The UpCity Logo with Orange Pin Symbol and Dark Logotype
Search
  • Find a Pro
    • Business Services
      • Accounting
      • Back Office Services
      • Cloud Consulting
      • Human Resources
      • Payroll
      • Browse All Business Services
    • Design & Creative
      • Graphic Design
      • Logo Design
      • UX Design
      • Web Design
      • Browse All Design & Creative
    • Development
      • Android App Development
      • Mobile App Development
      • Software Development
      • iOS App Development
      • Browse All Development
    • IT Services
      • Big Data & Business Intelligence
      • Cybersecurity
      • Browse All IT Services
    • Marketing & Advertising
      • Advertising
      • Branding
      • Content Marketing
      • Digital Marketing
      • PPC
      • Public Relations (PR)
      • SEO
      • Social Media
      • Video Production
      • Browse All Marketing & Advertising
  • For Service Providers
  • Provider Log In
4 Ways E-Commerce Businesses Can Create an Engaging After-Sale System
November 19, 2019

4 Ways E-Commerce Businesses Can Create an Engaging After-Sale System

Jack Shepler Uncategorized

November 19, 2019

4 Ways E-Commerce Businesses Can Create an Engaging After-Sale System

Jack Shepler
/
Marketing & Advertising
generic-marten-bjork-rH8O0FHFpfw-unsplash

In addition to guest posting on the UpCity blog, Ayokay is featured as one of the Top Branding Agencies in the United States. Check out their profile here.

In order to support a successful and sustainable business, you will need to find a meaningful way to keep customers coming back. Not only are repeat customers likely to spend more than a first-timer, it takes far less convincing to get them to convert once again. According to Invespcro’s study, it costs an average of five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a previous one. 

In order to keep customers loyal to your brand, your online ‘post-sales’ strategy will need to be highly engaging. Of course, many e-commerce brands go about this all wrong. After all, how many times have you bought from an online company only to be inundated with sales emails day after day until you finally move them to the spam folder?

The key here (and I’m sure you’ve heard this before) is quality content over quantity. Barraging your past buyers with aggressive sales messages is not the best approach if you want to establish a successful customer retention strategy. Instead, try some of these more engaging and effective approaches.

Create a Lasting Final Impression

The customer clicking the final checkout button should not be the last interaction that they have with your business. In fact, it should act as an invitation to start reaching out to them with more meaningful content. This person is already engaged, and obviously, they are interested in your products. Therefore, the time after the first purchase is critical for converting them into repeat buyers.

Sending out an email shortly after a purchase to thank the customer for their business and to ask about their experience is an awesome way to re-engage with the shopper while also collecting helpful feedback. Now, these follow-up emails do not necessarily have to be sales-forward. Instead, this is the chance for you to build a relationship that leads to long-term loyalty. 

Be sure to add little personalized touches to these follow-up emails if you want to increase the number of openings and clicks. Simply including the customer’s first name or asking questions that are specific to their purchase shows that you truly care about your customers’ experience. Ask for suggestions, comments, and genuine feedback on certain areas to give customers the opportunity to offer some meaningful advice from the other side. 

According to BrightLocal’s research, 71% of customers are more likely to leave a review for a business if they are asked to. E-commerce business owners know that UGC feedback is essential to attracting new customers. Reviews also send out signals to Google for a strong SEO marketing strategy, so gathering this kind of feedback is quite beneficial.

Build It into Your POS

Another way to integrate an effective after sales strategy is by building it directly into your POS process. The key here is understanding your customers’ motivations, which in most B2C cases, is going to be closely related to getting the best deal. 

Asking a customer to create an account during the checkout process as an invitation to a loyalty program is a great first step. This incentivizes them to buy more to receive perks. Simply offering a loyalty program on your website can be a motivating sales factor for first-time buyers – as nearly 70% of shoppers say they are more willing to purchase from a company that offers a rewards program. 

