a 20% increase in customer retention after the holiday season.

Final thoughts

The holiday season is often a tense time for businesses, as profits can sometimes make or break their success. Retaining customers beyond the initial sale window has become increasingly important in D2C circles. Understanding how to interact with your customer base and show appreciation for them even after they’ve made purchases will go far toward creating long-term relationships between buyers and brands alike. 

Whether that means fostering meaningful conversations within the community, offering loyalty programs incentives, elevating customer service standards, or tailoring experiences around clientele, data points have shown these strategies are successfully providing huge payoffs into 2021 & 2022 – both financially but also through positive consumer feedback! If you want to level up your business game over this upcoming festive period, take advantage of our insights here at Apptile, explicitly designed to help keep those post-sales leading ever onwards!

At Apptile, our goal is to empower you to create personalized experiences that showcase your brand in the best possible light irrespective of your business size or budget.

Get started now and create stunning mobile apps in seconds without any coding. Book a demo with our team to see how Apptile can help you transform your business for the mobile era. We would love to hear more about your brand’s mobile app vision and help you bring it to life. Also, follow us to stay ahead of the eCommerce game and join the conversation today!