How do you define your brand’s end-to-end customer experience? Does it cease after the purchase transaction goes through? Consider your own eCommerce shopping experiences – you’re really not done “shopping” until that package arrives at your doorstep. In fact, for leading DTC brands, the customer experience (CX) never stops. These brands strategically leverage ongoing opportunities for post-purchase customer engagement with their brands via lifestyle content, personalized recommendations, and more. 

Nearly half of shoppers in the U.S. buy multiple sizes of the same apparel item with the intent of returning the ones that don’t fit. That’s according to a survey that was conducted in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic. With the resultant surge in and broadening of online shopping since then, we can infer this practice has only increased. Which means more brands may be seeing narrower profit margins.

This blog is part of a series about how and why retail brands must “earn the customer” – their trust and loyalty – to remain competitive in a digital world. See other posts, including Earn the Customer with Unique Brand Content on Your eCommerce Site and Earn the Customer with Customer-Centric UX Design.

If your brand is committed to being customer-centric, then every interaction in the customer journey should merit close attention, including post-purchase experiences like returns. Although your gut reaction may be to focus on revenue-generating areas of your business versus profit-sucking returns, it might be time to take a different view (and tap a potentially lucrative upside). “Return” is not necessarily synonymous with “refund.” If you expand your definition to include exchanges and store credit and treat the return experience as a way to support customers, returns can actually be an opportunity to increase customer loyalty and lifetime value.

This year’s holiday season is going to look different from past seasons, with heavy emphasis on eCommerce versus in-store -- a potential win for tech-savvy DTC brands. Early reports indicate retailers are searching for creative ways to generate shopping excitement online beyond “hot” prices -- such as offering early start dates, exclusive products, personal shoppers, virtual reality, credit/payment plan options, social and gamified interactions, and more. 

A subscription program can be a powerful strategy to make your business more valuable to investors and help make it easier to raise funding. Subscription models bring in more reliable, longer-term revenue, and can flatten out seasonal spikes, making forecasting easier and more accurate. However, it’s not easy to do eCommerce subscription programs right – it’s a delicate dance to optimize retention, churn, customer acquisition costs, revenue per customer and other factors. 

This blog is part of a series about how and why retail brands must “earn the customer” – their trust and loyalty – to remain competitive in a digital world. See the first post on "Earn the Customer with Unique Brand Content on Your eCommerce Site".