One thing we have learned from our recent clients is that you can very successfully sell a lot of products, but still be leaving a LOT of money on the table. Why? All because they had no customer follow up. Someone would buy the product – and that would be it – next!

Fortunately, when those clients came to us to fix that issue, they very much came to the right place. Why? Because Meredith is a certified Active Campaign Consultant, and Active Campaign is the perfect tool to automate customer follow up – especially where many products are sold via some sort of e-commerce platform.

So why does that customer follow up make such a difference to a businesses bottom line?

So, for example, we have a client that sells flavored olive oil sourced from particular olive producers.  The olive oil comes in fairly small bottles, when compared to supermarket brands, and she has calculated from customers experiences that one bottle usually lasts for about one month. 

So her first message is “Hey, what did you think of the olive oil? Here’s a little bit about me and my olive farmers (it helps them feel good about the product choice they made), and while you are at it, if you would like to send an invitation for a friend to try it, here’s a 50% off coupon for them.  It is a nice, customer-focused message – any customer would feel good about receiving that message.

A follow-on message might be “Hey, here’s my favorite salad dressing recipe for the oil flavor you purchased), again, this is where conditional content can vary depending on what they purchased) – AND which might include a particular mozarella cheese for which there is an affiliate partnership, so she is making money on that too.

Then, about week three, you send a message saying “Hey, hope you enjoyed the olive oil – are you ready for your next bottle yet – here’s a coupon for your next bottle?”

So even though it is an automated email sequence, because it is based on the specific product that they purchased, it feels very personal.

You can then go on to get deeper to learn more about the customer by asking questions in the message – “Are you using the olive oil mainly to dip?  For salad dressings? Or for cooking? Each question might be linked to an appropriate recipe and by clicking on a particular link they can go into a new sequence that  is more specific to that choice. So if they click on the salad recipe link they get more content pertaining to salad dressing recipes. So the next message in the sequence might be “Hey, I know you can create some great salad dressings with {product they purchased }  but you might be interested in this new flavor which makes some great salad dressings as well.

This kind of sequence is not something you build all at once and then you are done – it is something that is built over time from customer date and experiences with your products. But it will certainly create more upsell opportunities and repeat business by using such sequences = more revenue = more growth.

Similarly, another client had built up a huge following for her training video series on career advancement. She had 80,000 followers on LinkedIn and her e-commerce website was getting 3000 unique visitors per month. She was making good money, but she had no customer follow up and so she was leaving huge amounts of money on the table. We are still working with this client, but as soon as we have a case study to show you we will. But this is an ideal client for the capabilities of a tool like Active Campaign where you can automate so much of the customer experience – and where an investment of $10k can bring returns of 10x that – every year.

Whether is nurture sequences to encourage people to buy, or customer follow up sequences encouraging people to buy again, maintaining contact over time, in a very personal way helps you build your customer base over time. So if you have an e-commerce business that has the traffic and is selling the products – but doesn’t have a customer follow up sequence – then you need to talk to us. You are leaving a lot of money on the table!

Want to see if you are leaving money on the table?  Sign up for our free funnel mini-audit