If you sell online with your website, you know that once you have a customer, the real money is in helping that customer find more ways to spend money with you, over and over.
And most savvy online businesses have an upsell sequence built into their purchase process, which is great. But what happens once…
a customer has paid. How do you get them to buy from you again, and again?
Here’s what typically happens.
A customer comes to your website, buys whatever you sell, and then you hope and pray they like the product enough to come back.
But in my experience hoping and praying for repeat sales don’t do much.
It’s not your fault. It’s not because you aren’t delivering a great product or service.
The problem is, that without a reminder from you, people forget, even if they loved whatever they bought from you. It happens to me all the time.
Here it is a week before Christmas and I still have some shopping to do, and I haven’t even gotten an email note from the place I usually order coffee cakes from. It’s like they don’t care or even want my business – which I know isn’t the case.
The key of course is to have a proven strategy, ideally one that makes the customer feel special and is automated, to generate repeat sales.
Which is exactly what Zappos does. See the following email, below, they sent my wife today.
Subject: Your 1-year-old Not Your Daughters Jeans Sarah Boot Leg Classic Overdye
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Dear Sue,
One year ago, you ordered the following product from Zappos.com:
Not Your Daughters Jeans Sarah Boot Leg Classic Overdye – Black –
We wanted to let you know that right now, your size is still available from Zappos.com. You can order the same product again by visiting:? (and their link to the product page)
Or, if you’d like to view our entire Not Your Daughters Jeans collection, please visit:? (and their link to the product collection page)
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How clever is that?!
Just a simple reminder, a year later when the pants she ordered are starting to wear out, to pick up another pair.
And even though it’s automated, it’s personalized.
The key, of course, to making money, whatever you sell, isn’t the first sale, but the second and third, etc – the repeat sales.
Just copy the Zappos email idea and you could easily be making more money too.
Charlie
