When we talk about email strategies we often think of the kinds of emails that the customer need to be opted in for. You know, the weekly updates we send out, the sales emails, the product recommendations, but many fail to engage customers post-purchase. Big mistake.
This week we wanted to focus on a specific type of email that is very important to any eCommerce business and is very often forgotten about. And that is post-purchase emails.
Post-purchase emails are an important engagement tool for eCommerce businesses. It is super important to send an email after the customer has purchased something from your site. And not just because it’s a way to provide a receipt but for several other important reasons.
- Post-Purchase emails contain important information for the customer (shipping date, arrival time, tracking information)
- These emails can be used as the first touchpoint in the customer’s journey, and thus their first impression of your brand
- They have an extremely high open rate (we’re talking 61.7% open rate)
So how do you make your post-purchase emails interesting for your customer and effective for your business? Follow these three steps:
1. Use Images that Represent Your Brand
Don’t just use a generic image that says “thank you for your business”. Create an image that represents your brand and feels like your brand for the customer.
Here is a great example of a post-purchase email from TeeSpring –
The image that they picked fits their brand perfectly. It’s actually the same product that the customer purchased, with a simple background. The slogan “Love that shirt” also fits the brand and the image perfectly.
If TeeSpring went with a boring “your shirt is on its way”, the brand would be much less memorable and customers wouldn’t be as hooked on it as they would be with an awesome email like this one.
2. Introduce Your Business
The post-purchase email is also a perfect opportunity to introduce your business to the customer. It may seem strange to consider introducing your brand after a sale, but consider the fact that this purchase may have been the customers their purchase with you. Someone recommended your site or the specific product and they don’t know anything about you or your brand.
The next part of TeeSpring’s email does exactly that. In their case they display shirts by various sellers across the world. So they have a little blurb about the particular seller of the shirt, check it out:
This section provides all the info you need to know about the seller (or in your case your business). It provides their social proof (450k followers), how many products they sold, a few lines about them, and a very nice background picture.
That’s the same thing you should have about your brand.
3. Offer Similar Products
The next thing to do is to offer more products to the customer. Upsales. You can do this in different ways. You can either offer a special discount code for future purchases or display a few similar products to the customer.
Again looking at TeeSpring’s email we see that they include customers also purchased style recommendation:
4. Invite to a Referral Program
Referral or viral marketing is a very successful area of business. According to SmartInsight 54% of all purchasing decision come from word of mouth. That means you can easily double your ROI if you set up a referral program to encourage your customers to share your brand with their friends and loved ones.
Speaking about t-shirts here is a great referral program that Viral Loops set up. This graphic could easily become part of an email that they send to their shoppers.
Of course, you don’t have to set up a giveaway, but rewarding your referees with a discount to your products is not a bad idea.
5. Don’t Forget to Personalize
Last but not least, always personalize every email. Make sure to put the customer’s first name in the greeting. Sometimes you can put something that is relevant to the geographic location of the customer. On holidays you can always add a “happy holidays” greeting to the post-purchase email to celebrate holidays discounts or special campaigns that you have going on.
If you follow these 5 easy steps you will surely see the click through rates of your post-purchase emails increase and you will see an increase in your sales and brand awareness. Post-Purchase emails are your key to continued engagement, reducing churn and improving customer lifetime value.
