How To Build A Great Post-Purchase Experience With Emails

Introduction

Every e-commerce store needs a post-purchase experience for their customers, which is usually delivered through emails.

When a customer makes a purchase online, they’re often emailed a receipt or an order confirmation; these are part of the store’s post-purchase emails.

Imagine if you made an online purchase and you don’t receive an order confirmation email. You’d probably be thinking:

“Did they receive my order?”

“Did I just get scammed?”

“What did I just do?”

“Where did my money go?”

And if this happened to me, I would contact their customer service support and demand a refund.

Reducing Buyer’s Remorse

The example described above happens often, especially with small- to medium-sized businesses.

Did you know that 80% of women and 74% of men who buy clothes online immediately regret their purchase?

This shopping regret is known as buyer’s remorse, and it’s one of the main reasons for refunds and cancelled orders across all online stores.

So what’s the solution to this problem? You should build a strong post-purchase experience to reduce buyer’s remorse and boost customer satisfaction!

Building A Post-Purchase Email Workflow

There are six key blocks to include in your post-purchase emails:

1. Transactional content
2. FAQs
3. Shipping expectations
4. Returns, refunds, and exchanges
5. Reviews, testimonials and UGCs
6. Review request

With these 6 blocks, you should build 3-4 emails in your post-purchase email workflow.

Here’s what you need to know about each of these blocks:

1. Transactional Content

This includes any content related to order updates, such as:

• order summary
• order confirmation
• order shipped
• order delivered

Your post-purchase emails should be centered around order updates, because they have the highest open rates — everybody wants updates on their orders!

So for each order update email, you should include other key blocks to deliver a great post-purchase experience.

2. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

FAQs are a great resource for customers, because customers can solve a common problem without contacting customer service support.

For this block, list some of your top FAQs and include a link to your FAQs page on your website.

3. Shipping Expectations

Let your customer know when they should expect their order!

This can be presented as an image block, or even just a line of copy.

4. Returns, Refunds and Exchanges

You should share any important information about your return policy.

This lets the customer know how to return their order if they’re not satisfied, and what they can expect if they want a refund or exchange.

This block is especially effective if you have a generous policy, like a 30-day money-back guarantee.

5. Reviews, Testimonials and User-Generated Content

Otherwise known as social proof, any written reviews, testimonials, and UGCs will help build some trust with your new customers.

Humans are social creatures — we instinctively follow what others do, especially when we’re uncertain about something.

So when a new customer has just purchased from you, seeing positive reviews from other happy customers will help reduce their buyer’s remorse.

6. Review Request

A request for reviews is usually sent in its own email, and they should only be sent if:

• the customer has received their whole order
• the customer has had some time to use their product
• the customer does not have any open customer service tickets

With this in mind, your review request email should be scheduled at least a week after the customer has received their order.

If the customer has opened a ticket because they have an issue with their order, then you should not ask them for any reviews until after the ticket has been resolved.

Summary Notes

• buyer’s remorse is one of the largest reasons why customers ask for refunds
• the best post-purchase emails are designed to reduce buyer’s remorse
• a good post-purchase experience consists of:
  • Transactional content
  • FAQs
  • Shipping expectations
  • Returns, refunds, and exchanges
  • Reviews, testimonials and UGCs
  • Review request
• Here are some examples of post-purchase email templates

This is a great starting point if you’re building a post-purchase automation for the first time, or if you’re trying to improve your current one.

Many marketing agencies would rather hire our white label email marketing agency instead, because this lets them focus on acquiring more clients while we handle all the technical stuff.

Learn more →