EU241: Replay: Building Customer Relationships and Product Consumption Campaigns

eCommerce Uncensored - Email Marketing | Facebook Ads | Social Media Marketing

Black Friday & Cyber Monday are over, don’t let your relationship with your customers stop there! They guys break down a simple way to stay connected with your customers, bring your average order value up, improve your customers lifetime value, and make sure your customers are consuming your product the way it is intended to be!

This is a direct transcript. Please forgive any grammar or spelling errors.

Kevin: Hey everyone. And thanks for joining us on another episode of Ecommerce Uncensored is episode number 172. My name’s Kevin Monell and I’m here with

Jason: Jason Caruso.

Kevin: I’m feeling pretty positive about our situation at this point, Jason things are starting to open back up. Homeschooling is over, which was a huge hurdle for us. Uh, I’m feeling, I’m seeing a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel with all this stuff. Yeah.

Jason: And we’re planning on going back in the office

Kevin: and among any yeah. And then we have July right after 4th of July weekend. Right? That’s exciting. Couple of days a week, I think at the office, it’ll be nice to get out back with our team. So I’m pretty excited. I’m excited too.

Jason: And I got to get the hell out of this house.

Kevin: Well, you just got there. It’s a brand new house. Yeah. Is it the people in the house or is it the house?

Jason:It’s just the inability to get away.

Kevin: Yeah, I understand. So today’s episode, we’re going to talk about something, you know, we talk about acquiring customers. We talk about Facebook ads. We talk about email. I think one thing that we might not talk about as much is, um, after you get a customer creating relationships with them. And communicating with them via email, because that could be a really important part to keep, you know, the long-term goals in mind of your business and, and consumption.

Jason: Like how do you get people to use your product? That’s a big part of it, right? Because if they’re not using your product, then they’re not going to order it. And that’s what the whole point of this is, right. Is to get lifetime customers. Um, you know, w we’re going to talk a lot about some of, some of the things that we’ve done, um, but you know, I found that getting people or people need that extra little push to start using whatever it is they buy from you. And that makes all the difference. I mean, whether it’s cosmetics or, um, you know, software or whatever, you know, that that onboarding process or that consumption process is

Kevin: huge. So that’s pretty cool as well.

Jason: Yeah. And I came, I don’t know about you. One thing I’m looking forward to with this podcast is doing it in person because. I’m the iMac. It’s so hard to look at the camera at the top. And like, I’m looking down, I like the screen, but I’m not looking

Kevin: at you. Yeah. I feel the same thing going on. I do the same thing with V when I try to do those little, uh, selfie videos, when I rewatched them, I’m never looking at the camera it’s so, because of the

Jason: camera is up. Like kind of high looking down,
Kevin: I guess if you put the camera, like the video up to the top, middle of the screen, it’ll at least get closer. Cause you’ll be looking at me at least.

Jason: Um, I don’t know how to change the video

Kevin: if you just like move the window around until it’s at the top middle of the screen. I don’t know. Anyway, so yeah, so this customer relationship stuff, and this is a big thing that Klaviyo is always talking about, and that’s basically what their whole conference was about last year. And I think it’s so important that after you get that first sale, you realize that it doesn’t stop. Not only because of the revenue that can continue through a customer’s relationship. Like Jason said, it’s like the actual using of your product.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, we, we found with like our clients for sure. Um, you know, we had Kevin that client that we did like the mask for, we, I had a client, I used to work for a company who, um, had this like. This CAD software that you would download, and then it was kind of interesting. Um, the CAD software, you would download it, you would create your part in the CAD software, and then you would place the order through the software. And we would get thousands of thousands of people downloading it, but then like we wouldn’t, we would get like, let’s say a couple hundred people buying, like, you know,

Kevin: it wasn’t the software free.

Jason: Yeah. The software was free. Exactly. So, um, we were like, what do we do? Because if you’re getting like tens of thousands of people downloading a software and the only getting a hundred orders or whatever, there’s something, you know, there’s a disconnect somewhere. So what we did was we created like this post purchase consumption. Type email flow. And what that meant was that like the first email would thank them for downloading it, of course, and give them the link. And then the rest of them would, the rest of the emails would take them through a process that showed them exactly how to use it and then exactly how to place the order. I think sometimes we forget that people don’t love our product as much as we do. You know, I think about this a lot, Kevin, with the journal. Like, I’m always thinking that people are in there. Like I am, I’m always looking at it. I’m always thinking about it. And the truth is that’s not how, you know, people work. I mean, you know, number one, if you’re buying a product for $20 may not care about that product that much.

