Post-Purchase Emails: How to Keep Clients Coming Back

Breanna Owen (00:00)
Let’s talk about churn, baby. Let’s talk about you and me. Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be. Let’s talk about churn. Let’s talk about churn.

you’re welcome for that earworm by the way. churn by definition is to agitate or to stir specifically like a liquid violently. churning milk into butter, this violent agitation, often without care. And it can even be like producing something quickly automatically or in large

Quantities and just like really going at it,

this sense of in and out and in and out. And in the process something new is being made, especially something wonderful and yummy and delicious, like butter. and yet somehow in the business

context when we think about churn, we really are just focused on the out of things and not the the in in addition.

butter deserved better. I wanted to talk about churn today, not necessarily butter specifically, but churn as a whole.

And really that in and outness of clients, customers, maybe even employees coming and going in your business. there is so much for us as business owners and what we can do to really navigate this. to be clear, a hundred percent retention is not the goal here. Clients, customers, employees.

They all leave for a variety of reasons. you are not meant to serve everyone, you are not meant to serve everyone all the time. sometimes there is a season of how long you work with a client. And also, as somebody who worked with mortgage lenders and real estate agents for over eight years, I am very familiar with the fact that not all

businesses not all business structures or even how you work with your people is conducive to the idea of working with the same client month after month or year after year

I know that the client reviews, the testimonials, the referrals, like those are still important for businesses, no matter how long or short their client journey, their client experience is.

And maybe you can’t work with a client in the exact same way again and again and again. But after they do one thing with you, do you have other services? Do you have other products? Do you have other options for them that would be a good next step or a good continued step with you? Because like there are things that we can do. using that mortgage lender experience, after somebody buys a home, they’re not gonna buy a home again a year later.

Not likely, right? ⁓ but what about refinancing? What about second home loans? There are other things that you can do and you can offer and you can support them with or their people, their network of people with, And so you want to be the one that they think of when it comes time for them to do something else or when it comes time to refer you out to their people. I have said it before.

I will say it a million more times. There is no one right way to do email marketing, but there is your right way to do email marketing. So I really encourage you to take this idea and this concept that we’re gonna get into today and really think about how it could best fit your business, your product or service, your people. One of the perks of being in my position, from seeing things from my point of view, around email marketing in particular.

being this methodical strategist that I am is I see how people be overcomplicating the ish out of email. it doesn’t it doesn’t have to be this way. Like we can let it be simple. We can let it be easy. And it’s really fun for me to break it down and uncomplicate things with you. So let’s get into that, yeah?

I heard a few weeks ago on a call and can I just say hindsight’s twenty twenty, if I could go back and be off camera for this moment, I would. Because

my audio may have been muted, ⁓ but my face wasn’t. And the subtitles on my face are loud.

and that was that customer retention is the new customer acquisition. Client retention is the new client acquisition.

Did you hear it? Did you hear my eyes roll in the back of my head? respectfully, no, no, there is nothing new about client retention

Being essential for businesses even over client acquisition. Keeping your existing clients has always been easier and faster and more cost-effective than trying to go out and find and nurture and convert new clients. This is not a plot twist. This this is not like a hot new take. This is not like breaking news by any stretch of the imagination. This is

Just business. This is just how business works,

I can feel myself getting riled up again even just talking about it. this is part of the reason why it baffles me so much in the world of email marketing and email automations, how much airtime the welcome sequence gets of things. Like 95.3% of the time when people are talking about email sequences, we are thinking of or referencing welcome sequences in particular.

It it’s it’s dang near close to the top of that acquisition journey and experience. Meanwhile, post purchase email sequences are like the queen of retention. And all she gets is a is a cute little asterisk

It’s like if email sequences were a group project, the post purchase sequence is doing all the work while the welcome sequence is taking all the credit. And I say this with love. This is not a hate on welcome sequence episode, I promise.

