This is quite easy to verify by conducting a detailed analysis of competitors via an ecommerce scraper.

Some of these differences are significant, but others just require a shift in thinking. It’s these small changes in thinking that can yield massive results for your business. 

One key difference in thinking is that the most profitable ecom brands recognize just how valuable repeat customers are. 

Acquiring customers is one thing. But generating additional purchases from them is quite literally where the money’s at. It’s actually 6 times more profitable than trying to acquire another new customer.

So it’s not surprising that a small 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by a staggering 95%. 

That’s what post-purchase email flows do.

Wait… what is a post-purchase email flow?

Quite simply: a post-purchase email flow is a series of emails that you send to customers after they convert. 

You might think of email as a marketing channel to convert people into customers (which it’s definitely great at doing) but the top ecom brands know it’s even more powerful when engaging with existing customers. 

This is what post-purchase emails are for: driving more sales from your existing customers (aka your most profitable people). 

An example of a typical post-purchase email

And it’s not just first-time customers that are worth targeting. Every time a customer makes a new purchase it’s well worth following up with a post-purchase flow.

What kind of emails go into a post-purchase flow?

The optimal post-purchase flow consists of emails relevant to your store and customers. 

That said, there are certain types of post-purchase emails that are common across ecom. These include: 

• Order confirmation emails – you might think of these as a purely transactional type of email, but they’re a powerful marketing opportunity
• Customer review request emails where you ask for feedback 
• Cross-sell emails that recommend similar or complementary products to the one your customer just purchased 
• Follow us on socials email where you invite customers to follow your brand on social media
• Product education emails that provide tips on how your customer can use the product they just purchased 
• Win-back emails that re-engage customers who have gone cold

However it’s simply not enough to know about these different types of emails. What will make or break your post-purchase email campaign is how you structure it. 

Beyond depending on what type of products you sell, your optimal flow will also depend on whether it’s your customer’s first, second, third, or even 10th purchase.

So let’s take a look at how top ecom brands approach their post-purchase campaign depending on where their customers are at. 

First-time customers 

So you’ve just acquired a new customer – congratulations! But now’s not the time to rest or take your foot off the marketing pedal. 

While acquiring customers is an important step, your focus should now be on converting them into loyal (and more importantly) profitable repeat customers.

The first email that’ll help achieve this is the order confirmation. 

Thank you for your purchase email

Whether you double this up as your order confirmation email or send it on its own, your goal here is simple: thank your new customer for their purchase. 

For such a small gesture, simply saying thank you goes a long way to increasing customer satisfaction and fostering loyalty. 

It’s also an opportunity to introduce your new customers to your brand and story. 

For example, you could share your founder’s story of how the brand got started and the inspiration behind it. Or you could share your brand’s ethos such as its commitment to quality and customer service. 

The example below from Huckerry is pretty text heavy (certainly don’t feel like you have to match its length) but does this well. 

You’ll also want to include a call-to-action (CTA) in this email (as you should in pretty much every email you send). 

Depending on your brand and how hard you go after sales, this could be a CTA directing people to make their all-important second purchase. Otherwise, if you don’t think being this aggressive would work with your audience, you could simply invite them to check out your latest products.  

Follow us on social media email

First-time customers make for great social followers. Getting them to follow your social accounts also increases the chances they’ll become repeat-customers. 

And you can invite them to follow your brand with a post-purchase email. Fruit of the Loom does this well. 

You don’t have to tie this email to the product they purchased, but sending this as part of your post-purchase campaign is the perfect time as your new customers are still engaged with your brand. 

Check out our guide here on social media follow email tips to master this email.

Product education emails

Educating people on how to use your product is a great idea. After all, if they’re not using it properly, they’re not getting the full benefit making it less likely they’ll become repeat customers. 

So if you have a product that requires some setting up, then sending this kind of email just before your customer’s shipment is due to arrive is a great way to show your appreciation and boost customer engagement.

 The email below from Allergy Buyers Club is a great example of this in action.

Customer loyalty program email 

Customer loyalty programs are a great way to generate repeat purchases and naturally help convert one-time customers into repeat customers. That’s if they know about your program.

Do can do this with an email like what Romper sent their customers below.

The good this about this particular email is that it doesn’t lead with ‘join our loyalty program,’ instead it leads with the benefits and value of being a member. This then leads naturally into the CTA to sign up to become a member.

