How to plan out your post purchase program

Post-purchase communication is an essential part of any retailer’s marketing and customer retention strategy. Understanding the psychology behind customer behavior can reveal important opportunities within the customer journey. Marketers can use this information to increase the levels of customer retention, leading to a growth in brand advocates and ROI. With a little thought and the Dotdigital platform, you can implement a post-purchase program that improves your customer experience.

The key time to improve your customer experience and relationship is immediately after his or her first purchase – while the brand is at the forefront of their mind. To encourage this relationship, it’s important to communicate with customers regularly. Curate messages that have a personalized tone, prompting them to engage with you.

There’s no better time to talk to and engage with a customer than after they’ve demonstrated they’re willing to trust you. Here are our top tips!

Don’t forget your manners and show that you care

Say ‘thank you’. These two little words can really make an impact on your customer’s post-purchase experience.

How-to guides

You want to ensure that your customer enjoys their purchase; a simple ‘how-to’ guide can realize this and reduces the risk of returns from frustrated customers. This can be done in a variety of ways: you could provide an infographic in your email, embed a video tutorial, or include a link which will take them to a dedicated page on your website.

Product care tips

Like the above, the intention here is to ensure your customer is getting value from the product they’ve ordered and to encourage them to engage with their purchase. Help them maximize the product lifecycle with an email containing lots of product care tips.

Product feedback

A successful way to improve customer experience is to ask for feedback from your customers on the products they’ve purchased. Bear in mind that the time frame around reviews will differ according to what type of product they’ve purchased. Telling your recipients how their feedback will influence the products or services you offer will help to increase your response rates. Using Dotdigital’s survey tool will help you achieve a quick, effective, and sophisticated feedback form. All responses will be automatically matched and appended to your existing database records.

Replenishment reminders

Replenishment emails are automated emails that are sent to customers when their product is about to run out, so they can re-order. They’re useful for all sorts of products; makeup, pet food, skincare, food and health products. It doesn’t take much effort to create a replenishment reminder and they can be sent automatically with little management. This simple attention to detail can really improve the customer experience. As a brand that offers expediency, your customers will view you as both dependable and trustworthy.

Bring back lapsed customers

Another excellent example of post-purchase engagement is the win-back email. You might, for example, send to someone who’s made a certain number of purchases in the past, yet hasn’t placed an order in the last six months. This will enable you to target these customers with an email containing a voucher or discount code.

More engagement ideas

Keep your customers engaged, but be careful not to make your post-purchase emails too pushy – customers may not be ready to buy from you again just yet. Instead, look for ways to keep them engaged. Here are our most effective ways to guarantee engagement:

• Invite them to follow you on social media
• Tempt them with tailored product recommendations email – use this feature in Dotdigital to insert dynamic products into your campaigns
• Invite these contacts to sign up to receive your email newsletter for special offers
• Set up a loyalty program and invite them to join
• Offer an incentive to ask them to share your brand with their friends
• Send a discount code for their next purchase

Consider SMS

You might think SMS marketing is just a great way to get those sales in. It’s also a proven way to follow up and communicate with your customers after their purchase. Delivering relevant content is exactly how you get them to repeat their custom.

It’s this personal, friendly, and yet professional service which builds relationships and keeps customers from lapsing.

If you would like to understand how SMS can help your business, please feel free to give your account manager a call.

Post-purchase programs in Dotdigital

Choose from a blank template or, if you’re looking for a helping hand, select one of our pre-built templates. They’ve been designed for a range of different purposes, so you should find one that’s right for you.

You only need two things to get started with a post-purchase program in your Dotdigital:

1. Two triggered campaigns (containing external dynamic content blocks with links to your bestsellers)
2. Order Insight data (synced from your ecommerce store)

Your ultimate goal is to make sure your customers have a great experience with your product and service. Ideally, the experience will stick. They’ll keep an eye out for your communications and return to purchase again. Never forget that a well-conceived post-purchase strategy can win you customers for life!

For more inspiration on post-purchase marketing, download our whitepaper.