According to a study from Nielsen, the top features that consumers like to see from a loyalty program are flexibility, personalization, rewards, and technology integration. Be sure that your loyalty perks keep these factors in mind and offers the most valuable benefits to your customers.

Depending on which e-commerce web host service you use, integrating a loyalty program is typically an easy task. There are all kinds of apps and extensions available through most platforms for these types of services that will automatically track each customer’s purchases and send out customized codes.

If your loyalty program is going to boost the number of repeat sales, it will need to be enticing enough to push them to make frequent purchases. Offering a low discount after high volumes of purchases (such as 10% for every $5,000 spent) is probably not going to work. Make sure that the requirements are attainable.

Use Sales Data for Personalized Offers

Personalized experiences are a top priority for most businesses that want to get their customers engaged. Yet, most marketers are intimidated by the process of gathering, analyzing, and applying such large sums of consumer data into practical actions.

A personalized customer experience (CX) doesn’t need to be entirely tailored to each individual shopper who arrives on your website. Instead, focus on the details that directly impact conversion rates. In terms of personalization, the things that customers want to see the most are relevant promotions, recognition of past purchases and information, and personalized product recommendations. 

As you could imagine, the best way to source the necessary information for these customized experiences is with internal sales data. Before you even start tracking consumer behavior for specific shoppers, take a look at the patterns that most of your customers follow. 

  • What items are frequently bought together? 
  • How often do customers come back to buy the same product? 
  • What percent discount is typically enough to boost sales?

The answers to these questions can be a good starting point to sending out relevant promotions to new customers, especially if you are in the beginning stages of gathering more datasets for better personalization. You can use this information to send out timely reminder emails for products that a customer might buy frequently. 

For example, let’s say you are selling water filters. As most filters need to be replaced every two to three months, you can set up timed product recommendation emails following the initial purchase. 

Of course, it is incredibly important that e-commerce brands approach personalization with the customer in mind. Many consumers have justified concerns about the safety of sharing their private data with businesses, so be sure that you maintain customer trust by being transparent about your tactics and alerting customers when their data is being tracked. 

Host a Giveaway

Social media is an obvious channel that online brands use for engagement and to get customers more involved with their content. However, many e-commerce brands only view social media as an avenue to attract new sales. They are so focused on getting more followers, likes, and shares that they fail to use it as a post-sales strategy.

One of the current trends that many businesses are using to boost engagement is hosting a social media contest or giveaway sweepstakes to attract attention and gain some new followers. This can also be a great way to re-engage current customers. 

The online brand Floafers recently launched an online sweepstakes contest to increase their revenue in order to fund some new products. In a case study report, Floafrer’s marketing team found that requiring consumers to follow a link to a signup page was more effective for their strategy than a simple “like, comment, or share to enter” approach. As a result, they generated over $8,000 in revenue during the campaign and their email conversion rate went up to 22%!

Now, your prize doesn’t need to be as impressive as a paid vacation getaway; just giving away a new product or a gift card is certainly motivating enough for customers to share some of their valuable data with you. Plus, offering special perks like additional entries if people share brand-related content can also motivate past customers to essentially become brand advocates.

Conclusion

Successful brands understand the importance of creating loyal customers. While fantastic products, good customer service, and a positive shopping experience may be enough to get some to return, you need a defined post-sale strategy. Use this time after a sale as an opportunity to cultivate a meaningful relationship between your brand and its customers.

About the author

Jack Shepler
Marketing and Search Engine Optimization expert at Ayokay

Jack Shepler is a Marketing and Search Engine Optimization expert from Indianapolis, Indiana. He founded Ayokay, an award-winning web design and marketing firm that has built brands and increased sales for businesses since 2011. A Forbes Next 1000 awardee, he uses his decades of experience to educate through the Ayokay blog and through public speaking. You can follow him on LinkedIn.

In addition to guest posting on the UpCity blog, Ayokay is featured as one of the Top Branding Agencies in the United States. Check out their profile here.

