Fueling your post-purchase customer engagement by Divya Shah

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The post-purchase experience is critical to driving customer loyalty, retention, and, by extension, a brand’s long-term success. Personalization, segmentation, building brand advocates, cross-sell or upsell products, and storytelling across all channels become some of the important aspects to build post-purchase customer engagement. 

We deep dive into how DTC brands fuel these strategies with Divya Shah in this podcast.

About Divya Shah

Divya Shah is a brand and content strategist; with industry experience of over 2 years. She has worked across 8+ industries. Some of them are D2C, SaaS, academia, perfumery, fintech, ed-tech, and many more. 

Divya started her journey as a content creator on LinkedIn, building a community of over 50K+ followers in 1.5 years.

Aashish: Why is post-purchase engagement important for DTC brands?

Divya Shah: Let's dive deeper into customer conversion rates. So that is approximately one person to 3% for the DTC brands.

Retaining a customer is 10X better than acquiring one. And the chances of a first-time customer getting converted into a retail customer is by 70 to 80%, according to one of the marketers in the US. He said that the chances of converting are 70 to 80% provided you have strong post-purchase communication with your customer.

‍Aashish: Oh, yeah. For sure. And I think in the last two years since the pandemic, everybody has gone online. Consumer behaviors are personalization is becoming an important factor DTC brands have to focus on if they need to connect to each consumer. So how should one go about driving this personalization engine?

Divya shah: I came across this study by Accenture which pretty much read that customers are willing to share their data provided you offer them personalized offers and solutions.

73% of the customers prefer that brands give them customized solutions post-purchase. So some of the ways you could fuel post-purchase communication with the customers is first making sure that you are in touch with them across all the touch points.

Nowadays, WhatsApp marketing has been trending. Before we had email marketing, we had social media marketing, retargeting of ads, etc.

Once the purchase is made, you want to probably ensure that you're in touch with them through two modes, at least, WhatsApp and emails.

Secondly, once the purchase is made the retargeting of ads that you do for your customers, shouldn't be on the same products. I'll give you a very recent example. I bought something from a small-scale business. It was a centered candle. The next thing I wanted was a big twig. Because when the wax melts, it's very difficult to light the candle or trim the wind. So, I was still getting from the same business. I was still being shown the same fragrance candle card. There was no change. This is not done.

Now, one more thing is most of the DTC companies, get the shipment done with a third party. Now, in which case you kind of don't have complete access to the customer data. If you do, it's very scattered data. So have very keen data about your customers and the necessities, your WhatsApp number, and the ID that they're shared with you.

Aashish: What kind of personalized messages one should send to their customers? What works and what doesn't work?

Divya shah:

Thank you note with personalized upselling

Firstly once the purchase is done you send them the typical, thank you a message. But don't make it more than once it's done and dusted, but along with the thank you message, you can perhaps send them, okay. Say you bought this particular dress. So these are some of the most accessories with it Or most part footwear or necklace, whatever it is. Right. So that is how you're upselling. Further products to your customers. That's one thing, something that you should never do is if a customer opts out of communication, you still send them messages. Don't do that a lot of time. It has happened to me that when I'm opting out of a conversation with a brand on WhatsApp, I still keep on getting their messages.

There's this one company called poco card. I never purchased from them, but they still have my number and they keep on sending me promotional messages. So secondly, do not buy data sets, send it to the customers who are bought from you and who have shared their data with you. their WhatsApp, it's gonna be annoying because I've never bought something from you.

‍Educating customers about your most selling products‍

Coming by to the personalized messages the second thing I suggest is to make sure that you are sending them perhaps a little educative content at times which is again, linked with your product. So you could perhaps be stating some stats of the industry or something, or say that you know this is one of our best moving products and we feel that you should check them out before it runs out of stock. Okay. But just again, make sure or don't hear that. Don't make it a broadcast message. Because if you're into. Say, offering a lot of things. So you just might wanna make sure that you have segmented your customers and no, then the personalization just ends right there because if I am into eating organic, healthy food, I don't want to know about your best-moving junk food, least interesting something that's very simple, I would say.

Address them by their name

The third personalization tip that I have for you is to address your customers by their names a lot of time. I think the majority of the time DTC brands send a broadcast message. No, don't do that. You are talking to your customer one on one and making the communication process super easier. Make sure that you're talking as if you're talking to your friend, so you address them with your name, and you ask them, how are you doing? We all love our names. So let's make the best of that aspect of human psychology.

Aashish: Very interesting point. How do you drive storytelling in your post-purchase emails to your consumers and how impactful can you drive that campaign ?

Divya shah: It comes down to level zero of everything that is having a very strong brand strategy in place. I think 90% of the businesses here think that brand strategies are expensive It's a must investment for your business. The reason is that if you don't make this investment, your foundation is going to be weak. So not only a post-purchase communication, but any communication that you have in the entire customer cycle is going to be all haywire.