So if you have a program set up, you’ll definitely want to invite people to join it as part of your post-purchase campaign if they haven’t joined already. 

Cross-sell email

Cross-selling is the process of offering a customer additional products that complement what they have bought.

For example, recommending leather shoe cleaner to someone who’s just purchased a brand new pair of leather shoes. 

This is cross-selling and it’s key to generating repeat purchases by making customers aware of other great products you sell.

Example of a cross-sell email

The great thing about this post-purchase email is that it works pretty much regardless of what you sell. As long as you sell more than one product, chances are you’ll be able to set up some cross-sells. 

Check out our guide on cross-selling with email marketing to dive into this area. 

Replenishment email

This one’s very much dependent on what kind of products you sell. It’s also one of the surest ways to generate repeat purchases. 

It’s all about following up customers who’ve purchased a product that’ll need to be refilled, replaced or reordered. Typical examples include pet food, shampoo, coffee, etc. 

But it doesn’t have to be strictly perishable items that people buy at regular intervals. Kitchen utensils, auto parts, shoes, etc. all wear down over time and will need to be replaced.

The trick is to time this email to when your customers are looking to reorder and then provide a clear CTA to purchase the product again. 

You don’t want to clutter your email with too much. Just compare the two examples below.

Which email do you think works better? Which one makes it easy to reorder? Definitely the one on the right with its clear CTA.

Second-time customers 

If you’ve put together your initial post-purchase flow for first-time customers well, you’ll quickly find they transition into repeat purchasers fairly seamlessly. 

That’s great! You’re now generating additional sales and profit much more easily than consistently trying to acquire new customers. 

But the goal is to transform them into long-term loyal customers. 

Customers who have purchased twice are much more likely to reach this goal than first-time customers, but you don’t want to take your foot off the pedal. 

Instead, targeting second-time customers with another post-purchase flow tailored to them will help seal the deal. 

Thank you for your purchase email

Just like with their first purchase, you’ll want to follow up the second purchase with another thank you email. But you don’t want it to be a carbon copy of the first. 

This time it can be less about introducing people to your brand and more about securing their engagement for the long term. 

If you have a subscription service or program, this is a great opportunity to showcase it. One way to do this is by highlighting the savings of being a subscriber versus manually purchasing over and over. 

Subscriptions are also fantastic at generating reliable, repeat purchases. So if you don’t have one already set up, it’s something to consider. 

If you’re looking for inspiration, Dollar Shave Club does subscriptions extremely well. 

An example of a subscription email from Dollar Shave Club

Another idea for this second thank you email is to include a simple offer as a way of showing gratitude for them becoming a loyal customer and, of course, to incentivize another repeat purchase. 

Review request email

This is the first big deviation from your first post-purchase email flow – the review request email. 

If a customer has purchased from your store a second time, it’s a pretty safe bet they’re satisfied with your products and the customer experience. So why not make the most of that fact and ask them for a review? 

We’ve already written a detailed guide on generating customer reviews, but in short, you need positive reviews to act as social proof to increase your overall conversion rates and boost sales. 

True, may not directly help with converting second-time purchasers into long-term loyal customers, but you could potentially add a coupon as an incentive to leave a review like in the example below.

Because you’re essentially offering your customer the coupon in exchange for them doing something for you (leaving the review), it won’t come across as overly salesy. But importantly it’ll still incentivize another repeat purchase. 

Replenishment email

If your products lend themselves to being part of a replenishment campaign, this is a type of email you should be including in all your post-purchase email flows. 

Sale/offer email

If the emails above in your second post-purchase flow don’t do the trick and the customer isn’t making another purchase, it’s time to pull out the big guns. 

At this point, your customer is essentially in limbo in a ‘no man’s land’. If you leave it too long, chances are they’ll simply drop off and disappear. 

So now’s the time to be direct with a sale or offer email. 

How you construct this email will depend on your store, what products you sell and what kind of offers you usually provide. It could be a simple flat percentage off discount, free shipping, or something more creative like buy one get one free. 

Whatever offer you go with, make sure it’s enticing. 

Third-time customers 

Gotten your customer to make a second repeat purchase? Congratulations! They’re now what you can reasonably call a long-term loyal customer. 

Your goal here is to keep them engaged with regular email marketing and newsletters. This also means sending them what has now become their default post-purchase email flow. 