I’ve actually decided to do a full episode on each of the email sequences that are essential for businesses. And so welcome sequence is gonna get her moment. She’s going to have her airtime. We are going to love on her and talk about her. But that is not this episode. This episode is going to give credit where credit is due. We are going to give the the full most expensive bouquet of flowers to post-purchase email sequence.

because she’s the queen for a reason. I wanna get into like what this really is and why it matters more than businesses might realize. and specifically how leveraging and implementing a post-purchase email sequence in your business can help reduce churn without making your life harder.

So if we look at the numbers, on one side we have new leads. These are people who have never bought from you, they have never worked with you, at least not yet.

these people are just like new to your world. new leads convert at five to twenty percent on a good day.

5 to 20%. On the other hand, we have your past clients, people who have said yes to you, they’ve experienced your work, they got good results, they love you, right? Those people, are 60 to 70% likely to buy from you again if they’re given the opportunity. Also, completely related and entirely relevant. Did you know that it costs five times more to a ⁓

Acquire a new client than it costs to keep an existing one? Money, yes, but also five times the time, five times the energy, five times the other resources. People be out there spending five times the money chasing people who convert at maybe 20% on a good day.

while ignoring this entire group of people who are just right there who are already sixty to seventy percent likely to say yes to you again. Make it make sense, friends. Make it make sense. But all of this really hinges on one word. it’s like those two worms in in the movie Hercules. If

If is such a crucial point here. They are sixty to seventy percent likely to hire you again if they are given the opportunity to do so. And something else that I think is important to note about churn before I I get too far down the the path of this post purchase email sequence is the fact that there’s not one single moment that determines client retention versus client churn. There might be a breaking point, sure.

Of like, all right, that’s it, I’ve had it, I’m not doing this anymore, I’m out of here, peace out, bye Felicia. But especially when it comes to keeping and retaining clients, it’s a compilation of moments and experiences that really all compound together your entire customer journey impacts retention or churn. And so with that said.

If you have this Amaze Balls client journey experience, if you are doing all of the right things along the way and you don’t show them how to keep working with you at the end of the day, they’re they’re gone. They don’t know how to come back.

So your client journey process is is critical. Don’t get me wrong here, but the post-purchase journey sequence is really where it all comes together and it points back to how to keep working with you. This is especially important for established business owners who are wanting to grow and scale your business. This is the very first place I look at and the very first emails that I set up.

if I were your email strategist and you are an established business owner. And this is for every industry, no matter the business size, no matter the type of offer that you have. a few weeks ago I gave a workshop on this for my local chamber of commerce and I demonstrated this idea through a

completely fictitious story involving a woman named Sarah, her accidental love of gummy worms, and in really like this tale of two candy stores. So for the sake of trying to keep this episode short, I’m gonna give you the cliff notes version of this story, but I do think it helps be able to take this intangible thing like a post-purchase email sequence and really give it a tangible point of reference. So here we go.

This is a story about a woman named Sarah. and if you grew up making up choreography to early two thousands pop music like I did and just heard me say that in Brittany’s voice and you were like, I thought this was gonna be a story about a girl named Lucky. I’m so glad you’re here because you are my people. we belong together.

back to Sarah. And the gist of it is that Sarah’s going on this work trip. She needs to fly on an airplane, but Sarah also has real high flight anxiety. And she ends up coming

these articles, these research that says that sour candy can help

relieve acute anxiety in the moment. And she’s willing to try anything at this point. So on her way to the airport, she stops by a candy shop. She gets two bags of sour gummy worms, one for the flight there and one for the the flight home, right? Sarah ⁓ had a really great flight, it turns out.

You know, she has spent her whole life loving chocolate and peanut butter, and she was not expecting to love gummy worms as much as she did.

flavor, the chew, the sour, like the fact that it gave her something to look at at thirty thousand feet ⁓ in the air, and for once she did not spend her whole flight head deep into a brown paper bag. she was a convert to the gummy candies and she didn’t really see that coming.

Like after after she lands, she’s even like sends a picture of the empty candy wrapper and texts it to her sister and was just like, my gosh best flight ever, thanks to these guys, and then like keeps going. She gets in her lift and is on her way from the airport to the hotel and she’s checking her inbox and she sees an email from the candy shop.