In order to support a successful and sustainable business, you will need to find a meaningful way to keep customers coming back. Not only are repeat customers likely to spend more than a first-timer, it takes far less convincing to get them to convert once again. According to Invespcro’s study, it costs an average of five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a previous one. 

In order to keep customers loyal to your brand, your online ‘post-sales’ strategy will need to be highly engaging. Of course, many e-commerce brands go about this all wrong. After all, how many times have you bought from an online company only to be inundated with sales emails day after day until you finally move them to the spam folder?

The key here (and I’m sure you’ve heard this before) is quality content over quantity. Barraging your past buyers with aggressive sales messages is not the best approach if you want to establish a successful customer retention strategy. Instead, try some of these more engaging and effective approaches.

Create a Lasting Final Impression

The customer clicking the final checkout button should not be the last interaction that they have with your business. In fact, it should act as an invitation to start reaching out to them with more meaningful content. This person is already engaged, and obviously, they are interested in your products. Therefore, the time after the first purchase is critical for converting them into repeat buyers.

Sending out an email shortly after a purchase to thank the customer for their business and to ask about their experience is an awesome way to re-engage with the shopper while also collecting helpful feedback. Now, these follow-up emails do not necessarily have to be sales-forward. Instead, this is the chance for you to build a relationship that leads to long-term loyalty. 

Be sure to add little personalized touches to these follow-up emails if you want to increase the number of openings and clicks. Simply including the customer’s first name or asking questions that are specific to their purchase shows that you truly care about your customers’ experience. Ask for suggestions, comments, and genuine feedback on certain areas to give customers the opportunity to offer some meaningful advice from the other side. 

According to BrightLocal’s research, 71% of customers are more likely to leave a review for a business if they are asked to. E-commerce business owners know that UGC feedback is essential to attracting new customers. Reviews also send out signals to Google for a strong SEO marketing strategy, so gathering this kind of feedback is quite beneficial.

Build It into Your POS

Another way to integrate an effective after sales strategy is by building it directly into your POS process. The key here is understanding your customers’ motivations, which in most B2C cases, is going to be closely related to getting the best deal. 

Asking a customer to create an account during the checkout process as an invitation to a loyalty program is a great first step. This incentivizes them to buy more to receive perks. Simply offering a loyalty program on your website can be a motivating sales factor for first-time buyers – as nearly 70% of shoppers say they are more willing to purchase from a company that offers a rewards program. 

According to a study from Nielsen, the top features that consumers like to see from a loyalty program are flexibility, personalization, rewards, and technology integration. Be sure that your loyalty perks keep these factors in mind and offers the most valuable benefits to your customers.

Depending on which e-commerce web host service you use, integrating a loyalty program is typically an easy task. There are all kinds of apps and extensions available through most platforms for these types of services that will automatically track each customer’s purchases and send out customized codes.

If your loyalty program is going to boost the number of repeat sales, it will need to be enticing enough to push them to make frequent purchases. Offering a low discount after high volumes of purchases (such as 10% for every $5,000 spent) is probably not going to work. Make sure that the requirements are attainable.

Use Sales Data for Personalized Offers

Personalized experiences are a top priority for most businesses that want to get their customers engaged. Yet, most marketers are intimidated by the process of gathering, analyzing, and applying such large sums of consumer data into practical actions.

A personalized customer experience (CX) doesn’t need to be entirely tailored to each individual shopper who arrives on your website. Instead, focus on the details that directly impact conversion rates. In terms of personalization, the things that customers want to see the most are relevant promotions, recognition of past purchases and information, and personalized product recommendations. 

As you could imagine, the best way to source the necessary information for these customized experiences is with internal sales data. Before you even start tracking consumer behavior for specific shoppers, take a look at the patterns that most of your customers follow. 

  • What items are frequently bought together? 
  • How often do customers come back to buy the same product? 
  • What percent discount is typically enough to boost sales?