No more follow us on social media or review request emails.  

From now on, your post-purchase campaigns should consist of simply an order confirmation email and product-specific emails. 

In other words, if they purchased a new laptop, it’s still definitely worthwhile sending them a cross-sell email with cases and other laptop accessories. Product education content is still great to include depending on the product and if it’s perishable, replenishment emails are still great at generating sales and keeping customers active.

Unfortunately, even with the best post-purchase follow-ups and regular email marketing, some customers will still go cold over time. That’s why we have winback emails.

Winback email

Winback emails do what it says on the box – win back customers who have gone cold and stop purchasing from your store. 

When done well, they target customers just as they lose interest in your store and entice them to come back and make another purchase. 

An example of a typical winback email

Having a winback email automated for your customers will go a long way to keeping customers engaged and generating repeat purchases.

Time to start generating sales with post-purchase emails

That’s it! You now know how the top ecom brands generate millions in profit through repeat purchases instead of just focusing on acquiring new customers all the time. 

The only thing left is to start setting these post-purchase email flows up for your store. 

Looking for some help? While we’ve made it easy to set up these automations with SmartrMail, we also realize how busy running an ecom store is. 

That’s why our Customer Success Team is available to guide you through the setup process and answer any questions you have. We also offer assisted migrations to help you move across with zero hassle. 

The post How Fast-Growing Ecom Brands Make Millions in Profit with Post-Purchase Emails appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

Sourcing and producing products, setting up your store, advertising your business, painstakingly putting together social media ads, funneling customers through checkout all takes an incredible amount of time and effort.

That’s why when you successfully convert a customer and their money is in your pocket it can feel like your job is finally done. 

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. 

The best performing business owners know that a purchase isn’t the end of the customer journey, it’s just the beginning. 

And the next step is arguably the most important part of the journey: converting one-time customers into loyal, repeat customers. Which is where your post-purchase email campaign comes in. 

What is a post-purchase email campaign?

Just as the name suggests, post-purchase emails are sent to a customer after they’ve made a purchase. 

Your post-purchase email campaign then is just an email campaign consisting of multiple emails that’s triggered automatically when a customer makes a purchase. 

You might come across other terms like post-purchase series or email flow, customer onboarding series, and the like, but they simply refer to the series of emails a customer receives after making a purchase.

Why are post-purchase campaigns important?

By engaging with your customers after they make a purchase, your email campaign has the potential to:

• Improve your customer’s experience
• Get valuable feedback from customers on your products and store
• Gain positive reviews that you can use as social proof to increase your conversion rate
• Increase your social following and effectiveness of social media 
• Generate additional purchases

While this article will take you through how to achieve all of these benefits with your post-purchase campaign, the last point is worth emphasizing. 

Repeat customers are more profitable

One of the biggest factors holding potential customers from making their first purchase with your business is that they don’t know what your product and service quality is like. 

This can be especially true if you’re just starting out and haven’t had a chance to collect many reviews or build up an audience yet. 

Once your customers have received their purchase however, this concern evaporates. 

This is a large part of why it’s 5-times more expensive to attract a new customer than make another sale to a previous customer. Which goes to show how important customer retention is.

The fact it’s much easier to sell to existing customers than potential new customers also means that improving your customer retention rate can have a multiplier effect on your profits.

So much so that a Harvard Business School study showed that even a modest 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by up to 95%. 

And the most effective way to improve your customer retention is with a post-purchase email campaign. 

Post-purchase emails to include in your campaign

It’s one thing to know that post-purchase emails are important and that they can improve your customer retention, but you still need to know how to structure your campaign. 

Like most decent email campaigns, your post-purchase should consist of a series of multiple emails. So what emails should your post-purchase campaign consist of? 

Order confirmation email 

The very first email a customer should receive as soon as they place an order is an order confirmation email.

Order confirmation emails are a type of transactional email that’s sent immediately after an order has gone through successfully. 

Not only do they serve a record of the transaction, but as a buyer they also provide confirmation that nothing went wrong with the order and gives them a chance to check all the details are correct. 

These emails are usually enabled by default on your ecommerce platform (like Shopify). If not, it should just be a case of turning them on. 

