The Post-Purchase Experience: Tips on How to Get It Right
As the modern ecommerce landscape continues to grow and evolve, the most successful companies have expanded their understanding of the customer journey and become more aware than ever of the importance of customers’ post-purchase satisfaction. Customer satisfaction, of course, has always been important, as it has a direct impact on a company’s reputation and overall revenue.
Understanding this, companies have shown a growing interest in developing post-purchase marketing strategies tailored to optimize the buying journey, improve customer satisfaction, and unlock an additional, ancillary revenue source for the business.
As it turns out, virtually every stage of the ecommerce buyer’s process provides its own opportunities to demonstrate relevance and provide increased value to customers through various touchpoints.
Keep reading for an overview of how ecommerce brands can optimize their customers’ post-purchase experience and the impact it can have on the overall success of the business. This article will also explore the post-purchase stage of the customer journey and the opportunities it provides for delivering more value for customers while generating additional, ancillary revenue for your business, including from third-party advertisers.
What does post-purchase mean in ecommerce?
In ecommerce, “post-purchase” generally refers to customers’ initial behavior(s) after they’ve completed their payment and have reached the thank you and order confirmation pages. Since this is a stage in which customers have largely committed to making a purchase, it also represents a key opportunity to provide additional customer value (and earn increased, incremental revenue for the ecommerce company).
From the customer’s perspective, the post-purchase stage includes their direct actions (post-purchase behavior) as well as their thoughts about the brand, product/service, or overall buying experience (post-purchase evaluation). It also includes any post-purchase customer service, whether sought out by the customer or proactively offered at (or just after) the point of purchase.
Ultimately, the moment a customer makes a purchase should not be thought of as the end result of their experience with your brand—the actions they take in the seconds and even days after their transaction are just as important as the moments that brought them to you in the first place.
As companies increasingly see the importance of not just understanding but also impacting customers’ post-purchase behavior, they turn to post-purchase marketing strategies. By leveraging the right post-purchase strategies in a contextual and relevant way, companies generate win-win scenarios.
For example, when a company uses a platform like Rokt to enhance how they engage customers throughout the checkout process with relevant offers, they provide more value to customers while unlocking an additional source of ancillary revenue for the business.
What is “post-purchase” in the customer journey for ecommerce?
While it largely parallels the “traditional” customer journey, the ecommerce buying experience is different in a few key ways. For example, while the major stages essentially stay the same—awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy—the ecommerce post-purchase customer journey is often linear and consists of a series of decisions that are small yet significant. Many of these decisions occur on the thank you and confirmation screens.
Without optimizing the customer experience and personalizing the ecommerce buyer’s journey, companies overlook highly valuable opportunities for engagement—and risk missing out on additional ad revenue opportunities, like complementary offers and relevant, third-party ads. Many of these opportunities exist in what we call the Transaction Moment™, a unique aspect of the ecommerce customer’s journey.
What is the Transaction Moment?
The Transaction Moment is a series of four customer touchpoints that occur as an order is finalized and paid for: the cart, payment, thank you, and confirmation screens.
The Transaction Moment represents an excellent opportunity for companies to generate “win-win” scenarios with their customers. That’s because customers have indicated that they are ready to buy, and are committed to their purchase. It follows, then, that they are feeling positively about your brand, products, or services. It also means they are more likely to be receptive toward additional offers on the cart, payment, thank you, and confirmation pages—leading to added value for the customer as well as ancillary revenue for the business.
Of course, just throwing additional offers at customers isn’t a great strategy—and if you do it too much, customers will lose trust in your business. If you can serve up the best offers at the best time, though, you can consistently generate additional revenue, whether through internal or third-party offers.
The more relevant the offers, the more likely they are to succeed. But without the right data, predicting which offers are most likely to convert can be incredibly difficult. Rokt’s AI-powered platform makes relevance easy by helping ecommerce companies use what they already know about their customers (i.e., first-party data) to predict the most relevant offers, taking much of the guesswork out of post-purchase marketing. What’s more, Rokt also connects buyers with offers from a diverse network of third-party advertisers and ecommerce brands.
What is a post-purchase example behavior?
In addition to taking advantage of complementary offers, other examples of a customer’s post-purchase behavior include writing reviews, sharing their experience on social media, and joining customer loyalty programs. By taking any of these actions, customers communicate positive messages about your brand. Optimizing the post-purchase phase of their buying journey can enhance their advocacy of your brand.
Much of what we’re talking about here falls under the category of post-purchase evaluation: customers demonstrating how they feel about a particular brand, product/service, or transaction. What many companies don’t realize is the extent to which they can positively—or negatively—impact customers’ likelihood of leaving reviews or making additional purchases.
By optimizing the buying experience and checkout processes, for example, companies can demonstrate value to their customers in a way that encourages positive sentiment that often turns into repeat business. Inundating consumers with a wide range of irrelevant offers, by contrast, can have the opposite effect—turning customers off.
Why is post-purchase evaluation important?
The role of post-purchase evaluation in marketing success (and revenue growth) is difficult to overstate. When customers feel favorably about a brand, they tend to spend more. By actively soliciting feedback from customers, companies not only can ensure satisfaction with their purchase, but also generate loyalty, repeat business, and even turn certain customers into brand advocates.
What are the benefits of post-purchase services?
Depending on what the buying process for your customers looks like, post-purchase services (examples can include email confirmation and support, return and delivery services, and promotional offers) help maximize the value of each customer and transaction.
For example, say a new customer signs up for an online service. No matter how enthusiastic they may have been about their purchase, that enthusiasm quickly fades if they’re unable to easily access and configure those services. In this case, even a simple follow-up (like an informative “quick start” guide or post-purchase customer service email) can make a big difference in customer satisfaction and whether or not they do more business with you in the future.
