Post Purchase Marketing: Tactics and Engagement Strategy

What is Post Purchase Marketing?

Post purchase marketing or post sales marketing is a customer engagement strategy employed to improve your customer retention rate.

It’s a tactic used to engage, entertain, develop and maintain a quality relationship between you and your clients – post sales.

Marketing doesn’t end in sales, and neither does your customer journey end in the purchase stage.

We don’t just want people to buy from us and fizzle out, we want them to stick around with us for as long as possible.

However, this can only become possible if you engage them beyond the purchase stage, and give them something to be hopeful for.

Why Develop a Post Purchase Engagement Strategy?

How often do customers buy from you? Are they recommending your business to others? Do they come back for more?

70% of companies agree that it’s cheaper to retain than acquire new customers.

There are 3 basic reasons why you should develop a post purchase customer engagement strategy. These are to:

• Encourage repeat purchases
• Make brand advocates off customers
• Get feedback on product performance

Encourage Repeat Purchases

According to the book Marketing Metrics, the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%.

While the probability of selling to a new prospect is only 5-20%.

Post purchase customer engagement is cheaper than acquiring new customers. It also saves you time and resources in the long run.

Read also: 4 customer engagement strategy for social media success

Post purchase engagement keeps you top of mind and it can also nudge your customers to make repeat purchases.

Make Brand Advocates Out of Customers

Every brand hopes to get to a position where their customers will morph into brand advocates.

But this can’t happen overnight, and it takes more than offering the right products to get your customers to this point.

How effective is your customer journey post purchase? Do you extend your customer services beyond the sales stage?

Post purchase experience can influence customer referrals – which is a form of word of mouth marketing.

74% of consumers identify word of mouth marketing as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions.

Get Feedback on Product Performance

Feedback is arguably the most cost-effective method of evaluating the level of satisfaction consumers derive from your product/service.

The process of getting this feedback from customers involves a two-way communication and it helps to improve the overall customer experience.

Consumer loyalty is tied with quality service. Ask for feedback and follow this up with actionable steps.

Customer engagement post purchase can help you gather relevant information regarding product performance.

Switching From Marketing to Customer Service

After purchase has been made, it’s the duty of the marketers to switch from marketing to customer service.

Customer service is a form of marketing. In this case, you’re not selling – you’re standing by for feedback and assistance.

For example, a client purchased your 30-day content calendar plan. This package might include the following:

• The content calendar (excel format)
• Social media posting guidelines
• Content repository

Your client may have difficulty using this product, and this might prompt them to call you from time to time.

Read also: 5 benefits of using a content calendar

As part of your customer service, you need to be on standby to complaints and proffer immediate solutions.

Your ability to switch from marketing to customer service can positively improve your customer engagement post purchase.

Similarly, post purchase engagement marketing involves quality customer service and a seamless customer experience.

Both of which can impact your client retention rate.

93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies who offer excellent customer service.

Post Purchase Engagement Strategies

If you’ve not made provisions for post sales client engagement, you may be missing out on a key strategy that can create brand awareness or fuel your marketing funnel.

Turning loyal customers into brand advocates is one of the advantages of post purchase customer engagement.

The following are great examples of post purchase engagement strategy:

• Sending “thank you” messages after purchase
• Creating a sequence of user guide content
• Ensuring that you’re easily accessible
• Rewarding loyal customers
• Conducting customer surveys

Sending “Thank You” Messages

This is probably the most important post purchase engagement strategy for two reasons:

• It sends a message to your clients that: “we value you”. You can also use this medium to assure them of your unwavering customer service.
• Sending a “thank you” message nips buyer’s remorse in the bud.

Every client second-guesses their purchase decision at one point or another. It’s your duty to make them feel at home with the decision they’ve made.

Imagine receiving a text, call, email or a handwritten note from a brand you’ve just purchased from. Wouldn’t this gesture make you feel valued?

User Guide Newsletter Content

After delivering a “thank you” message, you need to follow this up with relevant post sales content.

These contents can be in the form of:

• User guides
• Product updates
• Promotions and rewards
• Surveys
• News and events

This is where audience segmentation comes in handy.

Segmenting your audience will enable you to deliver tailored content that’s optimized for this phase of marketing.

About 50% of loyal customers have left a company for a competitor who was able to stay relevant and better satisfy their needs.

Deliver Added Value

From our example on the 30-day content calendar.

Your client may be interested in conducting a content audit to monitor the efficiency of the content calendar.

If you have a product – say a content audit template – you can target them with it.

This product can offered as a free service, or it may take the form of a discounted offer.

The goal is to present a complimentary product/service that can be used alongside their initial purchase.

However, if that’s not available, you can market other products or services.

Ensure that you’re Easily Accessible

This is to ensure that customers can get in touch with you whenever they need to and in their preferred channels.

These days, dissatisfied customers may not call or shoot you a mail.

They may decide to express their dissatisfaction via social media posts or in your comments section.

In this case, you need to have an actionable plan for dealing with negative comments on social media, and a method of taking advantage of positive reviews.

Reward customer loyalty

This is where you identify and reward loyal customers.

Brand loyalty can be said to be a positive relationship between brands and their customers.

Rewarding repeat purchases sends a strong signal that you appreciate your clients.

This gesture can have a knock on effect on other customers.

Recap

Post purchase marketing is how you engage, develop and maintain relevant conversations between you and your clients – post sales.

Every statistics shows that customer retention isn’t only cheaper than customer acquisition, but that loyal customers also tend to buy more.

With this in mind, engaging your customers beyond the purchase stage can improve your chances of retaining them in the long run.