So have a brand strategy in place that defines your brand positioning, and your actual brand story. Your brand mission, vision, brand values, how you're going to talk to your customers, etc.

I'll give you a very simple example of the whole truth foods.

I recently stumbled upon one of the Instagram posts and since thought over design has been taking care of their entire designing aspect of the whole truth. So they came up with this very quirky post that the whole truth is going on a social date. And with that, they also launched a new product.
The second example, say with Kitkat, their campaign #BreakBanthaHai ( Break is of course needed ) has created a stickiness in everyone’s mind. When you wanna eat something, you precisely taking a break from doing something else to consume, you remember Kitkat.

All of those are storytelling aspects. And the reason we remember them this fondly is that they've been consistent with their product stories. You need to make sure that the Cru of the message remains the. And that's where your brand messaging comes into the picture. So if you don't have a brand message clear, your stories will go in 10 different directions for 10 different products.

Aashish: Yeah. I think having a good tone of voice, and consistent messaging across your website, email and Social media can stand out interacting with the customer post-purchase. Coming to an important question, How should DTC brands go about building strong customer loyalty to their mission and products?

Divya Shah:
‍ I'll take a very simple example of mamaearth. Okay. If you have seen their TVCs, no matter what they are showing, but at the end, there's this thing, they say that for every product or something that you buy, they plant a tree. Okay. So now they're kind of trying to upset their carbon footprint, which is being produced due to their plastic packaging, etc. Now they're trying to make sure that this is being communicated across touchpoints. So now I, as a customer who is into sustainability and cares about the future, I'm gonna buy from mama to someone. because I know that I'm contributing to a better future. That's one example. 

One more example that I can take for you here is that with the whole truth foods. So they have a very simple message that they're not going to hide any ingredients and they want people to stay healthy. And they're abiding by their mission of revealing everything that is not being hidden. 

And the third thing is through emails, perhaps, maybe you did something good towards your mission. So share it with your customers. They would love to know that. 

But one thing that remains for sure is that post your purchase, you want to make sure you are sending them personalized messages and not generic messages. If you send them generic messages that are not relevant to their previous purchase, you are going to end up getting blocked by your customers. 

Aashish: How do you go about driving referral campaigns and growth loops?

Divya shah:

1. The very first thing when building a marketing campaign and for that matter, growth loop is to scale your business versus building an engaging community, don't build a community for the heck of building it, build an engaging one. And for this, the best example is man matters. I've read so much about them lately. And I know some of my male friends who are using products and they're like, damn, the community is so engaging. You have got some issue with the product not working or something. There is one of the other customers who's advocating that. No, it will work. You still have to just be patient. Okay, so build customer advocates for your brand.And that happens when you are giving them quality products and hand holding them in their initial journey. Keep building an engaging community. 
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2. Secondly, you might understand their personalized offers or discounts now. So something that I recently tried with my client was that I asked them. For the next two months, maybe the customer's birthday anniversary, send them a discount. But also send them a referral code and ask them to share it with their friends. So, anyone who buys that referral gets an additional 10% discount on your current discount. So you are super excited to buy something because you're getting like your path clubbing two. And second, you are creating urgency by saying that this referral code is valid for one week.
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3. The third way is what I learned from the Air table. I have executed for one of my SAAS Clients, every time I invite someone to air table, I get $10 credited into my wallet, air, table wallet, and I can use that to buy a premium plan. And that's how for the last six months I've been using the air table premium plan without spending a penny.I think the way a DTC brand could perhaps replicate this thing is by giving them certain coins, to your customers precisely in, your wallet that is renewable on your platform only.
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4. Fourth, from a personal example of the Tata app. My mom has been a big fan of that. She keeps on getting a hundred points on every repeat order. They give certain points and she's like, okay, I've made five purchases. Now I've got this many points. I'm gonna order something for free now.So you see, you are retaining customers. You are, you are selling also your products. Everything is happening inside that one flat pricing. 

Aashish:  Awesome. Any last advice that you want to share with our listeners today, which they can take away?

‍Divya shah: When we say personalization, it means personalization. That means in terms of the products that you're recommending, calling them by their name. Once they opt out, you respect their privacy. Okay. And, fourth building a strong engaging community with the end goal of building customer advocates, customer advocacy, nothing like that. If you have customers who are advocating for your brand, that's it. Nothing can stop you from growing. 

Aashish: Awesome. Thanks, Divya for making it today. I hope to see you again in maybe some other episode talking about something else. So for today, hope you guys had a great time listening to me and Divya. Stay tuned. Have a good day. 

Divya Shah: Thank you Aashish for having me. It was indeed an amazing conversation.