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Increasing customer loyalty is essential for businesses of all sizes to help them grow and keep turning a profit.

There are many different strategies to achieve this and for companies that rely on making deliveries as part of their service (whether ecommerce, B2B or anything else) this provides a great opportunity. Research has found that around 66 per cent of consumers have bought goods from one online retailer based on delivery options rather than a competitor, showing how important it is. These are four ways to improve loyalty through your shipping strategies.    

Offer Free Shipping

Incentives such as free shipping are a great way to retain customers. Even if they find a product cheaper elsewhere, the benefit of free delivery can quickly make ordering through your business seem more appealing. However, you will need to make sure offering free shipping fits into your business model and won’t lead to a loss. If it does, then you could claim that free shipping is a marketing cost and take any money out of this budget instead.

Provide Full Transparency

Potential and existing customers will compare you against competitors, which is why providing full transparency is vital. Shipping fees, taxes, customs and any other costs, along with delivery time expectations need to be accurate and listed on your site. Throughout the shipping process this should be maintained, providing updates if there are any delays and offering parcel tracking can help in building up loyalty.

Meet Customer Demand

As technology has advanced, creating more convenient delivery options has become the norm. Customers are now more demanding than ever with the range of options available to them, which is why it’s important to meet these with the variety of parcel delivery services your company offers. From same to next day delivery, to time specific and many more, you need to make sure all bases are covered. Larger companies should start to include international shipping where possible to expand.

Maintain Consistency

Reliable and predictable shipping services are perfect for customers, as they can trust that any orders they place will arrive (even if not on time, at least they will be informed). Services that range from being super quick to late or arrive damaged will put off many customers, whereas consistency is key. Creating an efficient and sensible shipping strategy is the way forward to begin and maintain a consistent delivery service.

Your customer loyalty levels should improve by following some of these shipping strategies.

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