Any business, no matter what its structure or business model, needs to acquire new customers and optimize the acquisition funnel as much as possible. We all know this is common sense and there is endless information about it on the web.
But what happens after you have acquired a new customer? Does the journey end there? No, this is just the beginning; now you need to maintain a good relationship with your customer to retain them and make sure they come back for more.
Returning customers are 3-12 times more profitable than new ones , but without the right strategy, they are very difficult to retain.
So where does the norway phone number library acquisition process end and the retention process begin? When the customer makes their second purchase? When the customer receives their product? In the order confirmation email?
Long before that, the retention process begins as soon as the customer completes their first order , on the order confirmation page, also known as the thank you page.
If you continue reading this article, you will find that this overlooked page can become your doomsday weapon when it comes to retention.
Segmentation
A key point you need to address in order to make the most of your retention efforts is segmenting your customers – the deeper, the better.
The more details you have about your customers, the better your relationship with them can be. Your offer can be more relevant to the customer and you can engage them with more offers on more occasions.
Your thank you page is a great tool to better segment your audience, unlike emails, 100% of your customers see this page at least once.
You can segment your customers based on certain actions taken on the thank you page, such as clicking on a recommended product, or asking you for more information about themselves. In this article, we will discuss the more direct approach of asking the customer for the information.
Birthdate
Use your thank you page to ask for a customer's birthday and let them know it will be worth their while and they will receive a special birthday gift/offer.
Most businesses focus on retaining customers for the first 30-90 days after their first purchase; birthdays allow you to break this rule and connect with your customers at least once a year on their most personal and fun day. Not only that, birthday emails perform better than other emails – 4.8 times better to be precise.
Even better, you can offer to let your customers set up birthday reminders for their loved ones and send them a gift card or discount when each one comes around, making it easier for your customers to decide what birthday gift to give the people in their lives.
birthday collector
Expertise
This is where you can really go crazy with segmentation: you can add a simple post-purchase survey, asking whatever you want, and segment your customers based on their answers.
Some good examples would be asking your customers about their gender, asking them how they heard about you, asking them what kind of content or offers they would like to see from you in the future, etc…
Most companies use emails to conduct surveys. To complete them, the customer has to open the email, click on it, be redirected to a different page and wait for it to load, and only then can they fill out the form. This process results in a very low response rate. The response rate for external surveys is 10% to 15%, while the response rate for internal surveys is 30% to 40% .
The secret to success with surveys is to act on the results, you can literally ask customers what they want, all you have to do next is give it to them. They will be happy and you will get some extra income.
During our work with over 1000 Shopify stores on ReConvert – Shopify Thank You Page Builder , we’ve learned that the send rate for post-purchase surveys on the thank you page is around 43%. These numbers will outperform any email or external survey.
to increase sales
This is probably the most obvious and overlooked addition that is missing from almost every eCommerce store we come across. Just because your customer has just completed a purchase doesn’t mean they won’t buy from you again – it means the exact opposite!
The customer is “hot” and, with their credit card in hand, they have already made the decision to buy from you and already trust you. Make sure this opportunity is not wasted: take advantage of this key point in the customer journey to make the most of the interaction in terms of revenue.
Product Recommendations
Display product recommendations on the order confirmation page to cross-sell your customers, and try to make these recommendations dynamic and tailored to what the customer just purchased.
If you look at all the big retailers (Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Aliexpress), you can see that they all have a huge recommended products section on their thank you page. These giants spend millions on conversion rate optimization every year; if they all do it, they probably know what they're doing.
ebay product recommendations
Urgent offers
Make urgency a player on your thank you page by displaying an urgent offer (with a timer if possible) – you can make the customer an offer they can’t refuse and get them to buy again right then and there.
Since your customer completed two orders in a row, you can save on shipping fees and ship both orders together, allowing you to offer a larger, more tempting discount.
Some people would say that time-sensitive offers and timers are not effective in increasing conversions, but the numbers suggest otherwise: the average conversion rate on a popup with a time-sensitive offer on the order confirmation page is almost 3%! That’s impressive, considering that without it the conversion rate is 0.
Grow your lists
When it comes to retention, you need to use your mailing lists. These are the online assets that will help you stay in touch with your customers.
By default, most online payment processors capture customers’ emails as they complete a purchase. While it’s pretty cool and email marketing isn’t going anywhere in the near future, not all customers respond to or even open promotional emails.
