3 Ways Ecommerce

Improves B2B
Customer Lifetime Value
Ensuring Long-Term
Growth for Your Business
The understanding has long been, if you want to increase profits, then you need to mobilize your sales
team to close new deals, right?

Well, not so fast.

Businesses tend to be solely focused on generating new leads and sales, but this is not always the most
sustainable way to grow. They should mine the existing opportunity they’ve already earned by increasing

1 Average Order Value

2 Purchase Frequency
3 Customer Lifetime

Each of these components will raise the customer lifetime value (CLV).

Let’s explore how ecommerce can help you increase revenue generation from your existing customer base.

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Why Focus on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)?
Historically, many B2B organizations have struggled with customer retention. What is CLV?

In 2018, the global retention rate for manufacturers was only 67%, among the CLV is the total revenue a business can earn from a customer from their first to

lowest in all sectors surveyed by Satistica.1 final engagement. In short, it’s how much revenue a customer contributes over
their lifetime. Generally, CLV can be calculated with the following formula:
But customer retention should be a strategic area of focus for organizations,
especially since existing customers2:
CLV = (Average Order Value) x (Purchase
• Spend 67% more than new customers Frequency) x (Average Customer Lifetime)
• 50% more likely to try new products Where purchase frequency is the total orders/total customers and average
• Cost 5x less to acquire and retain customer lifetime is how long businesses retains a customer on average.

So, businesses need to focus on increasing their Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
in order to ensure long-term growth. A higher CLV directly impacts profitability and increases ROI of customer acquisition
efforts. By increasing CLV, you can expect higher profit margins, steadier cash flow,
more scalability, and it indicates that your customers like your brand and products.

Let’s see how modern ecommerce can effectively impact all three components of CLV.

1 Customer Retention Rate of Business Worldwide in 2018, by Industry

2 70 Powerful Customer Retention Statistics You Need to Know in 2021

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Modern Ecommerce Boosts
Average Order Value (AOV)
In order to increase AOV, your buyers must be able to order easily and quickly.
With modern ecommerce, sellers can improve the buying experience by: According to Forrester,
more than

70 %
• Streamlining ordering through self-service rather than needing to contact a sales representative
to place an order.3
• Providing more detailed product information, such as datasheets, videos, and manuals on the same
site that purchasing occurs to give buyers the confidence they need to make the correct purchases
of B2B buyers find
• Personalizing catalogs and pricing for a tailored buying experience based on account, buyer role,
buying from a website
and location
more convenient than
buying from a sales rep
Businesses that have been able to move their ordering process online have increased AOV by 44%.4

3 Death of a (B2B) Salesman

4 Ecommerce: How to Approach the Next Big Thing in B2B Marketing

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Modern Ecommerce Increases
Purchase Frequency
The second way to grow CLV is by increasing how often buyers purchase.

86% of a McKinsey survey respondents said that they prefer using digital self-service tools
for reordering, rather than talking to a sales representative.5

Instead of having your buyers manually add all the products they need to purchase to reorder,
use a modern ecommerce platform to expedite this process by:

• Automating the ordering process based on past purchases to only take a few steps rather
than doing everything over again
• Scheduling reminders to when it comes time to reorder, so that customers don’t forget to
place refill requests
• Triggering automated alerts when specified products are back in stock

5 Finding the Right Digital Balance in B2B Customer Experience

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Modern Ecommerce
Lengthens Customer Lifetime
Ultimately, happy customers are the customers who buy more and stay longer. B2B buyers will not
hesitate to stay just because they’ve been doing business with you for a long time.

A study from Accenture showed that 80% of B2B buyers switched suppliers in 2019 because they
weren’t meeting their needs.6
Companies who offered
self-service support
experienced an
In addition to modern ecommerce delivering better buying experiences, you can use the platform to
extend the lifetime of your customers by:

• Boosting customer retention and satisfaction with self-service.7

• Identifying changes in customer purchasing behavior with automated account alerts. For example,
85 %
year-over-year increase
in customer retention
rates compared to those
if buyers are suddenly stopping purchases, this is an early sign of churn and your team can step in to
try to save this relationship.
without self-service.
• Delivering targeted product and content recommendations to buyers based on purchasing and
search history, boosting your business’s value to the customer

6 80% of B2B Buyers Have Switched From Suppliers That are Unable to Align Their Services with Buyer Expectations, Accenture Interactive Research Finds
7 10 Leading Customer Experience Trends

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Tap Into Your Existing
Customer Base
Revenue generation doesn’t always need to come from new sources.
First look to see how you can increase both the lifetime and the
order value of your existing customer bases. And then focus on
acquiring new customers.

What’s Next?
To learn how a modern ecommerce platform like Liferay Commerce
can help you begin to improve your customer experience to support
long-term revenue generation.

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Liferay makes software that helps companies create digital
experiences on web, mobile and connected devices. Our platform is
open source, which makes it more reliable, innovative and secure.
We try to leave a positive mark on the world through business
and technology. Hundreds of organizations in financial services,
healthcare, government, insurance, retail, manufacturing and
multiple other industries use Liferay. Visit us at liferay.com.

© 2021 Liferay, Inc. All rights reserved.

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