Forum Moderators: buckworks
Do you have an "automatic" e-mail thanking them for their order and offering some incentive on their next purchase?
A "Frequent buyer" program offering discounts, etc. after the customer buys "X" quantity or "X" dollars?
Periodic mass e-mail campaigns? If so, what do you offer - $ off, % off, "buy one, get one" or what? Any ideas which kind of offers are more likely to result in a sale?
Is a monthly newsletter worth the effort?
So far in my business, we've not gone to any great lengths to get customers to come back, relying on our customer service and prompt order fulfillment to make them come back. The one thing we do consistently is to put 2 business cards in every order we ship - hoping that they'll keep one and give the other to a friend who's interested in the same niche products we sell.
The incentive to loyalty depends on business. Let me say the topic: the best for them to come back is to offer them a great service.
I think a good idea is to give them the 10% of the present order in the next one... if they come to buy after certain amount of time...
There has been some discussion here in the office too, about the site itself. All the gimmicks and enticements aside, it's my opinion that customers will return to a site that is well developed. That means good content, services, graphics, pages that work. Those things certainly have an effect on a first time customer, so there's no reason to believe they won't affect repeat business.
Is a monthly newsletter worth the effort?
Anyone that produces one will probably tell you Yes. I want to produce one, but still lack the expertise, the insight, and the time to produce one.
Let me switch hats a second... there we go... if I get more than about 2 versions of your newsletter a month I'll probably start just deleting them and thinking bad things about you. An example would be for a newsletter I get now. It was nice at first. Two months down the road, I think they could ease up a little, and stop sending the blatant advertising with the same email address. I go to open a newsletter and find a sales pitch, no news, no letter. More bad thoughts happen...
What discounts / freebies / gimmicks /
A final thought. We have been contacted by old customers who received something from us thru email, who thanked us for the contact, and told us that the reminder was just what they needed. They had forgotten our name or, presumably, how to find us on the web.
Our product line is the type that is favorable for repeat business -- more or less the "razor blades" for those with razors. So there's a lot of potential for repeat business if I can just find a way to prod them into buying more without making them mad.
I do notice that we have a good number of repeat customers who seem to "forget" our web site address and end up clicking on one of my PPC ads in the search engines. I wonder if those people really forgot about doing business with us in the past or if they just don't know how to bookmark a site?
A UK CD store that I buy regularly from often includes a money off voucher with a code to enter on the site. This keeps me coming back to buy the CDs again and again.
or if they just don't know how to bookmark a site?
That's actually a very good question. I put a little note right at the top of my index page
Please Bookmark our Site (Ctrl-D)
1) I have seen an increase if the requests for Favicon.ico, a good indicator of a bookmark being used, updated or created.
2) Looking thru my log files, I've seen people bookmark my site after spending some time looking around. Good chance they will be back if for no other reason than to see if my pages are rendering properly yet :)
We do a few things to help prevent our customers forgetting about us:
*Include business cards inside their parcel (cute, colour ones with a photo and they cost just pennies)
*Run a monthly news letter
*Have "customer account" facilities on our website
*Do “what it says on the tin” plus more (ship quickly, free gift wrapping to encourage word of mouth)
*Have a memorable brand name describing our product
*Print our brand and URL everywhere, on gift wrapping, invoice, free gift, ad-card etc.
*Send a follow up customer satisfaction email (we currently do this manually as we haven't figured out an automated system yet) inviting the respondant to win back the cost of their order, we then draw one in every x respondants to win a refund
*Give a helpful after sales service and reply quickly to emails
*Issue a coupon with every shipment, reedeemable for a free gift. One coupon cannot claim a free gift, it has to be two or more. Only our customers see the page containing the gift choices. More coupons mean a higher value gift.
Anyone else have any tips to share?
Hi,
Typically how much do they offer off the price? Is there a time limit to using the code?
Thanks,
TVB
Here are some general observations (in no particular order):
1) Automate as much as possible! When someone places an order they should receive an automated "thank you" that recaps the order, shipping address, etc.
2) After I ship each order, I go into my ecommerce system and change STATUS from "in process" to "shipped." When I do this an email is automatically sent to the customer telling them their product has shipped. I've received several emails telling me how much this status email is appreciated. Again, think automation!
3) I put out a newsletter every 4-6 weeks. I used to go to elaborate lengths to make an informative newsletter with trivia questions, etc. I've realized it's too much work! Now my newsletters simply list the new products since last newsletter AND contain time sensitive DISCOUNT CODE that they can redeem in my webstore.
4) I used to create fancy graphic-filled newsletters. I received several emails from good customers who informed me that the newsletter got caught by their Spam Catching application and if it wasn't for them waiting to receive my newsletter (imagine that!) they would not have checked and found my newsletter. Now I create my newsletter as an HTML web page and send a very short text email with a link to the newsletter webpage.
5) My ecommerce system has a discount code setting capability where I can set the discount to ALL ITEMS or just certain categories. Also, the discount can be set to expire on a certain date, be used only once or unlimited use or only kick-in after a certain dollar value is reached. Having experimented, I've found that offering a discount on all purchases of three (3) or more widgets results in a lot more sales of three (3) widgets per order! This is good because it's cheaper and faster to use one mailer instead of three.