The answers to these questions can be a good starting point to sending out relevant promotions to new customers, especially if you are in the beginning stages of gathering more datasets for better personalization. You can use this information to send out timely reminder emails for products that a customer might buy frequently. 

For example, let’s say you are selling water filters. As most filters need to be replaced every two to three months, you can set up timed product recommendation emails following the initial purchase. 

Of course, it is incredibly important that e-commerce brands approach personalization with the customer in mind. Many consumers have justified concerns about the safety of sharing their private data with businesses, so be sure that you maintain customer trust by being transparent about your tactics and alerting customers when their data is being tracked. 

Host a Giveaway

Social media is an obvious channel that online brands use for engagement and to get customers more involved with their content. However, many e-commerce brands only view social media as an avenue to attract new sales. They are so focused on getting more followers, likes, and shares that they fail to use it as a post-sales strategy.

One of the current trends that many businesses are using to boost engagement is hosting a social media contest or giveaway sweepstakes to attract attention and gain some new followers. This can also be a great way to re-engage current customers. 

The online brand Floafers recently launched an online sweepstakes contest to increase their revenue in order to fund some new products. In a case study report, Floafrer’s marketing team found that requiring consumers to follow a link to a signup page was more effective for their strategy than a simple “like, comment, or share to enter” approach. As a result, they generated over $8,000 in revenue during the campaign and their email conversion rate went up to 22%!

Now, your prize doesn’t need to be as impressive as a paid vacation getaway; just giving away a new product or a gift card is certainly motivating enough for customers to share some of their valuable data with you. Plus, offering special perks like additional entries if people share brand-related content can also motivate past customers to essentially become brand advocates.

Conclusion

Successful brands understand the importance of creating loyal customers. While fantastic products, good customer service, and a positive shopping experience may be enough to get some to return, you need a defined post-sale strategy. Use this time after a sale as an opportunity to cultivate a meaningful relationship between your brand and its customers.

About the author

Jack Shepler
Marketing and Search Engine Optimization expert at Ayokay

Jack Shepler is a Marketing and Search Engine Optimization expert from Indianapolis, Indiana. He founded Ayokay, an award-winning web design and marketing firm that has built brands and increased sales for businesses since 2011. A Forbes Next 1000 awardee, he uses his decades of experience to educate through the Ayokay blog and through public speaking. You can follow him on LinkedIn.

Related Posts

How To Set Your Website Up For CRO Success

How To Set Your Website Up For CRO Success

Getting leads is essential for any business. Encourage more visitors to convert into customers by making a few changes to your website.

Continue Reading

How Can My Dental Practice Stand Out To Potential Patients?

How Can My Dental Practice Stand Out To Potential Patients?

Read about marketing tips designed to help your dental practice stand out in its community and recruit potential new patients.

Continue Reading

Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing Services: What's the Difference?

Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing Services: What’s the Difference?

What matters between inbound vs. outbound marketing strategies is understanding the core benefits to cultivate a winning marketing strategy.

Continue Reading

The UpCity Logo with Pin Symbol and Logotype in all Grey
We help B2B service providers increase visibility and showcase their brand credibility. We then connect them to 1.5 million businesses (and counting) who are looking for new partners they can trust.
Follow Us

About UpCity

  • About UpCity
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Press Room
  • Privacy Policy
An Image of the Logo for Inc 2021 Best Workplaces

For Buyers

  • Browse All Providers
  • Latest B2B Articles
  • Top Digital Marketing Agencies
  • Top Advertising Agencies
  • Top Web Design Agencies

For Service Providers

  • Get Listed
  • Overview
  • Free Partnership
  • Certified Partnership
  • Certified Sponsor
  • Free SEO Report Card

Our Community

  • Community Guidelines
  • Why Trust Our Providers?
  • Methodology
  • About Excellence
  • Reviews for a Cause

©2022 UpCity. All rights reserved. | 180 North LaSalle Street, Suite 2100, Chicago, IL 60601 | 312-445-9615 | 800-230-0220 | info@upcity.com | Terms and Conditions