The period following a purchase is a critical juncture for your brand. Once a customer has chosen to buy from your brand, the way you manage their post-purchase experience will determine if your brand becomes a trusted favorite or simply fades away as a one-time purchase.
Keen to create superior customer experiences post-checkout?
Discover the power of post-purchase email campaigns and flows and learn how to leverage them to delight your customers, featuring examples from leading direct-to-consumer brands.
A post-purchase email is any message sent by a business to its customers following the purchase of a product or service. These emails generally provide essential information about the purchase, but they can also contain promotional content designed to boost retention or prompt the next purchase.
Order and shipping confirmation emails, for instance, are transactional post-purchase emails. However, you can also incorporate a thank-you email or a review request email into your post-purchase automation series.
The timing and content of these automations may vary depending on how much time has passed since the purchase. For example, an order confirmation email should be sent immediately after the purchase, while a product review request should be sent after the product has been delivered and the customer has had time to use it.
These messages collectively form your post-purchase email sequence.
Post-purchase emails not only deliver crucial information about customers' orders but also serve another purpose beyond order confirmation.
Utilize them to share more about your brand and products, and reinforce your customers' decision to buy from you, thereby enhancing customer loyalty and lifetime value.
Effective post-purchase emails can help you:
Moreover, post-purchase emails are among the most impactful emails you can send. Data from Klaviyo reveals that post-purchase emails have open rates almost 17% higher than the average email automation.
Refer to these industry-specific post-purchase email benchmarks to understand the performance metrics you can expect from these automations.
Keep in mind that post-purchase emails, unlike browse abandonment or cart abandonment emails, are primarily intended to nurture customers and provide information about a recent order. Consequently, they generally exhibit lower click rates, conversion rates, and revenue per recipient.
Imagine an Olympic sprinter winning a race. Do they stop at the finish line? No. They usually complete a victory lap, pose for pictures, and prepare for their next event.
Similarly, your responsibility doesn't end with a sale. Your subsequent "event" is to deliver exceptional customer service and persuade customers to return for more, ideally through an effective post-purchase series.
To enhance retention and customer lifetime value, consider integrating a post-purchase flow into your email marketing strategy, and stay engaged with your customers beyond the sale.
This is a simple & straight forward post-purchase email to drive engagement of previous customers, while capturing information via reviews to drive more social proof down the road for campaigns and other email automations.
Crate & Barrel shows a great job to cross-sell their customers with products that would supplement the most recent product that they just purchased. This is a common strategy to lower CAC & increase LTV of customers on a consistent basis.
Bite does a great job at tapping into social proof for their post-purchase flows. This is another strategy that is extremely popular early on in post-purchase flows to remove buyers remorse and to reinforce what a great purchase that your customer made.
A post-purchase email can serve a dual purpose: providing essential information about the purchase and functioning as a promotional tool to increase customer retention.
A post-purchase email should clearly convey information about the purchase, including product names and details, order information, shipping details, pricing, and payment information.When should a post-purchase email be sent?
A post-purchase email should be sent immediately after the customer completes the purchase, providing them with crucial order information and maintaining the ongoing conversation.
A cross-sell email is a type of post-purchase email designed to inform existing customers about related products that might interest them. This email is an excellent way to encourage customers to make their next purchase.