In terms of the content of these emails, the main things you want to make sure are included are:

• An order number
• The time of purchase
• Descriptions of what was purchased (ideally with product images)
• Billing summary including an itemized breakdown, total amount paid and tax
• Shipping details including
  • When the order is expected to arrive
  • The address it will be delivered to
  • Ideally also a means to track the order

The order confirmation email below from Chewy is a great example of this in action. 

For more tips and strategies, check out our guide on order confirmation emails here.

Thank you for your purchase email

After your customers have received their order, it’s worth taking the time to thank them for doing business with you. 

This small gesture goes a long way in making your customers feel appreciated which strengthens the relationship between your customers and your store.

While it’s easy to thank customers in-person in a bricks and mortar store, when it comes to selling online there are thank you emails. 

As these emails are dedicated to thanking customers, they’re also one of the simplest emails to set up. They can be as simple as the example below from Hudson’s Bay. 

This type of simple thank you email works well for someone’s first purchase. 

For repeat purchasers you’ll want to think about crafting a more meaning thank you message, like in the example below from Abercrombie & Fitch. 

To learn more about this type of email, check out our guide on thank you for your purchase emails here.

Follow us on social media email

Another email to send relatively soon after someone has made a purchase is a social invite email where you invite them to follow your business on social media. 

These social media invite emails will help grow your number of followers and when combined with an effective social media marketing strategy, will help keep customers engaged even if they hardly ever check their emails.

In terms of the content of this particular email automation, you can just opt to simply mention your social media accounts and invite customers to follow them like in this example from Bed Bath & Beyond.

Or, if you want to take your social media marketing up a notch, you can invite customers to share user-generated content (UGC) like Tom’s does in the example below. 

You don’t want to keep asking people to follow you on social media everytime they make a purchase. Especially when it’s hard to track whether they have already followed you or not, and if so, on which social media platforms. 

That’s why it’s best to only send this email a few days after someone has made their first purchase and not keep sending it to repeat purchasers. 

For more tips and examples on these emails, check out our guide on follow us on social media invite emails here.

Product education emails

If the product your customer has purchased requires any instructions to use or set up it can be a good idea to send the instructions in an post-purchase email as well.

You’ll obviously still want to include physical instructions with the product, but sending an electronic copy by email is a great way of both improving your customer service and keeping customers engaged. 

While the simplest way to do this by simply sending through a PDF copy of the instructions, incorporating the steps into the body of the email itself with diagrams will yield better results. 

The email below from Allergy Buyers Club which outlines the steps to set up an air purifier is an excellent example of a product education email.

Because these emails are product-specific their content isn’t going to change depending on if they’re going to a new customer or a return customer. They should also be sent each time a customer purchases the relevant product.

Review request emails

Positive customer reviews are an essential way of demonstrating to potential customers that your store is trustworthy and that they can buy from you with confidence. 

However, when customers tend to only leave reviews to vent their frustrations over a bad experience, it can be hard to collect positive reviews. 

That’s why you should actively reach out and request reviews from your customers. 

Before doing so though, you’ll first want to be confident that they’ll give you a good review.

Because knowing this is next to impossible for first-time customers, you’ll want to avoid asking them to review you on any public platform like Google My Business or Facebook. 

Instead for brand new customers it can be worthwhile asking them to send you feedback like Biscuiteers does in their email below. 

This gives them control and prevents any negative reviews from becoming publicly available. 

Once a customer has made a second however, there is a decent chance that they’ll leave you a positive review. After all, they wouldn’t have returned if they didn’t like your business and what you sell. 

This is when you can encourage customers to leave you a public review. 

For more tips on how to ask for a review, check out our guide on customer review request emails here.

Cross-sell email

Cross-selling is when you recommend similar or complementary products to the one your customer has already purchased. 

The classic example is how fast food restaurants will ask customers whether they want fries and a drink with their burger. 

Even though you probably aren’t selling fast food, there’s a good chance you can make just as enticing cross-sell recommendations. 

For example, if a customer buys a particular style of pants, you could recommend various shoes that go well with it. 

Another example is how Best Buy cross-sells SD cards, camera bags, batteries, tripods, etc. with a purchase of a digital camera. 

It’s all about thinking about which products go well together and when it makes sense to recommend them (for instance, you won’t want to recommend a camera just because someone purchased an SD card). 

To help with this process, you can also utilize recommended product blocks in SmartrMail which means you only have to set up the one cross-sell email. This email will then contain the product each customer is most likely to purchase.

