The Importance of Thanking Your Customers in the Post Buyer Stage

Selling your products and services online allows you to build a quality relationship with your customers, resulting in more repeat purchases, brand loyalty, and overall better customer satisfaction. Showing your customers gratitude is just one crucial part of relationship building and the customer experience. This article will discuss why it’s essential to thank your customers and how to get started today. 

Importance of Thanking Your Customers

Your relationship with customers shouldn’t end the moment products or services are delivered; instead, you should make them feel valued. After all, your business could not thrive without your customers. Here’s why it’s important to thank your customers in the post-buyer stage. 

Increases Customer Loyalty

Customers typically don’t feel loyal to brands that don’t try to build a relationship with them. Unless you have a truly unique offering, your customers may be able to find products just like yours somewhere else, so it’s essential to thank them after purchases to make them feel more connected to your brand. 

Unfortunately, many brands believe customers will simply shop from the cheapest competitor, while most customers want to purchase from brands who care about them as individuals. If you don’t want your customers to go somewhere else, the easiest thing you can do is thank them for believing in your business or product in order to help increase their loyalty.

Financial Benefits

Customer loyalty offers financial benefits for your business. A good customer experience, including thanking customers in the post-buyer stage, can keep them happy so they’ll never shop around; instead, they’ll remain loyal to your brand, which results in more repeat purchases and customers for life. Did you know? Customers are willing to pay more for better customer service, so your gratitude can help your business increase its revenue without spending more money on advertising or digital marketing strategies. After all, having a customer retention strategy helps you keep the customers you have, which is more cost-effective than seeking out new ones. 

Better Brand Sentiment

Your reputation should always matter to you. Years ago, reputation relied on word of mouth and public relations efforts to make your brand seem trustworthy and knowledgeable. Now, your reputation depends on what your real customers say about you in online reviews. If you’re not providing a quality customer experience that includes a show of gratitude and customer service for the post-purchase experience, you’ll likely receive no reviews or bad reviews. As you already know, negative reviews ruin your reputation and can stop you from being able to get new purchases. 

How to Thank Your Customers

Now that you understand the benefits of thanking your customers, it’s time to find creative, personalized ways to do it. Of course, you can send an email thanking them for your purchase, and you should, but there are ways to go above and beyond which will prove your commitment to customer satisfaction. 

Hire Someone in Charge of the Post Buyer Stage

You likely have department heads for shipping, customer service, and order management, but you might not have someone dedicated exclusively to the post-buyer stage. Finding employees to help you thank all of your customers can help you save money in the long run because they’ll be dedicated to helping you find the most effective methods at an affordable price. 

Include Thank You Notes

Including a thank you note with every order offers a more personal touch. It’s also the easiest and one of the cheapest ways to start thanking your customers right now. You can thank your customers with a handwritten note to personalize this even more. Unfortunately, this won’t be easy as you scale up. For example, the pet product retailer, Chewy, hires people to handwrite birthday cards for the dogs whose owners purchase from their site. If you don’t think you’ll ever be able to hire someone to handwrite notes, you can use a more automated process by using software that will generate personalized thank you notes for you. 

Thank you notes are something people will read because they don’t expect anything other than the product in their boxes. Most sellers only ship the product and an invoice, so a thank you note will make the entire shopping experience more personal. 

Have an Event

A thank you event can help your customers get more attached to your brand. You can host an event in-person or virtually that includes getting deals on your products. These events can happen at any time of year, but it’s best to thank your customers often. If you want to have a virtual event, all you need to do is send emails to your loyal customers with a coupon code that allows them to get the best deals as an exclusive offer. 

Send Birthday Cards

Sending birthday cards allows you to get more personal with your customers because you’ll be able to send them a gift in the form of a coupon code or special freebie. While a birthday card isn’t an immediate sign of gratitude after a purchase, it does help remind customers who may not have purchased anything from you recently that your business still appreciates them. Birthday cards are a type of gratitude that shows you care about your customer and want to wish them the best on their birthday by inviting them to get a discount on select products or services. 

Emails

Emails are great sales tools that take minimal effort. As we have mentioned, you should always send your customers thank you emails after they’ve purchased your products. While you might send them a confirmation email thanking them, you should also send a follow-up email after the product has been delivered so you can check in on their purchase, provide them with more information, give a survey link to rate your services, and thank them for shopping with you. 

Thanking Your Customers

Customers are more likely to continue shopping with your brand if they feel a personal connection. Thanking your customers doesn’t take too much time from your day and is a great strategy to increase customer retention and loyalty while boosting sales. However you choose to thank your customers, ensure you make the experience more personal to keep them coming back for more.