5 Ways to Thank Your Customers with Autoresponders

Cha-Ching! You’ve made a sale and now you have a customer. But until you get him or her to come back and buy again, it’s just a one-off transaction. To win repeat business and build a customer base, you’ll have to start focusing on the other side of your sales funnel: the post-purchase experience.

Then and only then are you actually considering the entire customer journey, which by all accounts, is the true path to business success and real growth.

Here are 5 tips for cultivating a good relationship with your customers using autoresponders, the marketer’s best friend.

1. The “Thank You for Buying” Email

This is the first type of thank you that comes to mind when most people think about customer retention. You’re grateful for a purchase, so why not express it, right? But don’t forget the customer experience isn’t over yet, once the purchase has been made.

You want more sales, so coddle that customer relationship with the utmost in care, and you might just win yourself some loyal customers who might even someday become brand ambassadors for your business.

Notice the list of targeted items

2. The “Thank You For Signing Up” Email

Any time a customer or prospect takes the initiative to make contact with you is another opportunity for you to spread joy and delight. There’s the obvious method: the thank you email, which we discussed just above.

Then there’s the signup email, which is equally important. In both cases, your response can make or break the customer relationship. Therefore, try and avoid the temptation of using defaults or templates.

Since signing up for the email is often the first contact a prospect makes with your business, it’s important to get this one right. To that end, here are a few pointers:

• Be sure to convey a sense of “welcome.”
• Personalize it with your own name.
• Be sure to convey a sense that they now belong to a community or some inner circle revolving around your business.
• Make sure your branding is at the forefront of your mind when writing your emails. That way, you convey a consistent and memorable experience across all your marketing channels.

Now, for an example. This is for a fictional business called Foxy Firsts:

Hi, I’m Amy. Let me be the first to welcome you to Foxy Firsts, a dynamic community of marketers from around the world, all of whom have one thing in common: a passionate desire to expand their minds and learn better marketing techniques!

Looking for ideas? Click to find out what your peers are up to today.

3. The “Thank You For Sharing” Email

Many business owners who run great blogs forget that when readers share their content, there’s another opportunity to say “thank you.” You’re most likely using sharing buttons and widgets to run the social sharing aspects of your website. However, even those that come with an on-page thank you feature built in won’t serve you as well as a good email will.

Email your appreciation for sharing your content and spreading the world about your business. This is yet another authentic touch-point that can make a huge difference when it comes to building relationships with prospects and customers. A few pointers…

• Be specific: if they shared your content on Facebook, mention that. If they retweeted something on Twitter, mention that too.
• Let them know what, exactly, you’re thanking them for: being helpful, reading your blog, spreading the word, etc.

Here’s a good example:

Hey, I noticed you liked my page on Facebook recently. I’m just writing to say thank you and how much I appreciate that!

4. The “Thank You for Looking” Email

This is the baby cousin of the “Thank you for your purchase” email. Your target hasn’t completed a purchase, but they’re more than halfway down the pathway towards doing so. This is your chance to jump in there and thank them just for browsing.

Sometimes these emails are called “abandoned shopping cart emails,” but whatever you call them, the objective is the same: close that sale. Here are a few pointers:

1. Personalize the email with customer shopping data.
2. Add an enticement for them to complete the purchase.
3. Make it easy for them to complete the purchase.

And, to those ends, here’s an example:

Did you forget something? I noticed you left something in your cart. To help you finish your shopping, here’s a handy discount code for 10% off your entire order… just because we think you’re great! Thanks for shopping with us.

5. The “Thank You For Your Gift” Email

This last “thank you” email idea isn’t one that you’d immediately think of to write, since it doesn’t seem to actually involve a situation where you feel thankful at all. It’s when a customer complains.

But for every customer who complains, there are a couple dozen behind the scenes who feel the same way but who never say a word. Instead of complaining to you about their gripe with your shopping cart, your shipping terms, or the way your product images get rendered on their mobile screen, those silent non-complainers simply leave your site and shop elsewhere.

Therefore, that one complainer has actually done you a favor by alerting you to the fact that your website is driving away customers. Therefore, you should send him a thank you email. Here are a few tips for doing so:

• Acknowledge receipt of the complaint.
• Assure the target that you take his complaint seriously.
• Assure him that you’re going to look into the problem and try and fix it.
• Then, thank him for helping you make the shopping experience better and for helping you serve him better.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve got the idea on some of the many ways you can thank your prospects and customers, it’s time to get motivated and start writing your own. Have fun with it, get started today, and build your loyal fan base, one email at a time.

Author: Ben Shepardson is the founder of NoStop Content, a boutique writing agency focusing on helping small business clients take their websites to the next level. From social media topics to articles on niche industry issues, NoStop’s articles are written with style, attention to detail, and with the client’s audience in mind.