For more on cross-selling with email marketing, check out our guide on cross-sell emails here.

Replenishment email

Some products people purchase need to be constantly replaced (think razors, pet food, shampoo, toilet paper, etc.). 

These products present a golden opportunity to improve your customer retention through repeat purchases. Especially when you send an email reminder prompting them to reorder the product like in the example below from Rockin’ Wellness.

Unlike the other emails on this list, this isn’t an email you want to send just after someone has purchased. Instead you’ll want to automate it to send around the time your customer is about to run out of the product. 

Getting the timing right will take a bit of trial and error, but once you get the timing right these emails will be bringing in easy sales.

Just because you only sell items that people don’t typically purchase regularly doesn’t mean you can’t get in on the action either.

With a bit of creative thinking, you’ll be able to come up with a replenishment strategy for many different products people don’t buy regularly. 

For example, if you’re a bookseller, you could automate an email asking if your customers are looking for a new book to read and then recommend some from the same category they purchased from. 

Again, because these emails are product-specific they’re not going to vary that much between first-time and return customers.

Organizing your post-purchase campaign

Because some of the post-purchase emails you should include in the campaign will vary depending on whether it’s a customer first or subsequent purchase, you’ll want to create two separate post-purchase automations. 

The first post-purchase automation should be triggered by someone’s first purchase with your store and consist of the following emails:

• Thank you for your purchase
• Follow us on social media
• (Private) review request
• Cross-sell

In SmartrMail, this will look something like this.

Then for every subsequent purchase a customer makes, you have a second post-purchase automation set up consisting of the following emails:

• Thank you for your purchase
• (Public) review request
• Cross-sell

In SmartrMail, this will look something like this.

Product-specific emails

In addition to setting up these two post-purchase automations, you may also want to set up separate automations for the product-specific post-purchase emails (product education and replenishment emails). 

You can set these automations up the same way as you set your two post-purchase automations up, which we’ll go into in the next section.

How to create your post-purchase campaigns in SmartrMail

Now that you know how to structure your post-purchase campaign and what the best practices are, the only thing left is to actually set it up. 

Thankfully, SmartrMail makes automating multi-step email automations easy. All you have to do is follow the steps below. 

If you don’t have a SmartrMail account yet, you can sign up for a 15-day free trial here if you run your online store on Shopify, BigCommerce, PrestaShop, WooCommerce, or Neto ecommerce platforms.

Read the instructions below or check out this short vid:

How to set up an automation in SmartrMail

To set up an email automation in SmartrMail, you first need to go to the Automations page from the top menu and then click on the blue New Automation button.

After clicking on the button, you just have to give your automation a name.

Choose a trigger

After you’ve given your new automation a name, the next step is to choose a condition that will trigger the automation to send. There are four different types of triggers:

• When a subscriber joins a list
• When a subscriber joins a segment
• When a subscriber abandons a cart
• When a subscriber places an order

For these post-purchase emails, you can ignore the ‘abandons cart’ trigger. Instead for your first post-purchase going to first-time customers, you’ll want to use the order triggered automations. For repeat customers, you’ll want to use the ‘subscriber joins a segment’ condition and the pre-made “repeat customers” segment.

Once selected, the trigger cannot be changed. 

Add emails to the automation

Emails in automations are the individual emails that subscribers will receive once they reach that step in the automation. You can drag an email action into your automation.

Once you drag your email into the automation. You can give it a name and a subject line. Then click Edit to design your email.

You’ll be directed to the email composer where you can add content and design your email. Once you’re done, click Enable and you’ll be directed back to your automation in progress.

Add a time delay

So that all the emails in your automation don’t send at the same time, you can drag Time Delays into the automation in the same way you drag new emails in the previous step.

Enabling the automation

Once you’ve added all the emails and time delays to your automation you can enable the automation by clicking the Enable button in the top right.

Conclusion 

Post-purchase emails are one of the most effective ways to build customer loyalty, increase your customer retention rate and make your store more profitable.  

By not going quiet after a customer makes a purchase, but by continually engaging with them with the emails on this list you’ll not only improve your customer’s experience, but also generate repeat purchases.

And when it’s so easy and straightforward to set up your post-purchase automations there’s no reason not to start setting them up right now. 