Post-purchase services also benefit the ecommerce companies that provide them to their customers. For example, recommending additional offers—whether internal or related to a third-party—during the checkout process can be a great way to unlock ancillary revenue. It’s very important to note, though, that these offers have to be highly relevant and tailored to the individual customer.
For many companies, this means a process of trial-and-error to see which offers generate the most conversions. With a platform like Rokt, though, ecommerce companies can take their post-purchase marketing strategy to the next level by leveraging AI and their own first-party data to predict the most relevant offers for each customer and transaction, including curated offers from third-party advertisers and other ecommerce brands.
What is an example of a post-purchase marketing strategy?
One of the most impactful post-purchase marketing strategies involves getting hyper-relevant offers in front of customers during checkout when they are likely to be most receptive.
The extent to which an organization can engineer and optimize effective post-purchase marketing strategies depends on how well they understand their customers’ priorities and expectations, including their unique interests, tastes, and purchase behaviors.
This again underscores the importance of relevance—and the value of being able to derive insights from what ecommerce companies already know about their customers. In other words, data alone isn’t enough—ecommerce companies also need tools for translating their first-party data into AI-powered predictions of a customer’s next best action.
Rokt’s ecommerce platform empowers companies with the tools they need to transform their data into insights they can use to predict the best offers for each customer.
The ecommerce customer journey provides four key opportunities for companies to enhance the customer experience and generate additional, incremental revenue. While the first two relate to the initial stages of the Transaction Moment, the last two center on its post-purchase component.
Here’s a general example of what the Transaction Moment and post-purchase experience might look like for an ecommerce company, and how they can enhance the customer experience while increasing potential revenue:
- Cart optimization: Once customers add products or services to their cart, the Transaction Moment is underway. The technology behind Rokt’s platform helps companies use AI and first-party data to predict the type of upsell or cross-sell offers that will resonate best with each customer.
As we’ve noted, relevance is the x-factor between post-purchase offers that are likely to convert vs. those that are less likely to perform. It also helps to mitigate the challenges presented by the paradox of choice, a phenomenon in which too many options results in the customer essentially making a non-decision by turning down all offers or having buyer’s remorse.
- Payment page monetization: Payment pages provide valuable, yet often overlooked, opportunities to generate ancillary, incremental revenue. Unfortunately for a vast number of companies, payment pages represent little more than cost centers. Rokt helps ecommerce businesses transform these into profit centers by providing customers with payment providers tailored to each individual (such as “buy-now-and-pay-later,” one-click, or digital wallet solutions).
Optimizing the payment page benefits customers (who can enjoy a seamless, uninterrupted buying experience) and companies (who can initiate new revenue streams by partnering with different payment providers).
- Thank you page opportunities: This is where the post-purchase experience technically begins. Showing appreciation to customers after they’ve made a purchase is an important, though sometimes overlooked, aspect of building productive, long-term relationships. Thank you pages also provide an additional opportunity for ecommerce companies to increase revenue on each transaction—through tailored upsells and cross-sells, for example.
- Confirmation page opportunities: Finally, confirmation pages provide great opportunities to promote additional offers, including relevant, third-party ads. Again, the key to success here is, without a doubt, relevance. Customers don’t want to be spammed with a high volume of irrelevant offers, but when they are provided with a much smaller set of unique offers that are closely related to their core transaction, the chances of conversion increase greatly.
Depending on the customer, the best confirmation page opportunities might also include non-endemic, third-party offers that are likely to resonate with customers based on their broader interests, past buying behavior, and other factors.
Rokt’s unique, AI-powered solution can empower your business to use actionable insights and create effective post-purchase marketing strategies for your business.
How does Rokt optimize the post-purchase experience?
Rokt Ecommerce helps ecommerce companies to better understand—and optimize—their customers’ post-purchase experiences by providing the types of actionable data and insights they simply can’t find elsewhere. In short, Rokt makes it much easier to…
Understand what customers want
Without an effective understanding of the type of buying experience customers want—and expect—it’s difficult to deliver effective solutions. A platform like Rokt helps you uncover new insights from your own data, enabling the kind of tailored and relevant experiences that can increase revenue and create advocacy. Specifically, our AI-powered platform helps you leverage these insights to predict the additional offers that will most likely resonate with each customer.
Unlock value for your customers and your business
Creating the best post-purchase experience possible for your customers amounts to a win-win for ecommerce companies and their customers. Customers benefit from a consistent and smooth experience across every touchpoint they have with your organization, including adding extra value to their core purchase. At the same time, when companies are empowered with the insights they need to optimize the Transaction Moment and post-purchase experience, they can unlock a valuable source of additional, incremental revenue through complementary offers and third-party advertisers.
Optimize the Transaction Moment
Contrary to what you might think, providing more options isn’t always best—not for customers or the companies that serve them. While it’s well-understood that customers expect relevant, tailored experiences with brands, providing them with too many choices can backfire (see: paradox of choice). From cart optimization and payment page monetization to thank you and confirmation page opportunities, Rokt helps companies create a more seamless, relevant customer experience throughout the Transaction Moment.
Explore Rokt and what we can do for you
One of the best ways to understand what Rokt can do for your business is to see how companies like yours have used it to elevate their post-purchase experience. On our website, you can view some customer examples and read in-depth case studies of what these companies have achieved.
You can also view our blog to learn more about topics like unlocking value in the Transaction Moment, the importance of relevance in the post-purchase experience, and so much more. Finally, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to our expert team directly.