Let’s be real…
Retaining customers isn’t nearly as exciting as acquiring new ones.
If you asked a marketer to write an order confirmation email vs craft a new Meta ad…
I think you’d know what the preference for most would be.
But the longer I live, the more I realize success comes from doing the boring stuff.
eCommerce is no different.
Most brands use aggressive, exciting direct response tactics in their pre-purchase marketing, and then once the customer buys, the communication style switches to templatized AI slop.
In this issue, we’ll look at how you can turn those first 30-days post-purchase into an automated marketing system that generates revenue on autopilot.
So when you see a 1.3x ROAS on Meta, you can still sleep at night knowing that revenue is being maximized on the backend.
We’ll cover:
- The 3 post-purchase marketing mistakes brands make
- 5 post-purchase emails you should set up no matter what
- A sneaky good educational email from Jawszrise
Let’s jump right in!
3 Mistakes Brands Make With Their Post Purchase Marketing
Mistake #1: No incentive to shop again
I see this very often when auditing CRM accounts. A customer receives a 10-20% welcome discount off the first purchase, and then little to nothing for them to come back.
Your acquisition offer should strike a balance between scalability and profitability. You don’t want to cut too much into your margins, so you can still keep the momentum going.
If you give customers 10% off initially, give them at least 15% off the second purchase. Make it the best offer they’ll ever see, attach a deadline, so there’s actual FOMO.
The moment they feel they can get a better deal elsewhere (like signing up to your list with another email), it loses its meaning.
Mistake #2: Poor CX
A one-time buyer is a highly skeptical buyer, meaning it can take one bad experience for them to never buy from you again.
CX shows up in the little things:
Is it easy to reach out to you? How quickly do you respond to support tickets? Do customers get connected to a human or a chatbot?
Overcommunication is also better than no communication.
Eli Weiss talked about the “dead zone” in one of his recent newsletters.
It’s the period between a customer placing an order and fulfillment. This couple of days might seem like “business as usual” to you, but for the customer, it’s a dead zone where nothing happens.
If it takes you 72 hours to ship out the product from your warehouse, the customer has already forgotten they even bought it.
Mistake #3: Cross-category selling too early
Trying to sell a one-time customer sunglasses when they just bought a watch is usually too big of an ask.
Cross-category selling can work on VIP customers who have ordered from you multiple times already, but the trust has to be high enough for them to check out “other stuff” you have.
For one-time buyers, the most straightforward path to retention is to sell them the exact same item they just bought, in a slightly different variation.
That could be a soda in another flavor.
A t-shirt in a different color.
Or sunglasses in a new shape.
The exception here is infomercial products.
In that case, a lot of your retention will depend on your merchandising strategy. I always refer back to the car + fuel analogy here. You sold them the car, now sell them the fuel, which is ideally a replenishable product.
(Trust me, if you try to convince a customer to buy another blender a week after they just bought it, they’ll think you’ve lost the plot).
5 Post-Purchase Emails Every Brand Needs
Now let’s get into some practical stuff. I’ll show you 5 post-purchase emails you should set up, no matter what type of product you sell.
Founder-led order confirmation
About 80-90% of customers open order confirmation emails.
You have their attention, which is the highest commodity these days. It’s the perfect chance to make an impression.
The key here is to be personal. Send the email from the founder, write in a conversational tone, and show that there are actual people behind the brand.
If you can throw in humor here, like CDBaby, even better.
Buyer’s remorse
I love sending this email in between fulfillment. Get the customer excited about receiving their new product. Show before vs after transformations, or highlight some of your best reviews.
This tackles some of that buyer’s remorse before it even kicks in.
Example from subtl.
Product education
Product education emails come in multiple forms, depending on what you sell.
For example, supplement brands should take customer onboarding seriously. If you promised them some sort of transformation, your ability to retain them depends on the customer actually consuming the product, and knowing how to use it correctly.
Other examples of educational emails include assembly guides, or “how to take care of your new product” (like the example above from T3).
For one of my clients that sells leather goods, we sent a PDF care guide.
You can’t go wrong here, as long as you build goodwill with the customer.
Video review request
Video > text
Text-based reviews are good, but there’s always this notion of “are these actually real?”
Video builds trust. You can’t fake a real video testimonial (at least until AI becomes even more polished).
If you can collect video reviews like Bambu Earth did in this example, you can use them in your Meta/TikTok ads, or just post them as organic UGC (that is as long as you get consent to use these videos, of course). It’s a really powerful retargeting method.
Make sure you give the customer an incentive for sending you that stuff!
Cross-sell
The final post-purchase email is a cross-sell email where you present them with relevant products + an offer.
Ideally, you should direct users back to your website in every email you send, but this is the first email where the sole purpose is to get them to buy again.
If you have a bigger email list, you can play around with customer segments here and make relevant offers. The easiest way is just to give a % off your best-sellers.
These are just 5 post-purchase emails. Set these up, and you’re doing more than 90% of brands already.
If you want more post-purchase email ideas based on what you sell, check out this guide I put together.
36 post-purchase emails to re-convert one-time buyers >>>
Emails that Sell #34: Post-Purchase Education
I just had to include a post-purchase email in this week’s analysis.
This educational email by Jawszrise is one of the best I’ve seen. Exactly something you’d want to send during fulfillment.
