Ecommerce brands are shifting focus from one-off sales to customer retention as the driver of sustainable growth. This article explores how an Ecommerce Brand with 80 Million Revenue prioritized customer relationships with AI-driven personalization, resulting in a 4X increase in user retention and a 30% conversion surge. Their transforming growth story offers valuable lessons for other ecommerce brands tackling challenges like inventory management, fulfillment, customer service, technology infrastructure, and profitability while building a loyal customer base.
About the Brand
This Ecommerce brand is one of India’s leading beauty and personal care ecommerce platforms, offering a wide range of cosmetics, skincare, haircare, and wellness products. The company has established itself as a strong competitor to brands like Nykaa, leveraging technology, personalization, and an extensive product catalog to cater to the growing demand for beauty and self-care in India.
Sustained Ecommerce Growth Strategies: Overcoming Revenue Stagnation
In the ecommerce space, turning visitors into loyal customers is a major challenge. From abandoned carts to slow fulfillment and low repeat purchase rates,ecommerce brands need data-driven engagement strategies to drive growth. Here’s how Netcore Cloud helped an ecommerce brand with 80 million revenue overcome these challenges and enhance customer retention promising long term growth.
1. Turning Visitors into Customers
Problem: High Browse-to-Bounce Rates
Like every other ecommerce brand in the market this ecommerce brand was rolling out New Subscriber Discounts, Welcome Discounts, Buy-One-Get-One (BOGO) Offers to attract new customers. Yet, beneath the surface of these enticing offers, a persistent problem simmered. The specter of abandoned carts haunted their sales figures. Shoppers would browse product pages, captivated by the offerings, diligently reading reviews, and even filling their carts. But at the crucial moment, they’d abandon the checkout process without making a purchase. This resulted in a decline in both revenue and sales volume. The brand knew they needed more than just blanket discounts. They needed to understand these shoppers, anticipate their needs, and recapture their attention with an offer or discount that would lure them back. They needed a solution that could translate customer behavior into targeted purchase behavior.
Solution: Omni-Channel Marketing with Personalization
- Netcore Cloud’s Customer Engagement Platform helped the ecommerce brand engage customers across email, SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, and in-app messaging to drive conversions. The platform also helped them run smart, budget-friendly campaigns using the Preferred Channel feature, avoiding wasted ad spend on channels where users were inactive or less responsive.
- Guided by Netcore Cloud’s Customer Success Manager (CSM), the ecommerce brand implemented abandoned cart journeys triggered by app exits after adding items to the cart without ordering. Using push notifications (e.g., “Hey [User Name], snag those items before they’re gone!”) and emails (e.g., “Ready to treat yourself? Your cart’s waiting. Complete your order for [benefit]!”), the brand encouraged order completion.
- They introduced web personalization to interact with customers on the platform or webpage, offering suggestions for similar items matching their searches, and relevant items that complemented items already in their cart. These combined efforts helped reduce bounce rates by 50% compared to the previous year.
Year-over-year bounce rate for the ecommerce brand’s website.
2. Enhancing Post-Purchase Communication
Problem: Lack of Real-Time Order Updates
The ecommerce brand, while investing heavily in paid Meta and Google campaigns to drive sales, neglected post-purchase engagement. In today’s market, customers expect instant order confirmations, timely shipping updates, and readily available support. A critical misstep occurred when a bride-to-be, preparing for an important wedding function, placed an order. The brand failed to provide any order updates, leaving her anxious and uncertain about the delivery timeline. The order arrived late, preventing her from using the trusted product before the important function. This single mistake damaged the brand’s reputation, eroding years of built customer trust.
Solution: Automated Customer Engagement
- The CSM helped the ecommerce brand set up workflows to automate order updates, including order confirmations, estimated delivery times, and shipping details, across WhatsApp, email, and SMS. Shipping information was shared via email or WhatsApp for order tracking and managing returns, while ratings were solicited through activity-based, triggered communication. This resulted in higher message deliverability rates, which translated into increased engagement and response rates from customers.
- The brand garnered positive reviews due to improved communication and instant resolution of common queries via an AI-driven customer support chatbot.
- These efforts helped the brand boost positive reviews and referrals by 35% and improve customer satisfaction by 50%.
Using customer engagement metrics (reviews and customer satisfaction) to assess ecommerce brand growth.
3. Increasing Repeat Purchases & Customer Loyalty
Problem: One-Time Buyers Don’t Return
Picture this: you discover a trendy new clothing brand online. The dress you order arrives quickly, fits perfectly, and looks fantastic. But after that initial thrill, silence. No follow-up email, no request for feedback, no tempting glimpses of new collections. The brand fades into the background noise of the internet, easily forgotten amidst a sea of other options. This is the challenge facing many ecommerce businesses today. Fierce competition and a constant barrage of deals often lead to one-time purchases and vanishing customers. In this landscape, simply offering a good product isn’t enough. To truly thrive, brands must prioritize not only product quality but also the entire customer experience, focusing particularly on engaging customers after the initial purchase to cultivate loyalty and drive repeat business. They need to transform those one-time buyers into repeat customers, and eventually, brand advocates.
