Boost customer loyalty through community building

Growing up in California, Cinco de Mayo was always a fun day.

The weather usually was starting to turn warm and everyone would spend more time outside. I remember close-knit parades, lots of good food, and good times hanging out with friend and family.

The holiday always had a great community feel.

Building up a community around your Shopify store can be a very powerful way to build customer loyalty and retention. It's never an easy strategy but the benefits can pay off, especially as customer acquisition costs rise. It's also extremely defensible against competitors.

If you decide to go the community-building route, here's a few tips:

• start small
• build an email list and a brand voice
• try to build things that customers can easily share
• create genuinely good products that help customers
• host a few events, can be simple online social media events or in-person meetups
• and most importantly, keep the level of self-promotions low

Done right and done consistently, you can grow a community.

If you want a more metrics-based approach, start using Repeat Customer Insights right now and keep track of the various loyalty metrics (Repeat Purchase Rate, Returning Rate, Average Orders per Customer). As your community grows you should see those metrics tick up little-by-little.

Eric Davis