IanOnline shoppers from all over the world are always looking forward to holiday sales. These sales offer the perfect opportunity for them to make purchases they wouldn’t otherwise make and they have the perfect excuse to buy gifts for not only their family and friends but also for themselves.
As a retailer, offering your shoppers a great post-purchase experience is the best way for you to ensure they will be coming back as regular customers, even after holiday sales. Here are some tips in order to help you make sure that happens.
Welcome your first-time buyers
When a new customer makes a purchase off your website, the best thing you can do is send them a welcome email. Making sure the customer feels satisfied should be your number one priority and you can achieve this by giving them enough attention and showing you care.
Customers who made a purchase once are inclined to come back and do it once again, spending 67% more money than those who are new. Fine-tuned the right way, your order confirmations can be an excellent opportunity to encourage future purchases in your online store.
Your welcome email should be sent right after the person has completed their purchase, even if their order has not yet been confirmed. This email will provide them with a small update on their order and tell them how happy you are for them to try your products and join your online community of satisfied customers.
Making sure every customer feels satisfied should be your number one priority.
Personalize the experience
A big part of making sure your customers are satisfied with not only their purchases but also their communication with you is to make sure their experiences with your post-purchase emails are personalized. There are a few different tactics you can use in order to achieve that and some of these are the following:
- Ask them to create an account on your website
- Call them by their names or preferred nicknames
- Use their location and time-zone
- Remind them of things they previously clicked on
- Use emojis as well as audiovisual content
Product suggestions based on individual customers’ recent purchases can spur increased sales.
All of these tactics can help you think of ideas which could aid the personalization process and allow you to create emails with useful information which your customers will find interesting and personal. The one thing you need to keep in mind is to not overdo it by sharing too much personal information
Even if you have created a small questionnaire in order to gather more information on their preferences, you should make sure that you don’t make them feel uncomfortable by overusing that information in your emails. Use just what you need in order to make them feel comfortable with your emails and they are bound to find a connection with your brand.
Update customers about order confirmation and shipping
After receiving a welcome email, your customers will be expecting updates on their recent purchase. Your best chance of making sure they are satisfied with your services is to always update them on time about new developments with their purchase.
Letting them know about the time and date of order confirmation as well as the expected shipping time is something that will work greatly to your advantage. Make sure you remind your buyers that shipments might take a little longer during the holiday season due to the volume of daily purchases.
Adding a clickable tracking number to an email announcing that the parcel has been shipped makes it easier for the customer to check parcel whereabouts.The copy on this email has charm and brings a smile to the reader, which also helps.
You can also make use of a service like LateShipment.com to track all your packages in real-time and send out order updates to customers in the form of proactive notifications.
Being honest and thinking in advance will help you make your email updates informational for your customers. The more they know about their purchases, the happier they will be with your services as they will be certain you are doing your best to deliver their products on time.
A great way to boost engagement and to make sure your customers are going to enjoy their products to the fullest is through sending out informational emails about the products they have purchased. Whether you own and promote your own clothing or skincare line, there are always things to share about the use, storage, and sanitization of your products.
A good idea is to create a section on your website which will be dedicated to creating articles regarding your products and how to use them. You can share fashion tips, skincare routines, how-to guides, and many other similar ideas which will increase not only your website visits but also the engagement and interest of your customers.
Not an order confirmation email per se, but this email has engaging copy that educates the customer about product use.
It is essential that you make sure the content you share on both your website and your emails is free of any grammatical and spelling errors as this can decrease the credibility of your written content. By using tools and platforms such as Grammarly, TrustMyPaper, Hemmingway Editor, and GrabMyEssay, you can ensure that your written content is polished and ready to be shared with your customers and online audience.
Continue to offer sales and promotions after the holiday season
Even after the holiday season has ended, your promotional emails and sales should not fade away. While the most profitable time of the year for companies is the holiday season, you should make sure you are providing your customers with reasons to shop all year-round.
The large call to action beneath the copy, at a moment when the customer might potentially be considering buying again, is an effective ploy.
Your sales can be split into certain categories and can either be flash-sales, which last for only a short time-span or a couple of days, or even longer week-long or month-long sales. Here are some ideas for sales which can help you create a calendar that you can share with your customers:
- Sending out discount codes on birthdays or the day they signed up to your website
- Having flash-sales on the days of national holidays
- Holding sales on older items after a new collection has been released
- Celebrating the yearly anniversary of your company’s launch
All of these ideas will help you know exactly when you should be sending out emails to your customers about your promotions and they will give them a reason to plan their upcoming purchases in advance in order to benefit from your future sales.
Start a loyalty program
A loyalty program is a great way for your customers to give you more information about their interests, to help them save money on their purchases, and to motivate them to make purchases throughout the year.
Your loyalty program emails should let your customers know that you value them and that it will be worth their time returning to your store by giving them early access to new products or unique special offers.
“What a loyalty program does is to essentially offer your customers reward points for making a purchase on your website. The one condition for this to happen is for them to sign up and become members of your website” explains Noah Plower, Sales Manager for Studicus.
This will benefit both sides and it will allow your customers to save money on their future purchases. They will be able to pick when they will use a promotional code and they won’t have to wait for holidays in order to make purchases they really want as they will be able to benefit from discounts very often.
Ask customers for feedback on their purchases
Last but not least, another way of making sure your customers are happy with their purchases and the whole shopping experience is to ask them directly about it. Collecting feedback right from the source is the best way for you to improve your services and your products and to make sure your customers leave your website satisfied and eager to make another purchase.
This short and sweet survey email is a perfect example of how to do this right. It includes just one short paragraph of text and a large call-to-action button.
You can either send out a small questionnaire for them to answer or you can ask them to reply to your emails and let you know exactly what is on their minds. This is an important step in the selling process and will help you understand how you can make your customers more satisfied with your services and products.
Final word: Make the most of holiday sales
Holiday sales are the time of the year when companies try to maximize their profits and gain loyal customers for the rest of the following year. If you play your cards well at this time, you will be able to increase the satisfaction of your customers and keep them happy with every purchase.
Which of these tips do you believe you could use for your own online business? Let us know in the comments section!
This article is a contribution by Angela Baker.
Angela Baker is a self-driven specialist who is currently working as a content manager at PickTheWriter and is trying to improve herself and her blogging career. She is always seeking to discover new ways for personal and professional growth and is convinced that it’s always important to broaden horizons. That’s why Angela develops and improves her skills throughout the writing process to help to inspire people. Also, she writes for LiveInspiredMagazine, rounding out her professional writing career.
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