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If a customer makes a purchase, one might assume that’s the end. You, as a business, sell a product, and they, as a customer, purchase it. Relationship over. Right? Well, yes and no.
A good business understands the latter answer, the no, is the better one in the long run. You see, the post-purchase experience of a customer is almost as important as them making a sale.
Not only does it show your company isn’t solely looking to profit, but it also builds trust, increases engagement, and promotes loyalty, which is inevitably going to increase profits. So, in this blog post, let us take a deeper look at post-purchase emails.
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What Are Post-Purchase Emails?
A post-purchase email is a message sent to customers after they’ve made a transaction. The post-purchase experience, overall, simply put, is what happens after a visitor becomes a customer and buys something. What experience do they receive after giving a company money, essentially? If we talk about emails specifically, these tend to include order confirmation, shipping notifications, thank-you notes, perhaps a discount coupon for another purchase (reward points, basically), feedback requests, recommendations, and so on and so forth. The aim is to make the overall customer experience, which includes everything after purchase as well, better so a customer feels good and buys from them again. Working with a digital marketing agency in Surrey can make this process more sophisticated and strategic, helping businesses create email flows that feel relevant, build trust, are timed right and ultimately help increase the number of repeat sales.
The Importance of Post-Purchase Emails
The great thing about mom-and-pop shops was the welcoming feeling, the trust, the transparency, and the feeling of being a valued customer, which is so often lacking in modern e-commerce. Post-purchase emails help with that tremendously by:
Building Trust and Transparency
It is just as important to send timely order confirmation and shipping updates to a customer as it is to pipe them down a sales funnel to increase numbers on a list. Without trust, every business fails. Transparency helps build trust and credibility, and when customers are kept informed about the status of their orders, they’re at peace. Research shows that post-purchase messages get opened 217% more, have a click rate over five times higher, and generate 90% more revenue per recipient compared to standard email campaigns.
Opportunities for Upselling and Cross-Selling
Post-purchase emails offer a great chance to introduce customers to products that naturally complement their recent purchase. When timed well and personalized, these suggestions can feel helpful rather than salesy and, frankly, pushy.
Gathering Valuable Feedback
As a business, no matter if it’s a product or service that you sell/offer, the value of feedback cannot be overstated. The goal is to make the overall purchasing experience as smooth and seamless as possible for a customer, and only during the post-purchase phase can they provide informed opinions. This way, you can find areas for improvement and also make the customer feel valued and almost invoke within them a sense of community and engagement.
Effective Strategies for Post-Purchase Emails
The importance of post-purchase emails clearly cannot be overstated, so let’s take a look at post-purchase emails that actually work:
Instant Order Confirmation and Tracking
Simple, useful, and effective. Everybody wants confirmation about their order, especially once they see the money debited message. The second your servers detect a customer has completed their purchase, they should receive an email with all the important information such as:
- Order details
- Estimated delivery time
- Tracking
It is okay to not have a live-tracking system in place just yet. However, people are often worried about scams, especially those new buyers that don’t often shop online. A simple “Your order is on the way” makes a huge difference.
Personalized Thank-You Email
A little appreciation goes a long way, so make a personalized thank-you email that includes the customer’s name, the item they bought, and a writer’s poetic touch to make it special. But it is always good to know the do's and don'ts of E-commerce Email Personalization.
Ask for a Review (at the Right Time)
You don’t want to rush this. Wait until a couple of days after the customer receives the order first. Then, you can consider sending them post-purchase emails and asking for a review. Remember, do not be annoying. You want to be sincere and even perhaps incentivize it a little bit. For example, many companies offer a discount coupon on the next order if a review is given or a form is filled.
Win-Back Emails for Inactive Customers
Customers, if they like a product or company, usually stick with it. If they haven’t bought something from your business in a while, give them a little nudge and let them know you want them back. A “miss you” email with a special offer often does the trick. However, you want the emails to feel personal, you want to ensure you don’t cross the fine line and enter spammy territory. Make them want to come back.
Conclusion
Post-purchase emails aren’t merely transactional messages but a very strategic tool used to build a positive association with their purchase and your company. The goal? It helps significantly increase customer retention and sales. However, ensure these emails are well thought out and not annoying; it takes two clicks to land up in someone’s spam folder, and the journey back is quite difficult, to say the least. Thoughtfully create these emails and build trust, enhance satisfaction, and encourage repeat purchases, ultimately driving long-term success.
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