This article was contributed by our friends at ShopPad, the largest developer of high-quality solutions for the Shopify and Shopify Plus eCommerce platforms.

 

So a customer just landed on your product page. They hand in their credit card information and are now purchasing your item.

For many stores, that’s a good sign of success. But the question is, how do you turn those first-time customers into repeat buyers that always come back for more?

The answer: Optimizing the post-purchase experience of your customers.

If you’re not finding ways to engage customers during the post-purchase experience, you’re leaving money on the table. You’re missing out on countless opportunities to boost loyalty, drive repeat sales, and make your eCommerce store stand out.

What Is the Post-Purchase Experience?

The post-purchase experience refers to the final point of the buyer’s journey when the customer completes their order. It’s what you do to engage the customer after their purchase and keep them happy.

Most stores go wrong because they think that the customer relationship ends once the shopper makes a purchase. However, optimizing the post-purchase experience is what improves the customer relationship and will drive you the most sales. And it’s easier than you think when you’re leveraging automation to do all the hard work for you.

The Best Post-Purchase Workflows for Customer Engagement

You may wonder what engaging customers during the post-purchase experience looks like. The best post-purchase workflows you can set up to keep customers hooked with your brand include:

1. Give a Personal Touch by Mailing Customers a Handwritten Postcard

Engaging customers after their purchase doesn’t have to happen just online. For a personal human touch that develops a long-term relationship, you can set up a workflow that automatically sends them a handwritten postcard after their purchase.

There are many reasons why you should consider including this workflow in your post-purchase experience strategy. First, it’s an excellent way to stand out from competitors by optimizing online and offline experiences. Secondly, it’s a great way to make customers feel valued and boost brand loyalty.

2. Send a “Welcome” Text Message When a Customer’s Order Arrives

First impressions matter a lot in eCommerce. If you want your customer to come back to your store for more, giving a warm welcome when they purchase for the first time goes a long way.

A simple tactic to welcome first-time customers is sending them a welcome text once their order shows up at their door. On top of letting the customer know that their order arrived, it also boosts their satisfaction by making them feel valued.

SMS works so well in engaging customers because it feels more personal than other marketing channels such as email. After all, you’re reaching out to customers on the same platform they use to keep in touch with friends and family.

Also, SMS typically has a higher open rate than email. Texts have an average open rate of 98%, compared to only 20% for email messages.

3. Proactively Reach out to Customers if Their Order is Delayed in Transit or Can’t Be Delivered on Time

Sometimes, unwanted things can happen during your product’s shipping. Traffic could get in the way, your delivery truck could break down, or maybe you lost the package.

These things aren’t necessarily your fault and might be outside your control. However, the worst thing you can do during these situations is not updating customers on the state of their order.

When things go wrong during delivery, you must follow up with the customer and update them immediately. Otherwise, you’ll have customers feeling frustrated and returning to you with the dreaded “Where’s my order?” question. They could even decide to leave a negative review and deter other potential shoppers.

The most common workflow you can set up to follow with the customer is to automate an email. With a tool like Mesa, you can create a workflow that identifies whenever an order is unfulfilled and sends the customer an email without any manual work from your end.

4. Email the Customer After 20 Days if the Package Is Not Delivered

If the package still hasn’t arrived at the customer’s doorstep after quite a while, it’s once again vital to let them know. The more the customer waits for their order with no update from your end, the more they’ll feel frustrated with your brand.

Within Mesa’s platform, you can set up a workflow that sends an email to the customer after 20 days when they don’t receive their order within just a couple of clicks. You can offer the customer a sincere apology for the inconvenience and customize the email however you want (such as including a product discount to make up for the bad experience).

5. Create a Gorgias Support Ticket for Customers That Leave a Negative Yotpo Review

Negative reviews take a significant hit to not only your brand reputation but your sales. Over 93% of online shoppers believe that online reviews influence whether they purchase from a store or not.

Even if a customer posts negative feedback online, don’t worry: it’s not the end of the world. One of the best things you can do is set up a workflow with Mesa that creates a Gorgias support ticket whenever a customer drops a negative review via Yotpo.

That way, you can understand the reasoning behind the negative review and find ways that your brand can do better. Perhaps if you manage to solve the issue, the customer will delete their negative review altogether.

Examples of Brands Crushing It With Post-Purchase Experience

Need some real-time examples of the power of optimizing the post-purchase experience? Here’s how some top brands are engaging their customers after their order to boost customer retention and satisfaction:

Gladskin

Gladskin is a skincare brand that targets unwanted skin bacteria that result in eczema and rosacea conditions. They experienced heavy delays during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and desperately needed a better way to update customers on shipping issues.

Typically, each time they missed a shipment, Gladskin would email the customer to let them know. However, this took a lot of manual work on Gladksin’s end, and if they were ever to miss the expedited shipping window, they had no option but to refund the customer.

That’s when they decided to integrate Mesa as part of their eCommerce store. Thanks to automation capabilities, they could take their customer service to the next level and satisfy more customers post-purchase.

Instead of tracking down each missed shipment, Mesa did all the hard work for Glaskin by identifying unfulfilled orders and sending an email to the customer automatically for updates. It helped drastically reduce the skincare company’s “Where’s my order?” tickets and satisfy more customers, even in unpredictable times.

StyleMeGHD

StyleMeGHD is an interior design company that offers affordable home decor products for its audience. They were looking for ways to step up their email marketing strategy to engage more customers and boost retention.

Their challenge was that they manually sent customers their order tracking link, which was a time-consuming process. They were also losing repeat customers due to not updating shoppers on the status of their orders.

Instead of hiring more employees to their support team, they decided to integrate their store to Mesa, which came with connections to some of the best email marketing platforms. Automating all of their post-purchase order emails saw an increase in customer lifetime value and fewer complaints.

“Mesa is a game-changer. [You can] free up your time spent manually reaching out to your customers and start automating processes where you can,” says Meghan Owen, Marketing Director at StyleMeGHD. “The team at Mesa is incredibly helpful and goes the extra mile to make sure everything is running smoothly.”

Start Driving More Repeat Purchases With Post-Purchase Workflows Today

It’s not enough to focus solely on acquiring new customers to generate the best results, delivering an exceptional post-purchase experience matters just as much to grow your eCommerce business.

It all comes down to optimizing the customer journey. By keeping customers engaged at every touchpoint, from the second they land on your website to even after they purchase, you’ll be able to create a complete eCommerce strategy.