Rebecca Hilliard is an eCommerce expert with 12 years of experience working in the eCommerce industry for brands such as Jimmy Choo, French Connection, ME+EM, Mylands and This Works. I now support premium direct-to-consumer brands with their customer retention strategies to drive revenue, loyalty, and business profitability.

We discuss how often brands prioritise customer acquisition over customer retention, missing out on a more cost effective way to grow. Rebecca shares lessons that independent brands can take from the high street names that she has worked with, and the advantages smaller brands have such as being more agile and able to respond to trends.

Rebecca shares the tools you can use to really understand how your customers behaviours on your website. We then discuss different methods for making your customer feel valued, and how to leverage this in your marketing.

Finally we dig into why customer retention  matters so much, and how to improve it. 

It’s a great, thought provoking episode, and a good one to listen to wherever you are in your product journey.

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Welcome to the bring your product idea to Life podcast.

This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd

like to create your own product to sell. I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product

creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly,

practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses.

Let's get started.

Hello. Today on the podcast, I'm speaking to Rebecca Hilliard.

Rebecca is an ecommerce expert with twelve years of experience working in the

ecommerce industry for brands such as Jimmy Choo, French Connection, Me

and Em, and This Works. She now supports premium direct to consumer

brands of their customer retention strategies to drive revenue loyalty

and business profitability. We had a really great conversation

that focused on the importance of retaining customers versus always looking

for new ones. You've probably been told that you always have to be

advertising and looking for new people to buy from your brand. But

what Rebecca teaches us is that actually there's so much value in retaining

customers and turning them into repeat customers. I thought this was

really fascinating, really interesting. And of course it's something we all know, but how

much attention do we pay for it to it? Becca has some great examples

for all of us on ways that you can not just attract but also

retain customers and encourage them to buy from you again and again.

So, as I say, it's a really practical episode. There's a lot for you to

think about here, for you to consider and then to go away in action. I

really hope you enjoyed this episode with Rebecca.

So hi Rebecca, thank you so much for being here. Hello.

So can we start? If you please. Give an introduction to yourself, your business, your

background and what it is that you do. Sure. So I've been working

in the ecommerce industry for twelve years now. I've worked with brands such

as Topshop, French Connection, Me and M, and more recently

this works. I'm really passionate about the customer and great online

experiences, so helping businesses

with great products growth or loyalty is kind of my objective,

if you like. And after working with brands over the years

in house and in the consultancy capacity, it's definitely clear

that brands, in terms of growth, want to

kind of prioritize acquisition when in fact actually

customer sort of retention. That piece is how you can

profitably grow and it's far more sort of cost effective. And

I had my daughter a few years ago, I'd always wanted to be my own

boss and I was just like, now is the time if I'm

ever going to work for myself. This is the kind of time. So now I've

been freelance for a few years now and I'm helping sort of premium direct to

consumer brands with their customer retention strategy

and helping them grow through putting strategies together and

supporting them on their implementation. Thank you. And I

am so excited to talk about customer retention with you. Obviously

it's a really important topic. What I'm really curious to know is, obviously you've

got lots of experience working with some really big name brands. You mentioned Topshop and

me and M, so like, big brands we all have heard of. So I'd love

to know a little bit about your experience there and then whether there's anything that

you've experienced or learned working with large brands that you feel that small

businesses can learn from and perhaps emulate or do in their

own way. Sure. So there's definitely a stark

contrast when it comes to these bigger corporate brands versus the smaller

ones. Early on in my career, I worked for some big

high street brands. Typically the environment is a lot more formal.

They've got set processes and it's very sort of hierarchical.

And there's kind of what I found. I was definitely in a more junior role

at that time, but there's a real lack of autonomy. Your roles are often

very siloed, so days are very similar and it's

very rinse and repeat. Definitely not as an agile type of

business, and it takes so much longer to get anything signed off,

so it's very slow moving. So that's what I've

kind of found working with those brands. Most of my

career has been now working with smaller and growing businesses,

which I definitely prefer. The roles are

usually a lot more fluid. You're wearing many hats. Even though I was an

Ecom, I'm helping in the marketing function, sometimes being pulled into

customer service, which I really like. Smaller brands I

find a lot more exciting. And you definitely have a sort of broader

range of responsibilities. You're working across departments I mentioned,

and you just learn so much. And I'd say

typically the role and the business itself is more

agile. You can adapt quickly to different changes, be more

reactive, and it's just when you're a part of that,

seeing that business transform over time, it's really satisfying to see

those results and knowing that you have sort of a greater

impact and influence in what happens.

