How do you best engage online shoppers, post-purchase?


Seen as the driver of online customer retention and loyalty, the post-purchase is often referred to as a critical and often neglected part of the e-commerce experience. But many see missed opportunities for engagement.
At a minimum, retailers should remediate delivery mishaps. With one bad experience often prompting a consumer to abandon a brand, retailers should have the ability to react to late deliveries and missing items, as well as return complications.
At the next level, customers want delivery assurances. Conditioned by Amazon Prime, this includes being able to track when their package shipped, where it is on its journey, and when it will arrive. Retailers can further allow shoppers to opt for text notifications on delivery status.
Beyond delivery, online buyers are said by some to be more open to receiving recommendations, deals and educational content while tracking and waiting for their packages.
In an article in the Harvard Business Review, Amit Sharma, founder and CEO of Narvar, which offers solutions for the post-purchase online experience, said buyers are especially open to engage if the information is customized. For instance, Birchbox, the online beauty subscription service, provides customers a video preview of what’s in their box. Levi’s promotes new products based on the buyer’s previous purchases.
Mr. Sharma told Women’s Wear Daily, “Successful retailers are those that focus on the supply chain as a place to engage customers rather than as a backend cost center.”
Talking to Forbes, Tim Ash, CEO of online conversion consulting firm SiteTuners, said that beyond cross-sell and up-sell offers, retailers could offer post-purchase buyers incentives for connecting on social media, offers to review products, or ask for e-mail sign-ups or testimonials.
However, retailers are challenged in managing the post-purchase experience due to their over-reliance on third-party delivery companies, too heavy a focus on new-customer acquisition, and a lack of coordination between supply chain, e-commerce and marketing teams.
- Online Retailers Should Care More About the Post-Purchase Experience – Harvard Business Review
- Wooing and Wowing Shoppers After They Hit the ‘Buy’ Button – Women’s Wear Daily (sub. required)
- The riddle of the post-purchase customer experience—and how to solve it – Retail Dive
- What CMOs Need To Know About Online Buyer Journeys – Forbes
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: Do you see a greater opportunity to engage and up-sell online post-purchase customers? Where are the biggest missed opportunities, post-click?
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13 Comments on "How do you best engage online shoppers, post-purchase?"
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Advisor, MyAlerts
There are more than 1 million post-purchase #Haul hashtags on Instagram, plus many other #Hauls on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Developing a post-purchase customer engagement strategy with these social-sharing “haulers” is a great opportunity for retailers and brands.
Global Retail & CPG Sales Strategist, IBM
This biggest missed opportunity here is the “e-nurturing” of all customers post-sale. Questions like, “Was the customer satisfied?”, “If not, why not?”, “If so, what can we upsell/add-on, etc.?” Capturing and keeping your existing customers is the easiest way to grow your business. And beyond the products your organization’s service after the sale is the best differentiator. This service must be surgical in nature. You can’t spam people with irrelevant messages. You need to leverage new tools available today to create compelling offers that develop a brand following over time, so they think of your brand first, regardless of when the last email contact from your brand was.
President, Global Collaborations, Inc.
Today we live in a social world so many people are now talking about a marketing hourglass rather than a marketing funnel. Once the sale occurs, brands and retailers have the opportunity to answer questions supporting their consumers, to learn about what else the consumers might need and to then encourage those consumers to share the experiences with the brand or retailer. The goal is no longer just to make a sale, but to encourage satisfied consumers to share their experience with friends. Getting consumers to be advocates after sales is the goal.
CEO, Hanifin Loyalty LLC
I believe consumers will welcome more post-purchase follow up, as long as the communications sent meet one of 3 requirements:
1. They are informative and useful to inform the customer of shipping status and contributing to problem resolution as needed.
2. They are relevant to the context of the item purchased and how the item will likely be used by the customer. For example, if a blender is purchased, a follow up about “how did that first smoothie taste?” could be well-received and lead to increased satisfaction and possible re-purchase.
