Chapter 9: Nurture Your Customers Post-Purchase

Congratulations! You’ve converted a browser into a customer.

Most people have their standard order and shipping confirmation emails set up, but don’t miss this opportunity to nurture these new customers with a post-purchase email flow. This post-purchase flow helps humanize your business, establishes trust, and shows you value your customers.

The basic post-purchase flow should be sent within the first few days after purchase and include one or more of the following email types:

• Thank You
• Product Instructions
• Review Request (**note, you’ll only send a review request via Klaviyo if you aren’t already using another service to collect reviews, like Stamped, etc)
• Referral Request
• Cross-sell

Post-Purchase Email: Transactional

Whether someone is subscribed to your marketing or not, they will receive your transactional emails (order confirmation, shipping, delivery).

If Shopify is automatically sending out these transactional emails, make sure to take into consideration the timing for those emails as you’re building your post-purchase flow to avoid bombarding your customer with too many emails on the same day, and to ensure the customer actually receives the product before you introduce how to use it or ask for a review.

One common mistake we see is not customizing your transactional emails with your tone and branding (logo, font, colors, etc). This is done within Shopify and improves the customer experience by creating consistency across all communication.

Post-Purchase Email: Thank You

The first email that will likely be included in your Klaviyo post-purchase flow is the Thank You email. This should go out immediately after purchase. Thank your customer for their purchase and welcome them to your brand. Avoid pushing additional sales or pushing your loyalty program. You can do that later in the flow, but for now, just show appreciation.

Post-Purchase Email: Instructions

Delay this next email to arrive after the product has arrived and give them 1-2 days to open it up. Then, provide instruction and how to set up or use the product. You can split your Post-Purchase flow based on different SKUs if you have some products that need direction, or differing direction, than others.

Post-Purchase Email: Review Request

Reviews are so important to encourage prospective buyers to purchase. Whether you set up a review flow within Klaviyo or use a service like Judge.me, Stamped.io, etc., you definitely want to make sure you’re collecting customer reviews.

Post-Purchase Email: Loyalty Program/Referral

In addition to collecting reviews, your Post-Purchase flow is a great place to get referrals. If you’re using something like Smile.io or another referral software, you can trigger this email to send once someone has given you a positive review (positive reviews are more likely to recommend you to a friend). You can also bulk send this to everyone during your post-purchase flow, but data shows that more targeted emails are going to perform better, so finding some way to send this email to only your top customers is the best practice.

Check out some plain text email examples from one member’s Smile campaign.

Post-Purchase Email: Cross-Sell

If someone has purchased from you once, there is a good chance they’ll purchase from you again. Set up a cross-sell email in this flow to encourage the customer to buy a companion product, or even more of the same (if you have additional flavors/colors, this can work particularly well). You can also send an email that includes your most popular products, and use Klaviyo’s smart codes to exclude a product someone has already purchased.

For more advanced users, you can create a whole flow dedicated solely to cross-sells or up-sells, which you can learn more about here.

Post-Purchase Email Bonus: Collect UGC

Misumi skincare has a fantastic post-purchase sequence, and these two emails are particularly good. The customer receives the first email 3 days after purchase and it tells them to take their before photo in preparation for product arrival. It doesn’t ask them to send in their photo yet, but it’s prepping them for later on, when they can send in their before and after photo for a chance to win a year’s supply of product. I envision later in the flow there is a follow up with a reminder to send in their photo.

The second email is delivered 5 days after delivery and asks for a product selfie, again with an incentive of a $300 gift card.

There is a ton of opportunity for other brands to replicate this. Even with a smaller incentive, this could be a great way to capture UGC, as well as build a stronger relationship with your customers.

Boosting up your Post-Purchase Flow

If you already have a basic post-purchase flow running, here are some ways to amplify it:

• Add a conditional split to send different emails to people who have purchased from you more than 1 time
• Add a trigger split for high-value carts to send them different communication and perhaps welcome them into your VIP segment