Turning Post Purchase into Ongoing Acquisition
In our 2023 recap report, which reviewed over 3,000 KNO surveys with more than 44,000,000 responses, we found: 61.3% of consumers reported taking longer than a week to make their first purchase after discovering a product or brand. This long consideration period is why we suggest viewing the point of purchase as the start of a new chapter in the customer’s relationship with a brand, not the final page.
Consideration times often exceed initial expectations, prompting the need for a strategic approach to post-purchase engagement. There’s a symbiotic relationship between customer retention and customer experience (CX). Understanding how to leverage this relationship is key to maximizing the potential of your current customer base.
The post-purchase experience serves as a pivotal opportunity to not only enhance customer satisfaction but also to amplify brand awareness and drive growth across various marketing channels. By strategically crafting survey questions with clear next steps for buyers to re-engage, you can effectively turn the linear buyer’s journey into a dynamic flywheel of ongoing acquisition. In other words, you need to make the most out of the customers you do have.
Strategic Questions on the Post-Purchase Page
When setting up post-purchase surveys, it’s important to ask questions that lead to actionable insights, rather than just interesting questions. For example, asking “do you like your brand? Yes or no” might sound interesting, but what are you going to do with that data?
Breaking down questions by purpose, audience, and product is essential.
- Purpose – attribution, product development, audience building, brand expansion, etc.
- Audience – new vs. returning customers
- Product – all products, sale-specific, bundles, product-specific
Check out our 200+ post-purchase survey questions by vertical here!
By aligning survey questions with strategic objectives and tailoring them to the diverse needs of the audience, you’re able to gather actionable insights that drive informed decision-making and foster continuous improvement in the post-purchase customer journey.
When it comes to checking in with customers after they make a purchase, Woobles knows how to ask the right questions. They make sure every question in their surveys gives them useful info they can actually use. This is crucial for quarterly post-purchase survey analysis, where charts and data reveal trends and insights, leading to actionable items for different team members.
“One interesting example that comes to mind is how we used data to make a difference. Last year, we weren’t launching many licensed products, which are collaborations with well-known brands like Warner Brothers and Harry Potter. We wanted to understand if people were buying these products because they liked the brand or because they were already customers interested in our new offerings.” — The Woobles’
To investigate, they added a question to their post-purchase survey. Surprisingly, for one of the licensed launches last year, over half of the customers who bought the products were not aware of the brand beforehand. This data helped demonstrate to other brands the power of their platform.
“Rather than just showcasing our social media following or marketing efforts, this statistic highlighted the immediate impact and reach of our brand, making it a simple yet highly effective way to demonstrate our brand power to potential partners.”
Integration of Re-Acquisition Channels
End the survey with an integration of re-acquisition channels by adding a call-to-action at the end of the survey for the customer to re-engage somehow. Referrals, mobile outreach, email/SMS campaigns, loyalty initiatives, Facebook communities, Trustpilot reviews, social media interactions, and Disco widget integration are all compelling calls-to-action that foster continuous customer engagement, and nurture brand relationships.
Because Kno gets a 45% average response rate on its surveys, it’s the perfect place to encourage a lot of high-intent traffic to complete an “action,” such as referring a friend, joining a Facebook community or for Only Curls, pushing new and repeat customers to download their app. And it worked — with Kno, they drove an extra 1k clicks to their download page in 2 months. These are 1k customers that can now use the Tapcart mobile app to re-order and have a deeper relationship with Only Curls.
Let’s bring it all together…
Now that you’ve gathered the data and identified new acquisition channels, the next step is to assess the effectiveness of your existing marketing and advertising channels to determine where you should allocate more resources.
Consider your current investments, such as TV commercials. Simply asking your audience who has seen these commercials can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of this channel for acquisition, allowing you to compare it with other paid methods.
It’s important to note that analysis goes beyond response rates and considers factors such as order value. Orders of different values are weighted accordingly, ensuring a more nuanced understanding of channel effectiveness.
Maximizing your current customer base requires understanding the symbiotic relationship between customer retention and CX. Focus on optimizing effective channels and leveraging available customer data from post-purchase surveys. This ensures you make the most of your resources, driving growth and fostering lasting relationships with your customers.
Be sure to check out our ebook, “Beyond the Checkout: Viewing Customer Retention as Ongoing Acquisition.”
Packed with 70+ pages of tactical advice and insights from our favorite partners like Triple Whale, Ad Beacon, Stamped, Replo (and a whole lot more!).