3. General follow up regarding overall shopping experience and satisfaction with the item or service purchased.
Co-founder, RetailWire
Bill – I agree, in theory, that asking, “How are you enjoying your XXX so far?” could build loyalty and inspired follow-up purchases. The problem is that such an inquiry can be automatically sent to the thousands of consumers of a product and yet most companies do not have the skilled customer service people to handle whatever comes back from the user, whether it be, “Since you asked, I can’t find the button that does XXX” or “I love it! Can you recommend a model that my husband would like? He’s into fishing.”
Maybe A.I. will be the ultimate answer for this.
Chief Amazement Officer, Shepard Presentations, LLC
Co-Founder & Partner, Ascendant Loyalty
Post-purchase engagement should have a central owner. A customer experience lead or retention lead must be in place to design, specify and execute consistent practices from the moment the “buy” or submit button is clicked. A silo orientation breeds dysfunction. CMO plus e-commerce senior management must get together and make a commitment to service the needs of the buyer. Trial leads to repeat purchase. Issues with the product, delivery or call center follow up creates negative buzz through social posts and personal stories shared with family and friends. As online sales continues to grow exponentially, this approach to seamless post purchase engagement is a must have. Only 9 percent of those dissatisfied make a point to share. That leaves 91 percent to become anti-sponsors of your enterprise. The risk is real and the price steep — make it happen — soon!
Independent Board Member, Investor and Startup Advisor
The post-purchase experience is the next frontier in retailing. The ongoing shift from transactional to experiential retailing continues to turn on the “sale” as goal and destination. To truly pivot to experience-based retailing, then post-purchase needs to be part of the “experience journey” and not limit our thinking and actions to a “purchase journey.” And this goes well beyond the traditional service contract on a washing machine or dishwasher (not to discount the value of those).
How does your customer use the product? How will she use all those ingredients to make that special pasta sauce? Is that roll of toilet paper really soft or strong? Which wine went well with the fresh fish purchased from Whole Foods or Kroger? Does that non-dairy ice cream get your seal of approval? There are tons of ways for brands and retailers to engage post-purchase if they have that mindset in place and are prepared to engage accordingly — most importantly that they have a process to bring those post-purchase insights into the next engagement cycle with that customer.
Retail Tech Marketing Strategist | B2B Expert Storytelling™ Guru | President, VSN Media LLC
CEO & Co-Founder, GoSpotCheck
I agree with Shep. I do see a greater opportunity to engage and upsell online post-purchase customers, but not necessarily by throwing products at them. The most important component of this equation is customer loyalty and happiness. By giving them relevant updates through the product journey — purchase, shipment and delivery notifications — a customer could feel more inclined to write a positive review or purchase from the same store again. After a few weeks a vendor could solicit a review and recommend items that others have purchased, and because there had been so many emails prior to this one, a customer may go back and online shop again.
Missed opportunities would be not building rapport throughout out the post-purchase cycle. If not frequently contacted it become easier for the consumer to forget about the brand and their purchase experience altogether.
Congratulations to Narvar, they have correctly connected the dots between technology, the consumer and retail by packaging a series of events that occur in a well defined segment of the journey: post sales. Perhaps they’ll even spawn a new category of systems, namely: the post sales system (and why not, since the web is making POS an anachronism).
This model can be applied to other portions of the consumer journey and represents a clue as to how to attack the problem of the omnichannel experience. This approach is a breakthrough but will probably be disregarded as obvious — that’s what Narvar is hoping for no-doubt.
Retail and Customer Experience Expert
Post purchase review requests are good but for the customers, the best value is information about the product they purchased, i.e. how to use it properly, increase usage rate and maximize benefits from the purchase. Immediate cross-sell and upselling from my point of view is counterproductive since the customer hasn’t derived value yet. Make sure the customer is happy and engaged with the purchase, then you can ask for a recommendation in social media for it.
U.S. CEO and co-founder, Mirakl