Case Study: How to Boost Shopper Retention and Loyalty for Your CPG Brand

CPG marketers understand the pivotal importance of connecting with their customers in meaningful ways to build a convincing and sticky brand among shoppers. The past few years have marked new records for sinking brand loyalty and retention in the industry, namely due to supply chain shortages that forced new opportunities for shoppers to search and shop for alternatives.

To respond to this challenge, CPGs needed to rethink how they built a brand identity by creating personalized and meaningful connections with consumers to stand out from increasing competition. CPG marketers can win with two strategies: creating micro moments for their shoppers that shape purchasing decisions and increasing their digital touchpoints with customers through CRM collection.

Flowcode, the DTC Platform, an end-to-end unified platform, bridges the gap between offline consumers and digital experiences using QR technology as a gateway. With this direct to consumer platform, brands can better own and manage relationships with offline shoppers to build better retail experiences. Numerous leading CPG brands have successfully leveraged Flowcode, achieving average engagement conversion rates of 63% and average contact collection conversion rates of 70%. Keep reading to learn how you can drive these results.

A new era of consumer connections 

When it comes to the consumer experience, every big CPG label knows what really matters is human touch. They’ve built their empires on making our ubiquitous experiences a little more personal. From shampooing your hair to serving up dinner for our pets, CPG brands have created identities that are much more meaningful and memorable than their products themselves. By building relationships with shoppers, many of these brands have been able to grow and thrive for decades. 

We've heard it all before–consumer behavior is evolving faster than ever. But the real question is: how is it changing? Let’s take a closer look at the shifts happening in the world of CPG.

1. Brand loyalty hit an all time low, and is still recovering

COVID-19 fallout led to mass supply chain issues which chipped away at brand loyalty. Consider this: in 2021, 8 in 10 consumers reported trying new brands, and a whopping 51% of that group cited the reason being out-of-stock of their original brand. As brands recover from these logistical setbacks, regaining customers for the long-haul is a massive goal.

2. Micro moments are reshaping in-person purchase experiences 

Micro moments occur when shoppers rely on their smartphones "to act on a need to learn something, do something, discover something, watch something, or buy something". These high-intent moments are pivotal for informing purchasing decisions, shaping preferences, and building trust with customers.

In a 2022 study of 11,000+ consumers, over 80% of respondents reported interest in accessing product reviews while in storefronts. Additionally, over half cited  it would make them more willing to make a purchase. Bottom line? Consumers rely on micro moments and expect them across their shopper experience in order to convert.

If CPG brands want to compete in today’s ever-competitive landscape, they must pay attention to this rising trend of blended shopping patterns. Many CPGs are already hopping on the train, but in order to accomplish this, CPGs need automations that tie their ecosystem together. 

As the MIT Sloan Management Review wrote, “Customers today expect the same speed and convenience in person that they get online. Stores that can deliver that experience will strengthen customer loyalty, making them more competitive with online sellers and creating an advantage over physical retail competitors that don’t offer comparable speed and convenience.”

Shaping customer decisions with digital touchpoints

Flowcode's end-to-end conversion suite allows CPGs to rethink customer connections. Flowcode QR codes enable instant digital touchpoints to share product information and resources that engage consumers both in-store and at home. 

Flowpage —  Flowcode's custom mobile-optimized landing page product — is widely leveraged by brands to create seamless mobile experiences to spur e-commerce and share content with customers. Flowpage also enables seamless contact collection through forms, driving a new customer information source for retention strategies like email, SMS marketing, and paid ad retargeting.

Flowcode and Flowpage are used by top CPG brands to effectively bring accessible digital engagements to any physical consumer interaction. Used in tandem, CPG brands have optimized their POS placements, OOH marketing, and product packaging to be interactive and build direct and additional direct lines with shoppers. Here are some impressive results we helped drive for these partners:

Strategy #1: supercharge retention marketing with CRM collection

For CPGs, customer loyalty is the gold standard. Not only do these consumers provide greater Lifetime Value (LTV), they’re also much less costly than acquiring new customers. 

But to accomplish this, you’ll need a way to increase touchpoints for retargeting spend and retention marketing. Flowcode's conversion suite makes that simple with embeddable contact collection forms on Flowpage.

Several major brands have leveraged Flowpages to run contest activations with much success. Among sweepstakes run by our CPG partners, Flowcode successfully converts information from roughly 70% of audiences and delivers 90% net new customers to brands' CRM databases.  In short, Flowcode effectively unlocks CRM from nearly three-quarters of active audience, almost all of whom are net new customers to each business.

This capability leads to significant incremental value for several campaigns, such as a major beverage brand's POS activation, which reported an additional $25k in value through contact collection from their shoppers. In another major TV commercial activation, Flowcode's brand partner attributed over $220k of incremental value to customer information gathering for retargeting purposes.

Strategy #2: enable lasting brand interactions in-store and at-home

Acquiring new customers costs 5x more than retaining current ones. One of the quickest ways to engage and retain customers is by satisfying them with accessible product information and inspiration, cross-product discovery, and quick re-purchase with D2C or subscription purchases.

Further, catching a shopper's attention in-store and from their homes means grabbing them at high intent moments for re-purchase as they plan to once again shop online or offline. Connecting with customers at this stage of the funnel can be tricky, but is completely possible with Flowcode and Flowpage in the mix.

Flowcode's partner, Haven's Kitchen, leverages the Flowcode suite to keep customers engaged with their products. Learn how Haven Kitchen has successfully built their retention marketing strategy through widening product and brand touchpoints here.
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Winning shoppers over is half the battle, but retaining them creates a pipeline for steady long-term growth. Increasing shopper retention has never been harder for CPG brands, but new technology enables CPG marketers to invest in offline channels that directly and quickly build additional touchpoints with high-internet acquired shoppers.

Flowcode's CPG partners actively use our conversion suite to educate customers and drive repurchase. Further, Flowcode has powered tens of nation-wide sweepstakes that have gathered thousands of engagements and customer emails and phone numbers. Leverage a  QR solution to close the gap between you and your customers instantly.

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