That's really interesting. Thank you. It definitely sounds like there were

ways in which a small business has an advantage, actually, in terms of being able

to be a bit more agile, maybe able to implement change a bit

quicker. When we're thinking about customers specifically. Are there

any ways in which you think a small business has the advantage? Because I do

know that as a small business owner, sometimes you'll look at the bigger brands

who are doing maybe in a similar space to you and you just think, oh

my gosh, how can I ever, I'll use the words

compete, whether that's the right word or not, but how can I ever be what

they are, do what they're doing? So I'd be really interested to know if you

think there are any ways in which, when it comes to specifically to

attracting and retaining customers, any ways in which a small business might actually have

a bit of an advantage. I think it's

just knowing your customers and a lot of these

businesses, I think these larger corporate businesses, in my experience, I'm talking

from my experience, they're putting kind of obviously the sales and

business objectives, but a lot of them lack putting the customer at the

really heart of the business strategy. It's very easy to compare

with anything, but there's so many advantages, as you said, with

smaller businesses, you can have that humanize

the brand, be more personable, especially if you're a founder led business

versus corporate. You can be the face of brand, reach out to your customers, make

them feel special, make them feel heard. It's definitely advantage.

I would say that makes sense. I guess what you're saying is you can actually,

as a small business, you can actually get to know your customers and communicate with

them on a more personal level. I would say so,

yes. Yeah, I agree, actually. And I also think there's something about with a

small business it's almost if you're willing to sort of be the face of your

brand or share your story, I think there's that as well, isn't there? That I

think I was having a conversation with someone yesterday about how with a small

business you may connect to them a bit more because there might be something

about the founder or the business that really resonates with you. And

it can be a lot harder to feel like an emotional connection sometimes

to some of the bigger brands. I agree with that.

I think what I know and what I've kind of learned is that

having that emotional connection is so important. There's so many brands

you can shop for and having that brand story, having those

usps and whatever your point of difference is, and then delivering

on your promise, essentially, like the product you're selling works

and you're delivering an amazing customer experience. People are going to want to buy into

that and stay with you and stay loyal. Thank you.

And before we talk more about the customer experience and some of the practical things

we can think about, what do we need? Because you mentioned earlier that it's important

to know your customer. What kind of things is it useful to know about your

customers as a starting point? Because I'm assuming before we go into

implementation, it's a good idea to think about who our customers

are. Yeah, definitely. Yes. As I said, I think before

anything, know who they are, because if you don't, it's just making life

really difficult for yourself when you don't know your customers, who they

are, what they like, how they like to shop with you, especially if you have

in store and online experience, for example, what they

like and how they like to hear from you, their preferences.

It just makes your task so impossible. How would you ever be able to deliver

that experience? So knowing those kind of core pieces of information will

make your marketing strategy and your retention loyalty

strategy so much easier to build out. So

from a small business perspective, you have a lot of things at your

disposal. So your e commerce platform, a lot of these businesses are on

Shopify. Great sort of analytics reporting in there to kind

of understand how customers are shopping with you,

how they're interacting with your website and their sort of

KPIs, for example. And you've got a free

GA4 Suite for analytics as well, which you can integrate your site and

so much value can come from those tools alone. And

then you've got other sort of reporting tools such as slightly

bigger brands, maybe with bigger budget, like Hot Jar, you

can see heat maps, how people are interacting with your website. You

can ask along the way, like how satisfied customers are with

your experience. You've got Triple Whale and sweet analytics

to really dig into what's happening. But

usually I say the key things to know about the customer is their demographic,

gender, age, status and kind

of maybe income, where they are, so what country, and

even within the country where they are buying habits, like their preferences, what

channels they like to buy. And so

Google, for example, you can really dig into the customer journey,

what pages they're engaging with, how they're interacting

with you, and you can really optimize the different touch points there. And

you can understand through analytics as well their pain points, like what

are the barriers to purchase on your website. And

sort of even you're not categorically going to know why a customer doesn't come back

without reaching out to them. So really asking for their feedback. And then

you can understand sort of why they stay loyal with you, why they shop with

you elsewhere or with your competitors and kind of understand their buying

patterns in more detail. That's so useful. Thank you.

