How To Drive Traffic and Sales From Your Order Confirmation Mail

The world of digital lives and dies by minute details, its subtle differences that set you apart from competitors in winning traffic and sales and to quote Al Pacino, here we fight for that inch. While the world of digital is in a constant state of change, marketers and businesses owners often gravitate to what practices are trending and often overlook marketing opportunity, like the one I'm about to make a case for.

Post-purchase marketing

Every time someone makes a purchase from your store they get an email receipt/order confirmation email, which has been an industry standard for years. But many eCommerce sites tend not to look after their customer post-purchase and encourage additional user actions with simple marketing queues.

In this post, we’ll take a look at how you can update your email receipt templates as a part of your marketing strategy to win additional sales, and stay connected with your customers and even reach new ones. Sound a bit too good to be true? I mean it's just a silly old receipt is it not? How can it drive more sales? Let's have a look and see what you could be missing!

What’s so special about the order confirmation email?

If you've dabbled in email marketing you'll know open rates are your first key metric and anything between 15 - 30% is worth pursuing. But what if I told you the open rate of an order confirmation email averages around 70.90%, compared to the average 17.19% for regular email marketing campaigns. Doesn't that speak to the underutilised potential of email receipts and the potential eCommerce gold mine, it has become for many.

It's important to remember that when a customer completes a checkout on your store, their trust is at its highest. They’ve already been convinced, they've already committed to your product and brand so why not leverage the trust you worked so hard to attain.

What’s Your order confirmation Email missing?

So a visitor has turned into a customer, here are 10 ways you can use that moment when a customer opens their confirmation email to do a few things:

1. Upsell related products in your store

We can't always account for every single user journey to purchase and we can't be sure the customer has been exposed to some of your on-site prompts or explored the site thoroughly before purchase and may have missed out on products that may interest them. Adding related products, frequently bought together or other shoppers recommend these products along with your purchase are all ways to upsell, shorten time to next purchase or even draw second instant purchase.

2. Offer a discount code to incentivize a future purchase

Thank the visitor for becoming a customer and encourage repeat purchase by offering an incentive like a discount or free delivery on their next purchase. This type of promotion strategy has a very powerful call to action and can shorten time to next purchase drastically as well as improving average order value on the second purchase.

3. Set up a feedback loop to better understand your customers and your checkout flow

Like I've mentioned before not all user journeys are the same and your conversion funnel isn't a one size fits all. Asking users for feedback on the check out flow can unlock vital insights you may overlook and a very user prompts here and there should drastically improve your conversion rate.

You may also find that first time users shop differently to repeat users and you could have a custom process that is simplified for the first time Booker or create a streamlined speedy checkout flow for your repeat business.

4. Promote your social media accounts

Users come from a range of channels and it's always a good idea to try and migrate users from your more expensive channels to cheaper channels. Asking those who have purchased to follow you on social media will help increase your social audience as well as create a relevant social audience who are interested in shopping with you.

5. Encourage customers to share their purchase on social media

Using your early adopters to spread the word via social media is a great branding exercise. Asking customers to share their purchases on social media creates brand ambassadors out of them.

Their friends and family are likely to see their posts and you'll be reading users on social you may not have reached due to your targeting. Social media validation is somewhat a watered down version of word of mouth and seeing friends purchase from a certain brand or website can alleviate a lot of bias and concerns about safety and reliability which is normally a key issue eCommerce brands try to overcome.

6. Solicit ratings and reviews

Not every user is interested in purchasing again very soon and would not be coerced by your incentive prompts. This is where you need to define your secondary actions you want users to take and having customers rate and review their purchases is probably top in the second tier.

These reviews provide relevant feedback for new customers, create unique content for SEO and also help drive repeat visits since the user needs to return to your site to post the review. When do they return to the site to submit their review who knows what on site prompts and messages they may see while posting a review? If you get my drift.

7. Offer a referral bonus for sharing with friends

Refer a friend models are an age-old practice and for good reason, because they work. Offering users a discount on condition they get a freind to register or buy can extend your marketing messaging and brand to avenues you would have not cosnidered with your other channels and become an unlikely source of new businesses for you.

Look at what your customer acquisition costs are and what kind of margin you can play with in acquiring new business and set up a refer a friend payment, credit or discount system.

8. Include a valuable, and fun insight into their “product”

Giving users valuable information that does not make them feel like a simple transaction can go a long way in getting them to consider you as their preferred service provider. Information like time of delivery, a distance of delivery, this is their 1st, second or 3rd purchase, how long they've been a customer with you are personalised queues that give customers a sense that they're being looked after. When customers feel they're being looked after, they not only return but return bringing friends.

9. Migrate users to your general newsletter database

If a customer profile used to make a purchase is not subscribed to your newsletter, flag this and prompt them to subscribe. As I mentioned before it's always important to try and migrate customers to cheaper channels and making it easier to connect with them. Not every one of your customers is active on social media and there is a barrier to receiving the message due to social media algorithms so migrating users to a direct communication channel like email is the ultimate prize.

10. Drive your subscription model

If you have a subscription service or sell FMCG you should suggest migrating users to your subscription model. Inform them of the benefits and in one simple queue, you've converted a first time purchase into a monthly repeat purchase. Now isn't that sweet?

Marketing confirmation

In the eCommerce spectrum, it’s an amazing how subtle changes can affect users in a big way and adding that extra something will help set you apart from your competitors. Adding new customer touch points and keeping them engaged at every turn will not only build trust but a relationship more profitable than the margin gained on that initial sale.

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Tags: CRM, email marketing