Kevin: Right. Yeah, I think that, I think that’s a big part of it too, to, to your free software example is like, whenever you give away something for free, it doesn’t really have any perceived value until you give them a reason to give it to them. We have a supplement company that we’ve been running a promotion for that gives you a free bottle of this. Um, it’s actually a really cool product that, uh, brings the color back to your gray hair. And it really works, but they want to work what would work for me. And I don’t think so. Maybe in your beard it’ll act, if you have gray hair in your beard, I think it works and it doesn’t look like you do though. No, very, very little, but I gave it to my dad, but he might, he might’ve been too far past. He, I don’t think it’s really working for him, but you know, personally like me, forties, fifties, you know, anyway, Besides the point. But anyway, um, this isn’t a commercial for that product, but they wanted to really push the product and they wanted it to get out to the world because no one really knew about it. So they wanted to offer a free bottle of it to every purchase, uh, that came in on the website and we sent to them and we’re like, if you give it away for free, that’s great. It’s good. We’ll get it into people’s hands. But once they get it, they’ll be like, okay, I got this thing for free. What do I do with it first off and do I really care about it in the first place? So that’s where in that post-purchase educational series can come in place and really be a valuable part of the process, not just giving a product away for free. And the same thing goes for your free software, same thing.

Jason: Yeah. And I’ll tell you what, man, as soon as we, we implemented these, these consumption type flows. We saw sales completely skyrocket. I mean, and we just made us realize that so many people didn’t know how to use the software and the owner of the company, you know, just assumed that everyone loved his software like he did, and just understood how to use it. And the truth was most people didn’t. Um, and I think that goes for a lot of products out there. I mean, if you buy, like, you know, you’re talking about the product for the gray hair, like, you know, I don’t know how often I should use it. I don’t know if it really works. Maybe you should show me some testimonials. Maybe you should show me, tell me how often I should use it. You know, how much, how many, you know, whatever. I mean, if it’s something you have to apply, how often do I apply it? How often do I do whatever. Taking people through this process will ensure that they actually use your product and they will use it the right way and they won’t get frustrated and they’ll come back for more. So that’s a big thing that I think that a lot of people forget about. Um, I’m sure a lot of people listening to this. Um, may have heard this before. I mean, we have a lot of loyal listeners and we’ve talked about this, but this is a good refresher for those of you who, you know, may have just forgotten the importance of it, because it really does or can change everything. Um, Kevin, I mean, I can’t tell you how many emails I’m getting, you know, just people thanking us for sending these emails for the journal of. Not even like asking him for anything, just saying, oh, thank you for this tip. This is really helpful. Oh, thank you for that. This is really helpful. That kind of thing.

Kevin: And it makes them feel good. And when the time comes for them to buy again, when we offer them something else, they’re more likely to buy. And to your point about the journal, you know, and how people don’t necessarily care about it, the way we do in that sense, you know, we just spent a lot of time improving, you know, the product, you know, we added a new level of, uh, another way to, for people to consume the journal. So we thought it was. It’s an awesome way to look. When we look at it, we’re like, oh, this is awesome. But like, does do our customers really care about it? Do they even know how to use it the right way? And that’s when like yesterday Jason, you had, you know, decided to really just create a quick video. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m really excited to send it out and teach everybody.

Jason: Yeah, I put it in the, I put it in the dashboard. So basically what I was doing is like, we we’ve done a lot of work on creating different formats for the journal. Right. It’s a digital journal that historically. Um, has been just downloadable as a PDF and that’s great. You know, people can view it anywhere without internet or whatever, but there are some people who like to read things like a book, or they like to consume things like articles, online articles, and we didn’t have that those options. And our team has been working really hard. To make that happen. And we finally did, and I put those various formats in the dashboard of the membership, and I just assume that people were going to use it, but I don’t know if they did so yesterday I’m sitting around and I’m like, you know, why don’t we just create a video, explaining these things, explaining where to use them, how to use them, what our plans are. And I did, and I, I put it in the dashboard and I’ll send that over to you Kev so that you can check it out. And, um, we’ll email.

Kevin: Yeah. I mean, we announced it a little bit, but again, it doesn’t really matter that much to anybody

Jason: announcing it and actually showing them how it’s used. I think are two different things. I mean, I actually go through like the interactive version. I showed them how they can search for a term. I showed them how they can, um, make it larger and make the text larger, actually show them all that.