And I think hopefully it's really reassuring for everyone to hear that you can

find out a lot about your customer from the tools and things you're already

using. I know, for example, on Shopify, you can

see how someone found you as well, whether it's Google, whether it's

Instagram, where people clicked through from. And I guess that kind of thing

can really help you get a sense of who your customer is and where they're

finding you. And then, as you said as well, there's obviously that benefit in reaching

out to customers. I was having a conversation with someone yesterday who was

talking about their returns rate and about how their returns rate was quite

high. And I said, well, have you contacted those

customers to ask why they're returning? And they said, oh, no, we just accept the

return. And I'm not an expert in this at all. But even to me I

thought, well, actually you're probably missing something there because if you ask people why they're

returning, it might just be they don't understand what the product

is or maybe there's something about when they get it, they don't know how to

use it. It could be something so simple and just

by improving that, you could obviously reduce your returns

rate but also help your customer as well, because

presumably they wanted whatever that you had to buy in the first place, they actually

purchased it. So I think there's a lot to be said for actually

sort of personally reaching out to people as well. Definitely to get

that insight as well because it's maybe something to do with your product descriptions or

imagery. You need video to kind of explain that product more.

Or maybe if it's a fashion brand, for example, which typically has a higher

return rate, say, than like a beauty brand, it's something

there and you can kind of get a sense of really what's happening. And then

obviously you don't want to be hemorrhaging that money by having to

process returns. So getting that finesse three feedback is

really important. Yeah, I think so too, because I was looking at it, like

I say, I'm not an expert and person I was talking to, they were saying

to me, why do you think this is? And I was saying, well, I could

give you so many guesses, pretty good guesses. But actually

if you take what I think and it's the wrong thing, you might end up

making the wrong fix and putting your energy in the wrong place. So

I think it can be a bit vulnerable, reaching out to customers, but I feel

like they always would appreciate it. People love

getting feedback. I think they really value that. That

feedback loop is so important. People love talking about their experience,

especially if it's like more of a negative one. They want to usually are quite

receptive to things like that. So it's definitely worth implementing

into a. Business process, I think so one

thing when I had my product business, I noticed is that if somebody

submitted a return which didn't happen too often, and I contacted them and said, I'm

really sorry you feel you have to return this. Can I make it right? Nine

times out of ten they then wouldn't leave a bad review. Not saying they would

have left a bad review anyway, but something I really noticed is I got hardly

any sort of negative reviews on the platforms I was selling on.

And I do wonder there might not be a correlation,

but I also think there possibly could be. There probably

is. Because whilst for whatever reason, the product

hasn't been what they've needed or there's something hasn't sat right, you

reaching out has made that experience more positive

for them. And whatever it is, you've resolved it or you've helped them to

kind of get to the endpoint that they want to with that product. So I

think there would definitely be a correlation there. Or maybe they also just

want to vent as well. Sometimes when I look at reviews, I just think this

person was just angry. There's that as

well. This leads me on really nicely to my

next question, which is what are some other things that we can do to

make our customers feel valued and give them a great experience of our

brands? Sure. So I would say from an online

perspective, everything needs to be seamless. So from pre purchase,

so your acquisition channels, so your paid media probably,

and all the kind of channels which are driving to the website.

On the website. It's a slick website, it's fast. The UX is amazing,

especially mobile experience. And then obviously back to

the data piece, understanding who they are so you can tailor your communications and your

onsite experience accordingly. So I'd say that's

something which is really important and then to kind of make them feel

valued. So humanizing the brand, making it really

personable and just making everything

slick, I. Would say that makes sense. So just making sure

that it's really easy for people to buy from you for your

processes, that makes sense. Thank you. And what about when

it comes to marketing our brands? Is there anything we can do there

to help attract customers, retain customers?

This is probably a set. This is a two part question. My other part of

this question is what kind of marketing channels do we need to be when we

talk about marketing, what kind of channels are we thinking about as

well? Sure. So in terms of the data piece, the

first step is just understanding what is going on. Smaller

brands have that data, so they're really digging into kind of what's happening and then

you can make really informed decisions about, okay, what are my next steps

based off what's happening on my website? So I'd say a great

experience on the website in terms of

optimizations and I guess making them feel

valued and unheard and feel special. So onsite

experience from adding everything to your products,

to the basket, all of that's really informative, high

quality content, educational blog post, landing

page, that kind of thing. Even functionality like loyalty

programs. Or if you've got a product which is a perfect fit for subscriptions, that

