True story:
I recently ordered new supplements from two places:
One was from one of my long-time clients.
The other one was from a newish supplement brand, who has tight marketing, except, it seems, when it comes to one very particular thing.
(I’ll keep both names vague to protect the innocent and the guilty.)
That thing?
They have no post-purchase sequence. A common mistake from those in ecom, yes. But just because a mistake is common doesn’t mean that it’s not a mistake.
I’ve yapped on and on about building my client post-purchase sequences. Not only do they generate some extra cashola for the brand each and every month automatically, but they also do something far more important when it comes to ecom, serving your customers, and boosting your brand’s lifetime value: They enable consumption.
Consumption, at the end of the day, is what being in any business is about. And perhaps there’s no industry where this is more obvious than ecom: If your product sits in the cupboard for months going on years going on decades, then, well, you’re probably not gonna make any additional sales from that customer.
A post-purchase sequence is one of the few ways to inspire consumption, so your customers actually benefit from your products. In other words, it’s your moral duty to send a post-purchase sequence, otherwise your customers are quite literally pissing their money down the drain. If your product works as you claim, then you must work even harder after you make a sale than you do before it.
Here’s why this is grinding my gears today:
While my client is sending me detailed post-purchase sequences for the supplement I ordered from him (which, yes, I wrote, but still important), the other company hasn’t sent nada.
Well, I just remembered I ordered the latter today. I went to take it, then I realized I forgot the serving size! If it came with packaging, it’s been long since thrown out, so it won’t help me. (And this brings up a bigger point: Many ecom brands don’t think they need a post-purchase sequence because their packaging has all the info customers would need. But they don’t realize that there’s a large majority of their customers who throw the packaging away immediately…)
Anywho, that ain’t the only thing I forgot:
Since this is, from my outsider’s perspective, a brand-new brand, I also forgot their name. So I couldn’t just google their brand and find the serving size.
I had to actually search my email for the name of the supplement — which admittedly didn’t take long, but it took much longer than if I’ve received follow-up emails from said brand which reinforced the serving size, benefits, etc. to me in a post-purchase sequence. Then I had to go to their website, and scroll several miles worth of thumb-scrolls to find the serving size info I was after.
And you know what?
While some customers will go through these somewhat onerous steps, many won’t.
And those that won’t?
They might’ve paid you once, but they’d never pay you twice.
Which is how many otherwise good brands (even brands with good marketing and stellar products, which is about as rare as finding a wild sasquatch) purge themselves.
And, yes, you can—and should—extrapolate this to every business under the sun, no matter which industry they reside in:
Marketing teams, CEOs, and even sales people care about making sales more than making customers. Subtle, yet crucial, distinction there.
They’d much rather convert a lead to a customer, than a customer to a repeat customer.
All their marketing comes before the sale. None of it comes after the sale. And after the sale is where you make the real money. Not only will cross and upsells, which, yes, are important, but also with consumption.
Without consumption, your business couldn't last a week.
Further:
It circles back to a recurring theme in these emails: the general experience.
Your customers cannot have a good general experience if they never consume your products because you stop caring about them the second they enter their credit card info.
Mull that over, why don’t you. And spot areas where you could beef up the consumption of your products and services. That’s how you create a healthy brand that can lead to, in the case of my client, a 7-figure ecom brand.
And if’n you need help creating post-purchase sequences that inspire consumption and generate more revenue each month on autopilot, grab a time with me here.
John
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