How to Nail Your Post-purchase Emails With Automation

In today’s digitally driven world, a relationship between businesses and customers is neither linear nor merely transactional.

Given that you spend so much time, effort, and capital in converting every single lead, it is important to ask yourself – Do I want a sale or a customer? 

Any savvy business would pick the latter. Why? As per the Pareto Principle, 20% of returning customers can contribute to 80% of your sales! Let that sink in for a moment.

Naturally then, a major chunk of your marketing efforts must focus on customer retention. And this is where Email Marketing Automation comes in. It can lend an impetus to your initiative to connect and establish a long-term relationship with your customers.

But why should you take this seriously? 

Email marketing offers the highest ROI among all digital channels – a whopping $38 for every dollar spent! That’s why a sizable 84% of marketing professionals believe email is the single most critical tool for establishing brand loyalty.

What Are Automated Post-purchase Email Campaigns?

As the name suggests, post-purchase emails are the ones that are sent to customers after they buy something on a digital platform. With the additional help from automation, marketers can do this today without any manual intervention. 

This makes it a great customer loyalty and retention tool. Unlike one-on-one business email interactions, these automated campaigns have the potential to reach a wide cross-section of customers and still feel highly personalized!

To help you get started, let’s take a close look at some of the best practices and campaign design inspirations for creating impactful post-purchase emails with automation.

Best Practices for Creating a Winning Post-purchase Email Campaign

To hit the nail on the head with automated post-purchase emails, you have to segregate your returning customers from new ones. They already know and trust your brand.

All you now need is to engage them with information about relevant products and services that address their problems/needs. With that in mind, here are the top 5 best practices for creating a winning automated post-purchase email campaign:

1. Think About Customers’ Interests

The human mind is programmed to toss aside what’s not relevant. And even more so in this time and age of information overload. While it’s important to communicate with your customers after they’ve made a purchase, it is equally vital to keep your messaging relevant. To do this, you can design automated post-purchase emails that intimate the customer about their order details and status. This may include receipt, intimation on shipment, customer support information, and so on.

2. Focus on Nurturing Relationships

While your target audience may share a demographic, they are bound to have different personalities. The beauty of automated post-purchase emails is that you can create personalized emails appealing to these different buyer personas with the help of segmentation. It simply means dividing your email list into targeted sub-sections based on location, dialect, buying preferences, and so on. This technique allows you to deliver targeted, personalized messages even through automated emails.

3. Keep Campaigns Customer Behaviour Centric

Technology has made it possible for businesses to get tangible data on customer behavior in real-time. This can be an asset to your post-purchase email campaigns. You can use parameters such as amount spent, time spent on a particular product segment, last purchase, ratings, and more to assess the kind of messaging you want to craft for buyer personas.

For instance, a post-purchase email for an exclusive rewards program can be sent to only those who have spent a certain amount on your website in the past month or so. Or those who have rated your shopping app with 4 stars or above. This helps generate an element of exclusivity that bolsters customer loyalty and retention.

4. Choose Frequency Wisely

Let’s face it, most of us do not have the time to engage with our friends or extended family every day. Why would your customers then want to receive emails from you on a daily basis? While you want to keep your customers updated about their order, you’d also want them to rate your services highly and return for future purchases. Hence, it is critical to be mindful that your proactiveness does not lead to email fatigue in your customers.

So, while you ensure that your order placement, shipment, and delivery emails are sent out immediately, spend some time researching the right time to send out other emails like feedback emails or cross-sell and upsell emails. So that users are most likely to engage with these. Then, automate your campaigns accordingly.

5. Test, Optimize, Repeat

Even if your current post-purchase email outreach is getting great returns, there is always room for improvement. So, don’t let opportunities slip through the cracks of complacency. Testing the effectiveness of emails from time to time and tweaking them as required must be internalized in your email marketing approach. This helps ensure that your message resonates with your audience.

Automated Post-purchase Emails That Keep Your Customer Coming Back

Post-purchase emails can cover a lot of ground for your business – from collecting feedback to cultivating long-term relationships and nudging customers to make more purchases. With the ability to automate these emails, there is no reason why you should miss out on any of these end goals.

Here are 5 examples of automated post-purchase emails that you must include in your email startegy to make your customers come back for more:

1. Thank Them for Their Business

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A simple thank you email is a time-tested post-purchase message that humanizes an otherwise faceless transaction between a business and buyer. It also makes your customers feel valued and appreciated. Moreover, this is one email your customer is eagerly waiting for. You can incentivize these emails by adding a coupon for their next purchase or announcing a special discount.

While adding a CTA to a thank you email isn’t necessary, it can act as a soft nudge to motivate your customers to make another purchase.

2. Ask For Their Opinion

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If you want to come across as a business that cares about its customers, asking for their opinions is the best way to do it. You can either club this with a delivery confirmation email or send it as a separate one soon after. However, make sure you’re absolutely honest about how much of their time will this feedback take. Exceptionally long or complicated surveys can be off-putting for most people!

3. Appreciate their Choices

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Appreciate your customers for their choices. For instance, if you deal with cruelty-free cosmetics, send them a post-purchase email that talks about the benefits of this practice. Let them know that by shopping with you, they have saved a few innocent bunnies or birds from being put through the pain and distress of experimental testing.

By making them feel good about themselves, you can ensure they return to your business for more.

4. Give Them Incentives

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So, a customer has spent their hard-earned money to purchase your product or service. You have to make it worth their while by offering something in return. A gift card, a discount coupon, an invitation to join an exclusive reward program – these little tokens of your appreciation get your customers excited about making future purchases and make them feel valued. Both of these are great ways to incentivize engagement!

5. Make It More Than a Transactional Relationship

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Not all post-purchase emails have to be about propelling sales and driving up profits. After all, a customer just bought from you. Pushing them to make another purchase shortly afterward can prove to be counterproductive.

Allow them to catch a break but keep up the communication so that your brand recall stays fresh in their mind. A message from the CEO or an email talking about your CSR programs can be effective in using post-purchase emails to build upon brand values without making an overt sales pitch.

Wrapping Up

Post-purchase emails play a key role in your business growth. By automating these, you can reap the benefits of high open rate and engagement with minimal effort. The focus has to be on the right message – one that provides clear benefits to your customers. Make the most of these best practices and tips to harness the true potential of automated post-purchase email campaigns.

At Uplers, we understand the nuances of navigating through the challenge of creating engaging email campaigns. As a leading email marketing agency, we help you create impeccable email templates with editable modules that are perfect for automation.

Learn more about how we can help you join the ranks of power email marketers with the help of automation.