will be fantastic to kind of get people coming back

and sort of twofold the data piece as

well. Like looking at who these customer groups are, you probably have

a really small group of high spenders who generate proportionately,

a lot more than everyone else. Tell them

they're the vips, make them feel special and

reward them for shopping with you, whether it be a discount or a gift, a

surprise and then a parcel, for example, as well, or even a personalized letter

from the founder. I've had a few of those in my shopping experience and

they just make things that much better. I guess from an

email perspective, a lot of these small brands are on

Shopify, so there's great integrations with things like Clavio for email and

sms, having those automated flows set up in

the background to reflect where you are on the shopping journey. So

welcome flow first or second, order a brand

basket, all that kind of thing. And then you're able to kind of cross sell

them into complementary products or new products to get them to come

back and shop. And you're then able on those channels as well

to talk about your brand story, your usps, why

you are better in your eyes than your

competitors. And you can be so hyper targeted with the segment,

giving them that relevant messaging. And I'd also say sort of

customer service, the customer service channels via social media. A lot

of people reach out or email phone if you've got live chat,

making everything really seamless and helpful there and then

with the social piece as well, organic social, that

community brand building and engagement and

pulling them, sort of growing that community there and turning them into

customers that's really good. Thank you. I think that's all

really useful, practical things that people can do, because I think it can

be hard for a products business to think about how you can build

like a community almost. And I think the brands that do

it, do it really well. I've seen examples.

Some examples I've seen is there's a brand, and I'm not going to name any

brands that has a Facebook group with customers where they

get this is what's the new products that are coming out, or here's a discount

for being in the group and things like that. And I think things like that

and making the customers feel like a connection with you are just so

important. Yeah, we're not naming

brands. There's a very good country lifestyle brand that's very

famous, a UK based country brand, sort of

country lifestyle brand are very well known, but they really leverage their

social community. So Facebook generates a lot of revenue, those

customers, because they have in person events,

webinars, they send exclusive discounts and

activations out to these people. And it's a real money maker

from what I understand. So it sounds like there's lots of things that

you could be doing. It's just thinking what would suit you as a business or

a founder and the amount of time you want to put in.

Definitely. And

we spoke a little bit about this earlier. You touched on the fact that one

thing you specialize in is customer retention.

So why is it important to retain customers versus always

looking for new ones? I assume that we obviously all do need some kind

of new audience finding us. But

why do you believe that the most important thing is retaining the customers that we

have? Yeah. So in short, a repeat customer or an

existing customer is far more beneficial for your bottom line.

The simple fact is that repeat customers will generate more

revenue for your business. They'll bring in higher profits, they

usually will have a higher lifetime value. They're far cheaper

to support on an ongoing basis than a new customer.

So many reasons. Marketing efforts for repeat customers

are more cost effective for you. So those retention things you have

in place, rather than sticking lots of budget

into meta as well, they'll buy more over time. They

usually spend more pet orders. So you've got nice average order values there.

You've got really positive word of mouth marketing, which is free,

and they give you what we talked about earlier. So really great

brand feedback. They'll love to talk in that feedback loop. So they

can maybe highlight barriers to purchase and just really help

you make great optimizations on your website.

Real sort of community and sort of brand advocacy as

well. And I guess from a commercial perspective, they're a lot

easier to sell to. You can cross sell, upsell them new product

launches. So yes, they're a brilliant thing to sort of

optimize within your business. I'm absolutely convinced.

Do we know why? Out of interest, you may not know

the answer and it's absolutely fine. I'm just curious, do we know why people

are more likely to spend more money with you if they've bought from you already?

Is there any sort of science behind that? Well,

I think in simple terms that once you've kind of got a customer, they're bought

into your brand and then you've got them and then

you're then probably retargeting them through email, which is

targeting them through email, which you cheaper than, say,

spending, I don't know, whatever the cost per click is or

cost per acquisition numbers are via Facebook or

Instagram, that kind of thing. But they're going to spend more over time

with you and you're able to communicate with them.

They keep having sort of more positive experiences with you.

They're more likely to come back and if the products that you have are doing

what you say they're going to do, they're going to keep buying into that and

your, I guess, human emotional messaging as well.

In very basic terms, that makes so much sense. And I think I'm just thinking

of my own buying habits as well. And I think also there is an element

of you like what you like and you become a bit of a creature of

habits. So I'm thinking this probably applies to not

all product categories, but definitely things like food and beauty. If you find

a brand that you like or a product you like, I think a lot of

us will just keep buying that same product if it's something

that works for our skin or something we like to eat or whatever it is.