That was probably sent while she was up in the air and on air airplane mode,

But they sent a confirmation email like, Thank you so much for shopping with us. There was an exclamation point that was doing a whole lot of heavy lifting. Sarah appreciated the effort, she noted it, she moved on and was like reading the next emails in her inbox. A couple weeks later, she is checking her inbox again and she sees another email from this store.

And it’s just like saying, Hey, we’ve got a twenty percent off this weekend only. come in and stock up on more candy or whatever. She kind of like mentally noted it, thought about going back in. but life got busy and she had things to do that weekend. Maybe a few garage sales to to shop at, some plants to attend to in her garden. We don’t know. All we know is that Sarah

Forgot and she did not end up going and shopping at that 20% off sale. So a few months go by, and Sarah has another work trip coming up. Same anxiety, same kind of situation. she ends up stopping at a different candy shop on her way to the airport to run in and grab a couple of bags of gummy worms.

And so what’s interesting is how here is Sarah in the exact same situation, wanting the exact same product and just ended up at a different store. shop A has spent so much time trying to bring in new people and is so focused on the new clients coming in that they

didn’t put a ton of effort or energy into really maintaining the relationship of the people that they did have. They they kind of saw that point of purchase as as the finish line, like, ⁓ happily ever after, and out goes our client through the the revolving door out into the streets, the end the roll credits end scene type of a thing, when their focus is on that that acquisition.

and not on the retention, then when it comes time for Sarah to need the same thing again, she ends up going somewhere else and not really thinking like twice about it.

So as I was going down this little rabbit hole digging into churn and what is it and the origins of using this word and why do we use this word in particular and also craving all the things with butter at the same time I was thinking about like what if the key to less churn in your business is actually by leaning into the churn.

And by having more churn. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but if you have five percent churn month over month, after twelve months of a five percent churn every month, you are sitting at like fifty six percent of your clients are remaining.

you lose a little bit every time. Well, that little bit really, really adds up. And so I was just like, gosh, what if we need more churn in our businesses in in our email sequences and when it comes to nurturing our clients? Specifically, what if we celebrate the client? highlight the path forward? What if we are up leveling the experience? What if we are re-leveling?

booking with ease. What if we are nurturing long term here? Now we’re we’re taking this thing that used to be this violent, aggressive

approach that’s taken without care and we are adding in some intention and purpose and care to it. each of the five stages will have its own job. And when they’re all working together, your post purchase sequence in particular is doing what either attempts to get done manually or is kind of done on the surface level but not really intentionally.

We want to be staying connected and following up and making sure that our best leads, the people that we’ve already worked with, are not falling through the cracks. And again, this is going to cut down so much, not just on the the finances that you spend on acquiring new clients, but also the time and the energy I mean, let’s just say 50%, right? Like I know the data says 60 to 70 percent of the people who have hired you before will

rehire you again if they’re given the opportunity. let’s just go with simple math. Let’s just look at fifty percent. If fifty percent of the people who worked with you last year were to rehire you this year, or if that is not realistic for your business structure, what if fifty percent of them referred you out and those people hired you again this year? All without you having to go out and

find those new clients, what would that do for your business?

What would that do for your life? What would that do for for your clients, right? I think I mentioned I did this as A live training. And I do bring this to teens and communities if that is something that you might be interested in, and we can really hot seat what what each level of churn.

could mean and could what look like in an email sequence for your business. We walk through each stage of the the framework together. I have some key questions to think about and consider and then people walk away with really like their sequences kind of outlined and mapped out. So if that is something that sounds useful to you, keep this in mind. reach out to me. But let’s go back to Sarah for a hot second,

So far, what we have are two very similar experiences. Sarah needs gummy worms, she buys gummy worms, she leaves the store. This candy store sends a confirmation email afterwards. But now here’s where shop B kind of takes it in a different direction. we’ll walk through the five stages of churn as we go through this. So shop B also sent a confirmation email, but this one was a little, it was a little cheeky. It stood out a little bit.

it made Sarah feel like it was okay. It validated her experience of buying candy for an emotional support reason What shop B did here was celebrate Sarah, their customer.