Kevin: Oh, that’s really cool. And we do get people who. You know, request refunds sometimes. And I think that that’s a good point, too. We have a client that has a pretty substantial refund issue with one of their products. And it’s because it’s, it’s like a revolutionary product it’s new to the market. People don’t know exactly what it is. It’s kind of like a. Well, it’s a Revair. Right? We talked about it. We had Kim from Revair on our podcast a couple of months ago. And she talked about her process. Go check out that episode. It was really cool. I don’t know what episode number it is, but, um, everybody should know that. I feel like I listened to podcasts and people just recite what maybe cause they’re more planned out than we are, but they just know what episode numbers things are. It says it’s his hair product. That’s like, doesn’t blow dry your hair. It actually sucks it in like a vacuum, um, and dries and straightens it that way. And for somebody getting this device, it’s not a cheap device. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s like three, $400. And when you get this big box, it can be very overwhelming when you get it. And you’re like, okay. What do I do with this thing? That’s when the post-purchase consumption emails can come in huge because they can kind of walk them through the process and make sure that they use it correctly, because I’m sure that our customer service line deals with a lot of people who want to send it back or aren’t happy with it just because they’re not using it correctly.

Jason: Right. They don’t know how to use it. They don’t know what the benefits are. They don’t know any of that stuff.

Kevin: Yeah. So we recently just created like a 15 email long post purchase flow that they get emails every single day. It starts out by welcoming them, welcoming them to their community, how to use it when to use. Uh, So you know, success stories. And then we begin to also, you know, within the mix, obviously we start to introduce other products, too, you know, cause this is their main one product. They may not know that they even offer these other products that worked with at work really well with the main product. So you begin to introduce those, you ask them if they have any problems, you send them really quick links to support lines or frequently asked questions. You kind of like. You know, and, and this is something that we’re going through the journal. You, you try to catch them before they actually reach out to you and say they have a problem. And you try to answer their questions with emails.

Jason: You like 99% of the people that email us about a refund is because they, they were too, they were frustrated because they couldn’t figure out how to get the past issues. Yeah. And just something that simple, you know, people don’t really pay attention. Like you think.

Kevin: And maybe this email is the start of just like this video that you did is just, maybe we should do like what we’re saying. And post-purchase a specific show.

Jason: I think we should come up with videos, like a video series that shows them how to look around and how to find things. And, um,

Kevin: Yeah, maybe I’ll do that. I like the retention, especially when you’re working with a membership, a situation like we are a yearly membership. You want to make sure as many people as you can, you can retain them. You’re going to naturally lose people who just aren’t that interested, but you got to hold onto those people through the These processes like this, to keep them on board, to show them that you’re continuing to make new shit and you’re improving what you already have and things like that.

Jason: Yeah. And most of the time when you tell people, or when you take the time to help them, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll save them, you know?

Kevin: Yeah. And sometimes we deal with it with, with just our business sometimes like they, people just want to, they feel like they. I need to give you their money. Cause as like a thank you for giving them all that information, you know what I mean? We have, I had a guy who was really

Jason: pissed and he he’s like, I want my money back, yada, yada, yada. And then all I did was like, I took a screenshot screenshot of the website. I’m like, dude, like, this is what it says. And he wrote back, he he’s like, oh my fault. I missed. And then I’ll keep the membership like, so a lot of times just people not realizing. What’s there or what, what what’s supposed to happen. Just taking them through that process can make really

Kevin: awesome. And I think most of it’s because we just take it for granted. Like we see it, we know how to use it. We just figure people will figure it out. You know, even this product does Revair product. It goes with like a really nice instruction manual, but. For me, you know how I am with instruction manuals. They’re just like, I’ll just start putting the pieces together myself, not even look at the instruction manual. Right. But if I get an email every day after I buy it, that’s when I start to consume. Right.

Jason: Yeah, definitely
works.

Kevin: Works well. Cool. , Jay.

Jason: I’m good, man. I mean these little things make all the, make all the difference. I mean, we. Um, you know, I don’t know if any, one of these things are like groundbreaking, but as they add up, right. You know, they equal, um, something big and we’re, we’re seeing that. We see it with our, with our own products. We’re seeing that with our client’s stuff. Um, you know, it’s not just one thing that’s gonna make you successful, it’s doing a bunch of little things that add up, and this is one of those things you don’t think about just making it easy for people to consume your product. And it’s big.

Kevin: Yeah. Right on man. And we haven’t yet we haven’t mentioned our Facebook group in a while, either go over to ecommerceuncensored.com/facebook. You know, we want to hear from you guys and it’s a good way for. Everybody to interact. It’s really cool. So go check that out as well. All right. Cool. This has been episode 172 as always. You can check us out at ecommerceuncensored.com. Talk to you guys real soon

Jason: later.

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The post EU241: Replay: Building Customer Relationships and Product Consumption Campaigns appeared first on eCommerce Uncensored.