The post How to Structure the Perfect Post-Purchase Email Campaign appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

That’s why shopkeepers happily thank customers everytime they make a purchase–to build a relationship and show gratitude. 

The problem with online stores however is that it’s not possible to personally thank shoppers the same way you can in person. That’s why order success pages display a “thank you for your order” message once payment has been made. But these messages lack any kind of personal touch and don’t leave customers feeling appreciated.. 

Thank you emails, on the other hand, give you a golden opportunity to engage your customers with a genuine heartfelt message that shows your appreciation. And below are 14 of the most creative, original and ingenious thank you emails. 

Thank You For Your Order Email Examples & Tips

1) Bellroy’s ‘Settled in yet?’ 

Not all thank you for your purchase emails are sent straight after someone places an order. Which is why you shouldn’t confuse them with order confirmation emails. 

Thirty days after purchase, Bellroy, for example, sends out an email effectively asking whether their customer is happy. 

This is not the first thank you email Bellroy sends (you don’t have to limit yourself to just one), but checking in again after a month reassures people that Bellroy is committed to customer service. 

Asking how likely they are to recommend them to a friend also lets them identify customers who are dissatisfied with their purchase. By doing this, Bellroy is then able to reach out to these people in an attempt to correct any issues and have a better chance at keeping them loyal. 

2) CREAM’s Thank you for your order email

Apart from ice cream not being your typical online purchase, this email from CREAM is fairly standard. What is worth noting however is the ‘Give $100 Get $100’ offer at the bottom. 

Loyalty programs are a great way to turn one time shoppers into repeat customers and thank you emails are the perfect opportunity to let people know about yours. 

3) Allergy Buyers Club’s instructional email

Educating people on how to use your product is a great idea. Afterall, if they’re not using it properly, they aren’t getting the full benefit of it and may not come back to you again. Allergy Buyers Club works in visual instructions into their email thanking customers for their recent purchase to do this. 

If you have a product that requires some setting up, then sending this kind of email just before your customer’s shipment is due to arrive is a great way to show your appreciation again without coming on too strong. 

4) Sleep Country’s ‘Our gift to you’ 

Nothing says thank you like a generous discount offer. 

Chances are this email from Sleep Country is only sent after a repeat customer reaches a certain threshold of orders or dollars spent. This way, Sleep Country is able to reward their most loyal customers and show their appreciation without losing too much margin. After all, existing customers are 8x more likely to order again and their average cart value is double that of new customers. 

5) Allbirds’ ‘Thank Ewe’ 

Allbirds sells footwear made from superfine Merino wool from New Zealand, and with some clever copywriting, they’ve managed to weave in an ewe into their email. While the rest of the email ticks all the boxes by being simple and clean, it’s the play on words that makes it stand out in people’s inboxes.

Unless by remarkable coincidence you’re also selling sheep products, you won’t be able to steal their copywriting genius, but that doesn’t mean you should settle on just ‘thank you’. Get creative and brainstorm some ideas for wording that works with your brand. 

6) CBDfx thank you email campaign

Designed to look like an actual envelope, this email design is what separates it from others on this list. 

To avoid your campaigns from getting lost among the countless others in people’s inboxes, don’t be afraid to venture out with your design. Just be sure it follows good design practices. 

7) Hudson’s Bay’s “Thanks so much” 

Hudson’s Bay’s email is probably the most quintessential thank you email on this list. 

It doesn’t try to drive more sales, or educate, or get the recipient to sign up to a loyalty program. All it does is simply thank the customer for their recent purchase in a genuine way. 

With a subject line like “We just wanted to send you a quick thank you” and showing gratitude without having an underlying goal of making another sale makes this email come across as sincere. 

8) Tarte’s “Thanks, Marjorie”

This type of thank you email is effectively an order confirmation, letting the customer know that their order has been received. And as far as order confirmation emails are concerned, this example is lacking obvious details like what was purchased, billing, shipping address and some kind of order ID or number. 

What makes it stand out as a thank you email however is the large “thanks, Marjorie!” heading. 

With the benefits of personalizing email marketing abundantly clear, it’s a wonder that more emails on this list haven’t bothered to address their customers by name. 

The lesson here is that few words sound as sweet to someone as their own name, so making one’s name stand out in your thank you email is a great way to boost engagement.

9) Abercrombie & Fitch’s “We’re honored”

A simple yet beautifully designed email that capture’s Abercrombie & Fitch’s brand to a tee. 