And not just themselves and the fact that Sarah purchased from them. So we have C in celebrating the customer. Let’s say a few days later, Sarah gets another email. And this one has like a subject line that’s like, How many days does it take to go through a bag of candy? Because Shop B has done the math and their average customer finishes a bag of candy in about two and a half days.

Which meant that Sarah was probably getting pretty close if it her bag wasn’t empty already. And in that email, it mentions our very scientific data shows that about two and a half days, ⁓ you’re gonna be sitting on an empty bag of candy, and we can’t have that. And so here are some other flavors, some other types of candies that you might.

like and also by the way if you click here these are available for pickup or we can ship them straight to your door so this is an example of highlighting that path forward because people have already said yes right the client has already done the thing they’ve already bought the thing they don’t know what else is possible they don’t know what else they need and they don’t know that you can provide it or what you can provide and so we want to make this next step forward

easy and obvious. Like this is not this is not pushy. This is generous. they they loved it. Why wouldn’t they want more? It’s like when I go to my hairdresser and I get a haircut, I am scheduling the next appointment while I’m there. it is not good for either of us if I leave and then leave it up to myself to try to r to reschedule later. Like I don’t. I will forget. So just give them that clear path forward

early on so they know what’s available to them and they can say yes when they are fresh on the my gosh, that was amazing. I want more. So let’s say a week later, Sarah gets another email. and this one, because Sarah’s opened enough of these emails to be like, these are different, these are fun. what’s this one gonna say? She opens it and she gets there’s like this whole allure. And again, in person I have the email.

actually kind of laid out and it’s really fun to dig into. There’s this whole like lore and drama on the battle between green apple versus watermelon as the top flavors of of candy.

it gives it gives her a poll and was like, All right, so where do you stand on this? Click to vote. I just wanna mention the fact that I did this training, on like a Tuesday morning and I think it was Thursday afternoon I was getting my kindergartner off the bus

His bus driver was handing out these blow pop suckers to really celebrate the end of the school year, So he gets off the bus and goes to hand hand these suckers to me though, and I kid you not, like I I have the receipts. I have the photos, I will show this. the two flavors of blue pop that he handed me were watermelon and green apple. I I about died, okay? This was so funny to me.

and just had to share that moment with you. But back to the story. a week later, she gets another email and it’s like, Hey, here are three dessert rep recipes that feature popular candies from the shop. and Sarah happens to have like a potluck at work coming up. So she sends this email to her coworker Cindy and is like, Hey, this is this is the one I’m bringing on Friday.

And this just really gives us an example of what it could look like to really up level this experience of providing value in a way that is micro, it’s small. Nobody really expects it, but people are gonna remember it. They’re gonna pay attention to it. These are delightful touches that really make your clients feel seen. Those are the emails they forward. These are the things that they talk about and they share.

shot B is for short, sending an email that’s asking for a review. And it’s doing so in a way, especially like after they’ve built a little bit of a relationship and a little bit of experience with Sarah, that makes it so that when she sees this request, she’s like, Hell yeah, I’m gonna leave five stars. mention how the gummy worms are her new like flight BFF and she’s gonna mean every word. So we have

have also like the R in churn can stand for referral just

As much as it can stand for rebooking. Because the thing with rebooking is that your people want to say yes to you. the biggest barrier, the biggest obstacle stopping people from saying yes to working with you again is is not a lack of it’s lack of access, my friend. these people trust you, they like you, they know what it’s like to work with you, they know what to expect from you, but they don’t know what comes next.

They don’t know what goes best with the thing that they already have. if we’re going to assume anything, let’s just assume that they want to say yes to you. They need a reason. They need a clear path forward. They need to know where it is they’re going again. They need that permission to say yes.

And then when we think about the N of the nurture long term, the biggest thing that I see is how short sighted business owners can be, especially with their client journey emails and their their post purchase emails in particular. they think, you know, post purchase is a week, maybe a month after we’re done working together. And I’m I’m saying think bigger.

Think think longer here. What does it look like to reach out to them in three months, in six months, and twelve months after your project has has worked out? What can you be saying to them? how can you be connecting with them? What value can you be offering them and showing up for them with even at that point? But like, do you feel the difference between shop A and shop B approach? shop A, saw the point of purchase.

