Pimp My Email #2: Optimizing Post Purchase — Breathe In Detroit
Make every purchase a special experience
A powerful story. That’s what stands behind Breathe In Detroit — both founders were at their lowest before starting the company.
Cynda had battled alcoholism, faced homelessness, and on top of that… acute alcoholic hepatitis, leading to complete liver and kidney failure. Good luck getting a transplant when you’re an alcoholic.
Her family was told to say goodbye and she was scheduled for permanent dialysis, a procedure with a grim prognosis for life… if she survived the surgery. Moments before going under the knife, a miracle happened — her organs were going back online, slowly starting to work again.
Sean had his own story of losing a past life and finding a new beginning — a story of financial downfall, a lost marriage, and an almost broken spirit.
And from this, they not only recovered. They built a successful company with a positive impact on the community, regularly donating 1–2% of their revenue to good causes.
Want to check them out? Here you go: breatheindetroit.com
The company focuses on eco-friendly yoga-related apparel with positive messages printed on them. Keep in mind who will likely order from them when you go through their new emails.
Breathe In Detroit had worked with another Email Marketing Agency before but were not extremely satisfied with the results.
On our kick-off call, they asked us to work on their Post Purchase (Thank You) Emails, as those were in need of some love.
Why The Post Purchase Emails Matter
Picture this: You’re browsing through an online store that really speaks to what you like. Their message resonates with you, their products seem great.
You buy.
… but all you ever get from them afterward?
The standard order confirmation, and your product. Nothing else.
If the product is great, you’re probably happy. But could they have done better? And what if the product isn’t as great as you imagined?
They will likely never see you again.
But what is the most essential element to long-term success in business?
Retention. Returning customers. Business on repeat.
A common mistake among e-commerce brands is viewing the sale as the end goal. They optimize their site, run ads, do all kinds of marketing.
…but after the sale? The customer falls off. Never hears from them again. Not a great experience for both parties, buyer or seller.
Being able to acquire new customers is good. Being able to keep them is better. Being able to do both really well? Powerful.
Let’s look at the facts:
- 96% of the feedback received when asking on receipt and confirmation emails is positive (ConversResearch)
- Thank you emails are one of the most engaging emails in email marketing. They average a 352% higher open rate than a traditional email campaign and a 329% higher CTR. (KLAVIYO)
- Customers that have a fantastic experience with a brand spend 140% more compared to those who feel they had a poor experience (HBR). Post-purchase engagement is an excellent way to increase overall satisfaction.
- 89% of consumers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive customer service experience. (Salesforce Research)
- The average probability of conversion for a new prospect is roughly 1% but jumps to 9% for a return customer, and they spend 5x as much (Adobe)
And here’s my personal favorite:
Roughly 50% of customers say they would switch to a new brand after one bad experience. (Zendesk)
Take that in. 1 out of 2 customers will likely leave you if you screw up just ONCE.
A strong post-purchase email sequence can help you proactively work against returns, and IF there is an issue with the product, the customer is less likely to be unhappy — because, during the sequence, you will be able to ask for feedback and if everything is alright (has it arrived in a timely manner, is the product undamaged, etc.). We typically do that about a week after the shipment is supposed to arrive.
This provides great customer service at no additional cost. You don’t have to manually follow up. Just monitor your email address and quickly engage with anyone having an issue with his purchase.
How much money could it have cost you not to have this set up?
The Old Setup
Simple and effective. But, there’s an issue here. Do you see it?
One of the emails is set to manual. This means every email has to be reviewed by hand before it’s sent out. But it’s easy to forget reviewing emails in the busy day-to-day… and hadn’t been done here in quite some time.
Meaning that on any order after buying for the first time the customer didn’t get a Thank You email. That’s a lot of possibilities, just lost.
Stuff like this is not uncommon. Many companies do not properly maintain their Email Marketing, resulting in many thousands of lost sales. It’s for this exact reason why we start every engagement with an extremely in-depth audit, going over everything from Email Deliverability, Messaging, Strategy, Automations, Positioning, and much more.
We always find something.
Old Thank You Email 1st Purchase
Old Thank You Email 2nd or more Purchases
New Post Purchase Setup
For this episode, we promised one email “pimped”, plus an Outline for the Post Purchase Flow, and new Copy for the Email Signup Forms.
We did a bit more — three emails, one for your 1st purchase, one for the 2nd, and one for each following purchase. The new plan for the full Post Purchase Flow is only available to our Newsletter (you can sign up for that & potentially win Pimp My Email here).
New Thank You Email 1st Purchase
That Google-thingy at the top of the email? That’s a GIF. It doesn’t GIF in images though, so here it is again, by itself:
New Thank You Email 2 Purchase
Reading this email, you might be wondering: “Why gift them a shirt?”