The message of gratitude for customers making the decision to purchase with them does a much better job of building a relationship than just saying thank you. The simplicity of this email also helps draw people’s attention to the message as it’s not competing with any other images or calls-to-action. 

10) Methodical Coffee’s “Thanks for your support”

Thank you for your order emails are a great opportunity to incentivize repeat purchases. Especially if you include an offer like this one from Methodical Coffee. 

To avoid setting the expectation of always receiving a coupon after a purchase, you might want to hold off on including one after someone’s first purchase. Instead after a few orders, you can instead include one in a more general ‘thanks for your support’ email like in this example.

11) Warby Parker’s “a great big thank you” email

This thank you email has an ulterior motive: getting people to complete a survey. 

Doing this is absolutely fine however, and starting off by thanking your customers for their support comes across much better than just flat out asking people to fill in a survey. Adding the possibility of winning a gift card makes it even more likely that people will fill it out. 

Seeking the occasional feedback from customers is also recommendable as it helps ensure you’re offering the best possible shopping experience.

12) Kate Spade’s ‘thank you’ email

Another email that’s designed to look like an envelope. This one is not strictly a thank you for your purchase email, but for signing up to their email list. 

Thank you for signing up emails are in many ways just as important.

Even though signing up might not seem like such a big deal, it’s a big first step toward becoming a paying customer. Thanking someone for signing up shows that you appreciate the trust they have placed in you and that you’re a trustworthy business.

13) Tinker’s “thank you for an amazing year”

The end of the year is a great time to send out a general thank you for your support email to those who have purchased from you. Wishing people a happy new year also helps with building a relationship and boosting customer engagement. 

Whether you include a sale offer or not is up to you. Including one obviously increases the chances of getting more orders, but simply sending a straight up thank you without a promotion will likely improve your brand image over the longer term.

14) The Home Depot’s product recommendations

While this email from The Home Depot mightn’t be winning design awards, what it does do well is include personalized product recommendations. These are essentially just products selected from a customer’s past purchase history and browsing data that they’re most likely to be interested in. 

If you’re sending a general thank you email, you might just want to include product recommendation blocks. But if you want to take it to the next level, you can set up your own cross-sell email campaigns for popular products based on items you know go well with them.

Setting up your own Thank You For Your Order Email

Now it’s time to come up with your own automated thank you email campaign. 

When doing so, remember that it’s worthwhile segmenting your campaign based on whether someone is a first time buyer, or repeat customer. 

For first time buyers, your thank you email can be product specific and you should follow up with a review request email to ensure their first experience with your brand is positive. 

After someone has made a few purchases from your store, a more general ‘thank you for your support’ email becomes more appropriate. 

You can also create dedicated campaigns for specific products. If a product requires assembly, you could include instructions in your email along with a physical copy with the item. If an item is handmade, you might also want to include some background on the maker to enrich the experience. 

However you decide to set up your thank you emails, remember sincerity should always be the ultimate goal. 

For instructions on how to automate thank you emails in SmartrMail, check out our doc here.

Once you have your email campaign ready, you’ll also want to give it a good subject line to maximize your open rate. Thankfully, we also have a collection of thank you email subject lines to inspire your own.

Feeling inspired? Use Adobe Spark to create easily customizable thank you cards. This powerful design platform offers a wide range of templates, color schemes, images and graphics, no graphic design experience needed.

The post 14 Thank You For Your Order Email Examples & Tips appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.

Targeting existing customers is not only cheaper, but gets you more sales as well. It’s 6 to 7 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. Returning customers are also almost 2 times more likely to convert than new customers. As such, e-commerce sales from returning customers doubles that of new customers. You do the math.

The best way to extend customer lifetime value (LTV) is to provide a great experience for your customers. Engaging with them in a post-purchase follow up email campaign is a fantastic way to do so. Not only does this improve customer satisfaction, but also allows you to boost your e-commerce sales.

1. Order Confirmation

When: Immediately

The first email you need to send customers after a purchase is an order confirmation. It is important that this is sent immediately. This gives customers peace of mind, especially if something went wrong in the purchasing process – if they had trouble with PayPal or if your website crashed, for example. It also helps them get excited about their purchase. It’s that old retail therapy thing – shopping makes people happy.