As the finish line. boom, shakalaka, we got it. Thank you. Next. Whereas shop B was like, okay, we did the hard part, which was getting her in here, making her want to pick up the bag of candy, buying the bag of candy. That was the hardest thing we can do. Now let’s build on this. momentum, baby. let’s go.

They took this process and they transformed Sarah from being a one time customer into a loyal fan with immense lifetime value. Now, unless it’s the rarest coincidence of all time, and if so, I definitely need you to reach out and tell me, okay? But my guess is you’re not a candy shop business owner who sells gummy worms. if that is true, I need to know because this is amazing and we belong together.

My guess is though that you have a service-based business or a digital product. Maybe you do sell physical products, but they’re a higher end to purchase than a five dollar bag of candy. this is that point where please do not overcomplicate this. pause for a second, just a millisecond, and consider this process and this idea. Because

one could argue that shop A technically had a post purchase system in place. They sent a confirmation email, they they followed up with Sarah afterwards and was like, Hey, twenty percent off sale, come on in. you’ve you also noticed it was not a very effective post purchase email sequence. and so maybe you do have technically a post purchase sequence in place.

An email or two maybe even more than two, that is going out and connecting and nurturing your people after they have worked with you, after the project is finished, after they have bought the thing, depending on what your client journey looks like. And so my question for you is just how is it going for you? Is it getting you the results that you want? Because if not

that is the sign to really look at. Okay, how can you actually lean into the churn to the celebrate, to the up-level, yada yada yada, for your emails and your post-purchase sequence. Now, to make these emails even more effective and relevant, we can look at your human design chart or your business design chart.

depending on on which energy you you go with. for like the what’s and the hows it all comes together for you in your post purchase email sequence specifically. You know, your energy type is gonna tell us your overall general approach. Are you responding? Are you initiating? Are you asking for the invitation? Are you being a builder and a doer? Are you being the guide,

Your profile line is really gonna highlight how you best add value and continue to show up for your people. And knowing what your ideal audience is craving from you helps too. Like a five one client of mine who has an ideal audience that are two lines and four lines, they are gonna use their post-purchase email sequence to provide tangible, practical reminders for their people that that specifically point their people to being able to

really develop their relationships and and their connections and and hone ⁓ their own talents and crafts, right? Like for their clients, of their readers. when we know your motivation, that really helps us know what flavor of of why that we’re working with here. Like why do your people want it? Why should they

keep going with you or come back to you or share your info or leave the review or share the testimony, Now I know, I know exactly what you need. ⁓ but I also know that it can feel like there’s so much that you could say or share or do and it’s just like you feel like the options can kind of be endless. Which is exactly why using your human design chart to

Guide us and and narrow down what is going to be the easiest, what is going to be the most natural for you and for your business, but also what is going to be the most well received by your people comes in real clutch for us here. because then your post purchase sequence really is just built once. It’s running on repeat in the background and it’s doing the work whether you are on or off, whether you’re in a season of high output.

and a lot of client work or if you’re in a season of of rest. Maybe you’re on summer sabbatical with your kids. I don’t know your life. But the easiest revenue you will ever earn is going to be from someone who has already said yes to you. And I feel like this is where we get the phrase like you’re leaving money on the table. Because right now most of that revenue potential and opportunity is just it it is yours for the taking. It’s just kind of sitting there.

These are seriously my my favorite emails to talk about. And if you run or lead a community or if you’re part of a community of business owners who would be interested in this whole training, please reach out to me and let’s connect on that. I would love to do this for you and bring this to you. we actually look at the

emails of what shop A and shop B send and and we map it out and we hot see what this could look like. if you’re wanting to more fully like flesh out what this post purchase sequence could look like in your business, I definitely want you to schedule a one on one session with me, okay?

In about sixty minutes, we can have these emails, these ideas, these topics

this content mapped out for you so that you know what to send and

all of it is working with how your business is wired to connect convert and nurture your people.

My email as well as the link to book that one-on-one call is in the show notes. So go take a look and go own your mark.