In the case of Breathe In Detroit, we’re hoping for two things by doing that.
1. Increase customer loyalty
2. Generate word of mouth
The reason why this might work to get word of mouth is that this gift is not announced anywhere in advance. It’s not a “Buy 1 Get 1 Free” kind of thing.
By not announcing it in advance, it becomes a more genuine gift — coupled with the more personal messaging of the emails this will likely result in a very good customer experience that people might want to tell their friends about.
Also, because the gift is a secret, if you get it you’re suddenly initiated. You’re “in the know”… people tend not to be able to keep a secret like that to themselves…
New Thank You Email 3rd or more Purchases
Signing Them Up
You can write create the most beautiful, well-written email in the universe, but that’s not going to do much for you nobody is going to read them.
…turns out you need people on your email list for the whole thing to make sense. How do they get there? They sign up.
There are three ways to get people to sign up on your brand website: Popups, Flyouts, and embedded forms.
You know what a Popup is, right? It “pops up” after you visit a site — ideally after 30 or 60 seconds, or on exit intent (visitor about to leave the page).
Flyouts are similar but less intrusive. They “fly out” at the right bottom of the screen and take up less space on the screen.
Embed forms are the things you’ll typically see right at the bottom of a site, asking you to submit your email.
Old Flyout
This is already quite good. We always like to have it a bit more tailored to the brand, but for the ideal message, we’d just have to test around a bit.
A 15% discount is a big one — it can definitely make sense to have it, but 10% might just be enough. Things like this have to be tested.
But, if you want to get referred, maybe decreasing the Discount for signing up to the email list while giving out referral codes for 15% might be the best option. Now it feels good to recommend the brand because as the one recommending it I can also hand out a discount nobody else has access to. Again, testing testing testing.
You never know if you’re right in marketing before it has been tested.
After signing up, you’re greeted by this message:
This is pretty okay, the only change I’d make is to have the text be left-bound instead of centered. Makes it easier to read.
Like this:
However, there’s an error in here a lot of e-commerce brands make.
Don’t. Do. Double. Opt. In. As. An. Ecommerce. Brand.
By all means, please make sure that your Email Deliverability is on point — if you’re not sure how here’s our Email Deliverability Guide.
The problem with double opt-in in Ecommerce is that you lose a lot of potential subscribers, while not even needing it in the first place. This may vary depending on local legislation, for example, GDPR.
New Popup & Flyout
We made just a few little changes.
- Small changes to the copy more in line with the brand.
- Instead of just the flyout, have a flyout and a popup. Popup for Desktop users, Flyout for mobile.
- Change the timing for when the flyout/popup shows. It’s most often ideal to have it somewhere between 30–60 seconds + get triggered on exit intent (visitor seems to want to leave the page). It was at just a few seconds, which can hurt user experience as they don’t have enough time to adjust to the page first.
Old Embedded Signup Form
Up to this point, everything in the signup process was okay — this is not. Let’s spice it up with some copy.
New Signup Form Copy
“Join Our Community to get a 15% discount off your first purchase + coupons and rewards… and some hidden surprises”
Neither this nor the Popup/Flyout copy is perfect. It can’t be. Here’s why: You can only promise really great stuff in the Signup if there is something truly interesting waiting on the other side.
This isn’t supposed to mean that the company is bad with its Email Marketing — but it’s not where it could be. Like many other companies, Breathe In Detroit currently uses the Newsletter to run sales & discounts to their email list.
That’s a good start. Ideally, they would also produce some other content and work to build a community around the newsletter. This takes work, planning, a strong strategy, and time.
Want To Have Your Chance At Winning?
Unfortunately, we had to rethink our approach to Pimp My Email — while the feedback we have received was amazing, the engagement of the actual winners has been lacking.
For this reason, the format will change a bit.
Pimp My Email will now be a monthly series, with the winner receiving a completely (re)done Email Sequence.
Not one email. Not an outline for changes to the sequence.
A fully pimped email sequence, everything done, implemented, and designed.
This would cost at least $1,500 if we’d charge for it.
If not, but you like our work, hit me up and we’ll see if and how we can help your brand.
If you like what you’ve seen so far and would like your chance at having your emails pimped, you can apply here:
https://bullseye-persuasion.com/#pimp-my-email
If you’d like to get the extra insights into how we build & plan the email sequences, you won’t find that on our blog… but it’s 100% available to you by signing up to our Newsletter. Which you can do with the same link as above, just click “Nope, just watching, I have no brand” instead of “Sign Me Up”
Again, you can sign up for all that extra content (Pimp My Email once a month, email marketing tips and breakdowns, …) here:
https://bullseye-persuasion.com/#pimp-my-email
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