Post-Purchase offers are given to online customers as soon as possible after they complete their purchase. These offers can be shown either on the site, via email, or by text message. The idea behind them is simple – offer a complementary product with a significant discount to get a better average order value.
To not confuse Post-Purchase text messages with Win-Back text messages: Win-back text messages are pretty similar as they are also sent to a customer who has already bought something on the site, but they are sent a lot later – a week or two after the purchase. Post-purchase text messages are sent to customers as soon as possible.
What to offer Post-Purchase to your customers?
With Post-Purchase offers, it is essential to offer your customers products that are noticeably discounted as this dramatically increases the possibility of them adding the product or products to their existing order. It is well known that people who have already bought something on your site are more likely to do so again. And with Post-Purchase offers, this possibility is even greater as they are already in the spending process, so spending an additional 10% of the previous offer with no shipping costs, this sounds like a bargain.
There are various options to offer to your customers with Post-Purchase offers. The simplest one is to offer a complimentary product based on the existing one they bought. Just one product that is highly discounted. This option is one of the best as it does not give your visitors the time to think too much about their options. There is only one product for them that you offer greatly discounted, and that is it. That being said, the product needs to be complementary, and you do have the risk that it will be useless for them, or they will not see the benefit in it.
That is why it might be a better option to offer them two or three different discounted products. This way, you can increase your chances of them adding at least one product to their existing order, and so increase your average order value. To add, this is a feature that needs to be implemented on the site with a development team as this is not something that works out of the box with Ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce or Shopify.
To summon up on what to offer to your customers as a Post-Purchase offer: It is best to offer one to three different complementary products, all being noticeably discounted. It is important to show off as noticeably as possible that they are cheaper than usual. By doing that, you can get up to 40% Post-Purchase offers successfully completed.
Using text messages to offer Post-Purchase offers
There are different ways of implementing Post-Purchase offers. One of them is by showing it immediately after the order completion on the website itself. This is one of the best ways to go about it, as they are still completely focused on the complete buying journey. But, that being said, it might not be the best for your brand awareness or the conversion rate as your online customers might just complete their order and close the site.
That is why you can use emails or text messages to communicate better with your customers (and grow your brand awareness at the same time). Since we have already talked a lot about the comparison between emails and text messages in marketing, we will not focus on emails here. But with text messages, where more than 70% of your online visitors like receiving them from your site, they might be the best solution for implementing Post-Purchase offers in your marketing funnel.
To get an even better understanding of using text messages in marketing and the results they bring check the articles “Text messaging statistics for marketing” and “Interesting text message statistics for Ecommerce“.
With sending a text message right after your customers complete their order, you not only confirm the order for them, but you can also let them know when they will get their order delivered to their home – but in this case, that is not as important as offering them a special offer right in this massage that they receive immediately after they complete their order.
Optimizing your marketing results with text messages is a guarantee, it is only important to set them up properly based on what your store offers!
Based on our experience, it is best to send it 5-15 minutes after they have completed an order on your website. And the message can be really simple, just saying that you are grateful for them being a loyal customer and that you want to offer them an option to add another product to their order with a high discount – which is not available regularly.
The link in the message should be pointed either to just one product page or to a special subpage where only a few highly discounted products are shown. That is it.
When to send Post-Purchase text messages?
Post-Purchase offers are most effective when offered as soon as possible after your customers complete their order on your site. That is why they are usually offered on the site. But, that is not always the best solution as you come off pushy and cant share a lot more information. Using omnichannel communication is the best way to communicate with your customers about the quality of your brand, and that is why we recommend using text messages.
That way, you can have your customers focus on the information that is important – on the website, they completed the order, but with the text message, they get notified about something else. And they can, due to the shortness of the message, be more focused on the new offer your site has for them.
Post-Purchase text messages should be sent as soon as possible after your customers complete their order. The best time span is between 5 and 15 minutes after order completion. Within this time span, they are still focused on their order/product and are in the so-called “buyers/spending mentality.” At that time, they are more likely to spend more money on your site – as they already have the trust in your website, which you gave during their visit to your site.
Keep in mind that you can send more than just one text message for Post-Purchase offers.
Sending up to three Post-Purchase text messages is usually the best way to go about it. As mentioned above, the first one should be sent as soon as possible. But the second and/or third one should be sent in a non-intrusive time span.
The second text should be sent under 3 hours after their order completion. And the third one should be sent within 24 hours.
That being said, none of these text messages should be the same. Each should offer something different or at least have the text in the message different. But the best way to go about it is to offer a different amount of discount – the later you send it, the higher the amount should be.
How many Post-Purchase text messages should you send?
Sending 2 to 3 Post-Purchase text messages is the best way to go about it. It is not necessary that this is the best solution and that it might be best to send just one, but that is why testing is so important. It also depends if you are an established brand or not – brands tend to perform better when sending multiple text messages instead of just one.
As mentioned before, sending all three text messages within a span of 24 hours is important; otherwise, your customers will not be focused on the products they already bought, and the messages will not be as relevant as they would be otherwise.
An additional benefit is to send them a better offer each time. If they convert with a previous message, they won’t receive the next ones, so there is no worry. But if they do not, then offering them a better deal each time increases your options to make a sale.
Advanced Post-Purchase text message ideas
The most basic Post-Purchase text message is to offer your customers a specific product that is discounted. In the sent text message, you send them a link to the product page, and that is it – as simple as that.
But to optimize your conversion options, you can make a dedicated page specifically for that one product where you communicate with your customers that this product is explicitly discounted for them because they completed an order on your site.
You can go even further! In case you want to give your customers even more possibilities and, with that, grow your option of conversion even more, you can share a link in the text message, redirecting them to a subpage with more than just one product. There they can choose one or more products for a special discount they want to add to their order.
This option is the best one as it increases your chance of your customers deciding on a specific product – or products.
