When did you last thank your customers?
I don’t mean the pithy throw-away ‘thanks for your order’ that accompanies each dispatch note. You can do so much better than that.
I mean a heartfelt thank you. A message that demonstrates, with true gratitude, the value your customer brings to your business.
More importantly, your returning customer.
Second question I want you to consider. Can you segment repeat customers within your email platform? More to the point, customers who are making their second purchase?
I hope you can. It’s a crucial piece in your customer retention strategy.
It’s a simple segment to setup in Mailchimp:
It’s just as easy within Klaviyo:
Think for a moment about the value the repeat customer has to your ecommerce business. They’re your lifeblood.
You don’t just reward customers with discounts. A handshake can be just as important as a voucher. It’s human nature.
Here’s a great example I received in my inbox last week. It was from purechimp.com. Specifically, it was from their founder with the subject field ‘Thank you, again’
Hi Ian,
I wanted to take a second and thank you for your business. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing an order from a repeat customer, and I can’t express how grateful I am every time.
If there is anything else I can do for you, please do not be shy.
Thank you again,
Dean Legg – Founder
PureChimp
No talk of greatness. No ‘reward for my continued loyalty’. Just a straight-up thanks (and the reason why).
Just 3 sentences. No laboured message.
As marketers we live in an acquisition-driven world. It’s all about the CPAs, baby. Right? Wrong. The smarter ecommerce marketers understand the lifetime value of their customers. They spend as much time actioning plans to keep customers as to win customers. The vast majority of those plans relate to how they can email better. Not the newsletter blast, but the clinical way you can segment your lists to deliver personalised messages. Think back to Chuck I mentioned last week.
What really helped me to take notice of Dean’s email above (and that’s a tricky task when I subscribe to over 250 ecommerce newsletters….) was a) the subject line b) that it was sent from Dean’s own email address in plain-text format.
No fancy template.
I still wonder if it was sent from within an email platform at all. It was that personal.
I don’t want you copying Dean’s approach. I want you considering how you are building your brand so such an email wouldn’t feel out of place when it reaches your customer’s inbox.
Are you comfortable penning an email from the founder? I spoke at a conference last year where I was told by one retailer that it would be crazy for them to address any correspondence where they gave their founder’s name or email address. “They’ll be bombarded with sales calls and customer enquiries”. Really? Does that really hold us back from building a people-led ecommerce brand? The fear of, god forbid, customer interaction or cold calls (like that won’t happen anyway…)?
I’m banging the drum for smarter use of email marketing. There are so many opportunities available to you when you step back and consider what can be done above and beyond the campaign blast. They’re not all measurable in Analytics. Some just give your customers a heads up to the reason your store exists. The reasons you value their investment, no matter how small that may be.
Gather your thoughts and consider how you can, with very little time invested, say thank you to your own customers. In your own unique way.
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