This goes without saying, but the first important thing to include in an order confirmation email is a ‘Thank You’ to customers for purchasing your products; it’s just common courtesy.

Imagine you bought something in a bricks-and-mortar store. Would you consider it a good customer service experience if the shop attendant simply slid your purchases across the counter, and slapped your change and receipt in your hand, without so much as a ‘Thanks’? Definitely not. In fact, you’d probably never go back there again, and might even tell your family and friends about the rude customer service you received. It’s the same with sending a confirmation email.

Another must-do is to remind them of the items they’ve purchased. Again, this helps their peace of mind, because it confirms that they are going to be sent the correct items. Reminding them of their purchases gets them excited about them again, meaning that they are fully engaged with your brand. To expand on these good vibes, you can provide an estimated arrival time if possible, to get customers even more pumped about the products they’re going to receiving soon. This means that an order confirmation email is a fantastic place to cross-sell by recommending complementary products, direct them back to your website or social media accounts, or ask them to refer a friend.

Another way to encourage a repeat purchase is to include an offer code. This not only leaves a good taste in your customer’s mouth, but boosts the likelihood of another sale in the future. You could even increase the sense of urgency by making the offer code time sensitive.

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Another strategy to grow your customer base is to include a referral system. By simply asking your existing customers to refer their friends to purchase from your store, your customer is doing all the hard marketing work for you. Their friends are also more likely to trust them, meaning that you don’t have to provide any social proof.

To learn more, check out our collection of order confirmation emails here.

2. Product Education

When: 1-2 Days After Expected Delivery

The next email you should follow up with is a product education email. This should be sent around the time your customer is set to receive their shipment. Basically, this email should explain how to get the most out of your product. This can be in the form of a step-by-step guide, a video tutorial, FAQs, and so forth. It’ll depend on what products you’re selling.

If you sell electronics, you can explain how to get the device set up and fully operational. If your e-commerce store sells food, you could send out some recipes for your customers to try out that highlight the ingredients they’ve bought. Or if your customer has just received some clothes, you could show them how to coordinate the perfect outfit. Not only does this reduce the risk of an unhappy customer sending back items that they don’t like or know how to use, it also shows that you’re invested in customer satisfaction and care about them.

It’s also a great opportunity to do some more cross-selling. If your customer just bought a new shirt, you could subtly show them other items of clothing that would look good with it in an outfit. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in a ‘Recommended Products’ format. You could do this in a style guide or look book format – tell them that a pair of your store’s jeans or one of your jackets would look great with the shirt they bought.

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3. Review Request Email

When: 3-4 Days After Expected Delivery

Another email you could send around the time your customer is due to receive your products is a request to leave a review. It’s best to strike while the iron’s still hot, when your customers are still excited about having received your products and have had ample time to use them. Asking your customers to leave reviews shows that you value their input and are willing to hear what they say. These reviews are not only important for other potential customers, it’s also important for you as an e-commerce merchant.

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Customers who are looking around online to buy a certain product are searching for some sort of affirmation before they go ahead and purchase something. So by asking customers to leave a review, this can help your chances at selling more products further down the line. On the other side, negative reviews can be good for your e-commerce store as well. They allow you as a merchant to improve customer experience, and rectify any issues with your products.

Tip: Don’t be afraid to send a second follow up email requesting a review. You can combine this with a cross-sell recommendations to add additional value to the email.

For more information, check out our guide on review request emails here.

4. Replenishment Reminders

When: At Expected Use or Expiration Date

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You can extend customer LTV even further by sending out replenishment reminder emails. If you sell finite items like food or beauty products, customers are going to run out eventually. Sending a perfectly timed replenishment reminder could result in an easy conversion. Once you’ve figured out an average time between purchases of a particular product, you can time a reminder based on how often customers need to buy a replacement.

This replenishment reminder could also be an opportunity to upsell. If there’s a newer version of that product, you can suggest that instead. Likewise, you can recommend that they purchase the same product in a bigger volume, with more value for money.

To learn more, check out our guide on replenishment emails here.

Conclusion

Following these 4 steps are a great way to encourage customers to keep coming back to your store. This not only saves you money, but extends customer LTV and trust with your store. Now that you know how to create your own post-purchase follow up sequence, start creating your own email campaign with SmartrMail.

The post How to Craft the Perfect Post-Purchase Follow Up Sequence appeared first on SmartrMail Email Marketing Blog.