Solution: Personalized Loyalty & Retargeting Campaigns
- You’ve likely noticed while shopping online for cosmetics that after ordering a product from a specific brand, you receive emails suggesting other products from the same brand. This is precisely what our ecommerce brand achieved after onboarding Netcore’s Customer Engagement Platform (CEP). By implementing behavioral cohort analysis, they identified repeat purchase trends and user preferences, allowing them to plan targeted campaigns.
- Instead of generic discounts, they offered nominal discounts on products aligned with individual customer preferences, directly boosting sales. Furthermore, leveraging AI-powered personalization, they implemented “next-best actions” for retention: exclusive discounts for returning customers, free mini-products on repeat orders to encourage trials of other items, and “Buy Again” incentives like “Repurchase within 30 days and get 15% off.”
- Personalized restock reminders, abandoned cart alerts, and tailored promotions, delivered via email and push notifications, further fueled their sales growth. The result? A remarkable 20% increase in Repeat Purchase Rate (RPR) and a 25% boost in Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV).
YOY comparison of Repeat Purchase Rate and CLV to measure growth.
4. Increasing Average Order Value (AOV) with Cross-Selling & Upselling
Problem: Customers Hesitate to Add More Items to Their Cart
Our ecommerce brand was throwing a party of discounts, hoping to lure customers into bigger spending sprees. Some of them were Buy 2, Get 1 Free 15% off orders over $100, Spend $75 and receive a free gift, etc. Yet, despite this shower of incentives, the revenue growth they’d hoped for remained stubbornly stagnant. It turned out that many online shoppers were like focused treasure hunters, laser-focused on the single item they sought. And this resulted in failing to explore complementary items, leading to lost opportunities to increase Average Order Value (AOV) and ultimately impacting the brand’s revenue growth potential.
Solution: Smart AI-Driven Cross-Sell & Upsell Strategies
- The ecommerce brand began using Netcore Cloud’s AI-powered product recommendations, which help businesses personalize the shopping experience. By leveraging this feature, the brand increased engagement and conversions through campaigns such as:
- “Frequently Bought Together” (e.g., “Pair your lipstick with this lip liner”).
- “Customers Also Bought” (recommends based on similar shoppers).
- “Recently Viewed & Related Products” (reminds users of previous interests).
- Cart-Based Upsells (suggest relevant add-ons at checkout).
- Post-Purchase Recommendations (promotes refills, replacements, and new arrivals).
Display Recommendations at Key Touchpoints:
- Homepage: Trending or AI-powered “Picked for You” items.
- Product Pages: “Complete the Look” or Similar Products suggestions.
- Cart & Checkout: Bundle discounts or last-minute add-ons.
- Email & Push Notifications: Restock alerts, limited-time deals, and personalized recommendations. Minimum Order Value (MOV) increased by 28%
Analyzing year-over-year growth in Minimum Order Value resulting from Customer Engagement efforts.
5. Accelerating Order Fulfillment & Managing Demand Surges
Problem: Slow Order Processing Due to Logistics Disruptions creating a sense of uncertainty
During the festive season, high demand, coupled with various seasonal discounts, created supply chain challenges that impacted order fulfillment for the ecommerce brand. The issues they faced included carrier delays, unexpected demand surges (like those caused by flash sales), and inefficient inventory management. These problems resulted in a poor customer experience, leading to dissatisfaction and potential loss of customer trust. All of this could have been avoided with a planned and strategic approach to festive season sales campaigns, powered by in-depth data analysis to predict demand based on past behavior.
Solution: Event based triggered communication
- Netcore’s team helped the brand set up business event-based triggers and workflows to manage real-time communication. For example, if a customer added an item to their cart and it went out of stock just before they placed the order, the brand could set a trigger to send an email or app notification when the item was back in stock. This reminds the customer of the product’s availability, allowing them to purchase it if they’re still interested.
- Proactive customer engagement campaigns, such as sending real-time delay updates, helped reduce customer frustration and support queries. This resulted in a 38% reduction in customer support inquiries.
Source: STRIPO
Conclusion
In a crowded ecommerce landscape, converting visitors into loyal customers requires a data-driven, customer-first approach. By leveraging Netcore Cloud’s AI-powered Customer Engagement Platform (CEP), this ecommerce brand successfully:
- Increased conversions by engaging users across email, WhatsApp, SMS, push, and in-app messaging.
- Reduced cart abandonment through personalized retargeting and behavioral nudges.
- Boosted customer retention through loyalty-driven engagement strategies and repeat purchase incentives.
- Increased AOV and cross-sell revenue by personalizing product recommendations and promoting bundled offers.
If you’re an ecommerce brand struggling with customer acquisition and retention, let’s connect. Discover how Netcore Cloud can help you drive engagement, increase revenue, and build lasting customer relationships.