And I know that will apply to other products as well, but

yeah, I guess there is that too. And then when they, I think the brands

that do it really well, I'm thinking that there are brands that I've been loyal

to for a long time. And when they launch a new product, I'm like, oh,

this will be good because the thing I'm already using is good. And

in very simple terms, I guess there's an element of that as well, that you

start to trust that brand because the more good experiences you've had, the more

you're like, oh, my next experience will be good as well because the last ones

have been. Well, exactly. You've used

a beauty example there. So I would rather invest in a product I know

that works. I don't have to faff about with returning it if it doesn't, rather

than spending, I don't know, 50 pounds on a moisturizer, taking a pun or will

it work than something I know I already have? So there's

definitely a lot to be said within what you said there.

And what are some practical ways? Because like I say, we are all convinced that

this is what we need to be doing. Obviously, like I say, there's always going

to be an element of needing to attract more people. Of course there is. But

when we're thinking about keeping customers loyal, what are some of the things

that we as small businesses need to be doing in order to do that?

Because I'm assuming that we can set this in motion right

from their first interactions with us. Definitely. There's so many

things that can be done. So day in, day out. Now I'm sort of

helping brands with their customer retention strategies

to build that trust, to build that community engagement,

to drive loyalty and repeat purchase, and ultimately

to make more money and drive the revenue piece. If we're

looking at your website, I say you've got a lot of

data at your disposal there. Ensure your website is really easy to

navigate. Everything should be sort of clear layout, intuitive

menus, search should work

accordingly. Humanize your brand so the brand storytelling, weaving

your usps throughout the pages on your website

and personalizing those sort of interactions with the customers

there. I would say in terms of personalized, making

this online experience personalized as well. So giving those customers

data driven recommendations so we know you've bought x,

you should buy Y because it works really well together. We know you

like this category, so maybe you might like this

functionality wise. I've talked about it, but a loyalty program

works for a lot of businesses and it doesn't have to be discount driven, it

can be cause driven. So if you're buying

something, you're actually donating something to charity. For

example, their subscriptions

functionalities are fantastic to get that repeat purchase in as

well. Content is king in my eyes. So creating

really high quality content from your copy, imagery, video,

educational content about your product and your

brand story and I'd say on site as well, making

customer service your priority. So live chat has been brilliant

in helping people in real time with their problems

with email and sms. I would say implementing those flows.

If you've got Clavio, it's pretty straightforward

to create different sort of journeys post purchase and

even pre purchase and to help people sort of navigate their way

and come back and purchase again with you based on what they've shopped

with you before, what they purchased with you before, and what they've looked

at and social. So creating conversations,

getting those people to sort of buy into your brand

versus the product, I would say the people

who are doing it really well aren't selling products. They're

selling the experience, the brand, on their social channels,

especially on Instagram. TikTok's, I think a great sort

of social channel, especially within

its reach. There's so much opportunity. You see brands just really blowing up

there because a lot of it's like founder and behind the scenes type

content, but you're also able to do through that social and community building,

like events, in person brand experiences as well, to really

build that advocacy. Thank you so much. I

think you've given us so many great ideas there. So I guess it's all

about thinking what works for you as a business and doing what you can to

make your customer feel special and valued. I guess that's

part of all of this. Yeah, definitely.

Well, thank you so much, everything you've shared. Rebecca, I've got one final question, if

that's okay, and apologies in advance if this is a tough one,

but what would your number one piece of advice be for a small

business who wants to do what they can to make their customers feel

special and loyal to them? That's a big

question. I'd say in order to do

anything, you need to know who your customer is. If

you don't know who your customer is, you don't know how to speak to them.

You don't know what channel to speak to them on. So I'd say at the

very core of everything, the foundational step one, knowing that

data that we talked about earlier in this conversation is key. And then you

can make really informed decisions about what channels you

speak to them on, how you speak to them and when to speak to them.

That's brilliant advice. Thank you so much. Rebecca, thank you.

Thank you so much for listening. Right to the end of this episode, do remember

that you can get the fullback catalogue and lots of free resources on my website,

vickyweinberg.com. Please do remember to rate and review this

episode if you've enjoyed it, and also share it with a friend who you think

might find it useful. Thank you again and see you next week.