Three Tactics to Capture More Reorders
As an ecommerce operator, it’s a great feeling when you see orders piling up from first time purchasers. This indicates that you have gotten over the hump and convinced site visitors that your product has enough value to them for them to spend their hard-earned money on it. However, it’s very costly to build a sustainable business based only on first-time purchasers because acquiring new customers is expensive and time consuming.
A study from Bain & Company indicated that just a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75%. Knowing this, it is imperative that you find a way to convert these one-time purchasers into repeat purchasers. If you are able to do this, you will be able to build the foundation for a lasting business that puts less stress on your customer acquisition funnel while growing your business profitably.
Aside from having a great product and memorable customer experience, you must ensure that you have the right tools in place to capture and drive repeat orders for your business. Not sure what the right tools and tactics are to do this? Read on to learn three tactics that you can implement on your store to capture more reorders in an effort to drive greater profitability and growth.
Set up Automations to capture reorders
Whether you use Klaviyo or another email service provider (ESP), it’s simple to set up the proper automations and tooling to regularly drive repeat purchases. These automations will allow you to automatically deploy messages (either through email or SMS) to first-time purchasers after a defined period of time in an attempt to try to get them to purchase again.
Depending on what type of product you are selling, the time frame to ask first-time purchasers for a reorder may be a month or may be a few months. It’s important to dig into your order metrics to get an understanding of how often customers are reordering products from you so you can get a sense as to what the proper cadence should be in asking for a reorder. Once you have an understanding of what the correct cadence is, simply build out an automation that sells the benefits of your product or service to the first-time buyer. Just because they have already purchased from you once does not mean that they have to purchase from you again, so remember to once again sell the “why” to these first-time purchasers.
Pay careful attention to engagement metrics of this automation to ensure that you are seeing first-time purchasers place reorders with you. Remember that it’s ok to tweak the copy, imagery and the cadence of this automation and that you should be optimizing this automation for sales, not anything else.
Offer incentives for first time purchasers to purchase again
While many brands focus on getting a first-time purchaser to convert with your brand, it’s ok to leverage some of the same tactics that you take to get first-time purchasers to convert into a repeat customer. When thinking through some of the tactics that you may employ to get a one-time buyer to convert into a repeat buyer, keep in mind that it costs 16x more to build a long-term relationship with a new customer compared to keeping an existing one. In other words, it’s ok to offer a discount (i.e. $10 off your second order) to one-time buyers because a $10 off deal will be as much as 16x less than going out and trying to find a net new customer.
And once a customer purchases from you twice, they will be starting to form a habit of shopping with your brand which is a foundational element towards building a lasting brand. Ideas of types of incentives that you can offer one-time purchasers in an attempt to get them to become regular “repeat” customers include:
- 20% off your second order
- Buy for a second time and take $15 off your third offer
- Get a free gift with your first reorder
These incentives are designed to start to build a habit of repeat purchases from your one-time purchasers that drive brand loyalty and set up your brand for lasting success.
Make it easy to capture reorders in a single click
When a customer is logged into their account in your Shopify store, they see a list of their previous orders. While this is a great way for a customer to see their previous orders, it provides little value other than a “history” of their orders.
Make this section more valuable for both you and your customers by making the section valuable. Upscribe has a reorder feature that makes it simple to add a reorder button underneath the customers previous orders. So when a customer with a profile with your Shopify store is logged into their account they can easily place a reorder in a single click.
Doing this will lower the bar for you to turn more first-time and one-time purchasers into repeat customers. As a brand, you want to remove as much friction as possible for customers to purchase from you on your site; regardless as to whether or not they are first-time or repeat customers and by enabling a reorder button on your “my account” page you will be doing just that.
It may seem simple, but being able to sustainably capture reorders is the key to unlocking sustained success in ecommerce. Of course, your product or service is paramount to the success of this, but if you have a good product and do not have the above mechanisms in place to drive repeat purchases you will be holding back your company from growing.
Are you interested in learning more about how Upscribe can help you capture more reorders for your business? Schedule a demo here.