6) I have a very extensive FAQ section. Sure, there are still people who don’t bother to read it but as business has grown, the number of email questions has not grown in proportion. Every time someone asks a question that is not in my FAQ, I add it. I also have a note on my "contact us" page that says "You're questions may already be answered, please see our FAQ page."
7) Even when I’m emailed by the stupidest and laziest people on earth, I always reply with a smile, ass-kissing answer. TIP: don’t answer email until you’ve fully woken up in the morning. I’ve made the mistake of answering email while I was still a bit cranky from just waking up and I wasn’t as ass-kissing as I should have been. ;)
8) Make sure you have a Customer Testimonial Page. Save all positive feedback email you receive from your customers. Then every few months, email them back with their comment and ask for their permission to use it on your website. Many times, you’ll get an even better comment in their reply. Then when you list their comment on your website, you can also list their follow up like this:
[Reply when asked if I could use comments on website.]
Of course you can use my comments! You really took great care of me and service means everything.
9) As you describe the items you sell, use language that communicates your excitement about the product. Don’t go overboard. But if you can convey that you think what you’re selling is cool and worth purchasing, it will come across the site visitor.
10) Sometimes a customer will give me information about a product that I was not aware of. I double-check their info to make sure they’re not insane than I’ll add it to the product description. I also send them a quick “thank you” email to tell them that I used their info. This helps build loyalty.
11) Go through your web shopping cart carefully. I realized I had “buy it now” when in fact it should have been “add to cart.” Also, make sure any “back” buttons bring customer back to where they were – not somewhere else. I had this problem also. Here’s a biggie – I used to have an order confirmation page. The page title said, “Order Confirmation.” I found through analysis of my shopping cart logs that a lot of people logged off at this point and never placed their order. They thought their order had gone through and they were looking at an order confirmation page. I changed the page title to “Review Your Order” and changed the “confirm your order” button to “Place Your Order.” I also made sure the “Place Your Order” button was larger and stood out. This has reduced cart abandonment.
Well, gotta run. I hope others add to this…
TVB
But newsletters keep getting less and less effective. We still send plain text ones, but many probably don't make it past spam filters. Most of the rest aren't noticed among mountains of email junk. Nowadays, barely worth the considerable effort if takes to produce and mail.
Tip: rather than doing one regularly, it might be better to email only when you have something truly special to promote.... an annual sale, special purchase, new really hot product.
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Last month, we started including a gift coupon with orders, good for a nice but cheap gift with next purchase above a certain size when customer enters promo code within 60 days
Too early to really determine how well it works: Showing some promise...but nothing fabulous.
The question I like to consider is "what can I do to make the experience more like getting a present from a friend than getting a package from a company".
A personal or at least signed note.
A commitment to the customer (e.g. "we take pride in our company and are commited to our cusotmers. if you have any questions or complaints contact us directly at").
A little present (even a $.10 candy).
Nice packaging.
Some branded marketing tachatke (sp?) like a pen or button or magnet or whatever if you can afford it.
Anything with your name/url that will hang around their house.
Obviously this won't work for all products, but it will for most b2c.
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"I like to consider is 'what can I do to make the experience more like getting a present from a friend than getting a package from a company'"
My realtor sent me a neat computer screen duster - looks like a little squeegee except has a brush on the end for wiping the dust off the screen. And a velcro pad to hang it from the side of the monitor. Certainly keeps her name prominent in my brain, and I'm sure we'll contact her when we're ready to sell again.
I also like the idea of a "come back soon" coupon with every order - though we'd probably deliver it electronically rather than including another slip of paper in the order. Still need to implement a coupon handling system in my store but it's not that hard - I've just been lazy.
Do any of you use customer satisfaction surveys at all?
The idea is that I'd like to know what products we don't carry that our customers are interested in, what they liked or didn't like about the web site, how they found us (above what I can get from my statistics), suggestions from them for improving the shopping experience, etc.
I'm wondering if such a survey would produce any useful results and whether it would get enough response to be worthwhile? I'd probably offer a discount off the next order in return for filling out the survey.
Do any of you use customer satisfaction surveys at all?
I made mention of this earlier this morning in another thread. I have a survey that gives me information regarding:
How do you find me? (with the more popular options selected with radio buttons and a text input box)
How did you find my site usability/navigation?
Would you recommend me or my products?
Will you come back? (get the idea in their head)
What other products would you like to see? (interesting items listed here)
And I let them rate my products and services from 'awful' to 'excellent'.
I guess this falls under the gimmicks, get the customer/visitor involved in your site. They'll come back if they have something at stake, even if it's an opinion.
I offer free shipping and quantity discounts, but instead of it coming out of the total due, I put the amount into their account as a voucher that they can use against their NEXT purchase. That has worked wonders for repeat business. I also have a customer loyalty discount that I apply (again into their voucher balance) when they reach say $1500 or so they get 10% of subsequent orders inserted for their next purchase. This is actually a win win because the discount is worked into "product" as opposed to actual $$ and $10 in their voucher balance equates to about $3 in actual cost to you.
It also helps to have depletable products, so that they inherently have a reason to come back.
"£5 voucher when you refer us to a friend" etc...
It is something I definately plan as I think that this is in someways a more powerful way to build traffic.
