Post-Purchase Messaging with Baking Steel

06/23/21 • 48 min

If you have optimized your online shopping cart and the checkout page is seemingly flawless, you might assume little or nothing else remains for improving the customer purchase experience.

Not so. The best ecommerce merchants know the experience doesn’t stop when an order is placed. They nurture that customer relationship beyond checkout.

One of the most successful—yet typically underutilized—vehicles for doing so is the post-purchase email. This message type converts at 18%. That’s a 180% lift over the average promotional email.

They’re useful for keeping customers content when orders are delayed, as Craig Hastings of Baking Steel has discovered.

As culinary director and Baking Steel’s go-to marketer, Hastings established a series of emails delivered after anyone buys the company’s hallmark product, a steel pizza stone. He later created versions for both griddle and accessory customers.

Hastings explains how the series helped customers bide their time during the height of the Covid pandemic, when demand from stay-at-home cooks outstripped product supply and created backorders of six to eight weeks. He discloses the types of content the series employs to espouse the notion of treating customers like family, and why authentic content of good quality is important.

Lucas Walker, ecommerce veteran, also shares his views on why the post-purchase message might be the funnest of automations for email marketers.

We contemplate the following questions about post-purchase emails:

Why is post-purchase messaging our podcast host’s favorite automation type to discuss?
Should the message be aimed at driving sales, or is it more about reinforcing the brand?
Why should you consider lacing in an affiliate partner?
What makes for a great post-purchase message?
What do merchants overlook when crafting a post-purchase message?
How can post-purchase messages prompt better customer service?

About the guests:

Craig Hastings, Culinary Director and Marketer, Baking Steel

https://www.BakingSteel.com

When Hastings isn’t developing recipes at Baking Steel, he’s involved with email marketing, product fulfillment, and other fun endeavors to keep customers happy. His culinary background includes working for famed chefs James Beard, as well as Tony Maws of Craigie on Main. Hastings is the founder of Served Meals, a non-profit organization in Massachusetts serving food-insecure people while slowing the amount of food waste in the world.

Lucas Walker, Founder, Rolled Up

https://www.Rolledup.io

Walker is a serial entrepreneur. He has started three successful businesses in the software, ecommerce and media spaces. Lucas’ experience also includes marketing for an internationally-recognized sales trainer, where he launched the Make It Happen Mondays podcast, oversaw partners around the world, and reviewed over 10,000 ecommerce websites.

If you have optimized your online shopping cart and the checkout page is seemingly flawless, you might assume little or nothing else remains for improving the customer purchase experience.

Not so. The best ecommerce merchants know the experience doesn’t stop when an order is placed. They nurture that customer relationship beyond checkout.

One of the most successful—yet typically underutilized—vehicles for doing so is the post-purchase email. This message type converts at 18%. That’s a 180% lift over the average promotional email.

They’re useful for keeping customers content when orders are delayed, as Craig Hastings of Baking Steel has discovered.

Lucas Walker, ecommerce veteran, also shares his views on why the post-purchase message might be the funnest of automations for email marketers.

We contemplate the following questions about post-purchase emails:

Why is post-purchase messaging our podcast host’s favorite automation type to discuss?
Should the message be aimed at driving sales, or is it more about reinforcing the brand?
Why should you consider lacing in an affiliate partner?
What makes for a great post-purchase message?
What do merchants overlook when crafting a post-purchase message?
How can post-purchase messages prompt better customer service?

About the guests:

Craig Hastings, Culinary Director and Marketer, Baking Steel

https://www.BakingSteel.com

Lucas Walker, Founder, Rolled Up

https://www.Rolledup.io

Previous Episode

iOS 15 and Its Impact on Email Marketing

Apple has shaken the email marketing world with the announcement of its iOS 15 update, anticipated to roll out this fall.

The topic is taking over all marketing industry channels, with lots of discussion about the new privacy feature’s impact, including our new hub, www.OpensAreDead.com. It’s so important that it has interrupted our regularly scheduled podcast series on marketing automation.

The primary question up for debate: What are the repercussions when Apple Mail app users can block brands from seeing whether they opened their email?

The general consensus is that opens are dead. Even though not everyone uses iOS or their email app, it’s a large enough segment for which open rate data will disappear. Losing even partial data makes the rest unreliable for making informed marketing decisions.

Open rates have long stood as one barometer of an email marketing program’s success. While we don’t know all the implications of this change, we do know that marketers need to shift focus to what is most important in connecting with and engaging their customers.

Here are some questions we cover in this special podcast episode:

What do we know about the iOS 15 changes?
What is still uncertain?
What should email marketers start doing today to prepare for this change?
What are the must-have metrics for analyzing performance?
How can you boost the likelihood that subscribers will open your email?
What are the best means for ensuring marketing is relevant to the subscriber, and therefore turns a profit?

About The Guest:

Lucas Walker, Founder, Rolled Up Podcast Network

Walker is a serial entrepreneur. He has started three successful businesses in the software, ecommerce and media spaces. Walker’s experience also includes marketing for an internationally-recognized sales trainer, where he launched the Make It Happen Mondays podcast, oversaw partners around the world, and reviewed over 10,000 ecommerce websites.

Next Episode

Lapsed-Purchase Messaging with Naked & Famous

On the surface, the term “lapsed buyer” seems relatively straightforward.

But the concept turns a little murky when giving thought to what it really means.

First off, there are any number of reasons that someone has not purchased from your brand in a while. The customer might not be ready. They could have had a bad experience. Perhaps something changed in their life and your product has lost relevancy.

And defining the moment of transition to the “lapsed” side is debatable, too.

Despite all nuances, email marketers should not ignore these customers. Messages targeted at lapsed purchasers experienced a click-through rate of 13% last year, accompanied by a 21% conversion rate.

Naked & Famous Denim is one such company that employs lapsed-purchase email automation. The company’s chief denim otaku, Bahzad Trinos, shares the strategy behind these emails, which are sent to customers who often go a year before buying again. Denim enthusiasts are encouraged to wear the high-end jeans day after day, without washing in between, until the fabric molds to their liking.

Though Trinos doesn’t expect repeat purchases within a certain period of time, he sees value in engaging and maintaining an open line of communication. The three-part series produces a 16% conversion rate. The revenue-per-email (RPE) lift ranges from 580% to 793% over typical promotional emails.

He talks through his approach, which includes gathering customer feedback and utilizing Omnisend’s product recommender. Also joining the show are this season’s podcast co-pilot, Lucas Walker, and an Omnisend customer success manager who discusses her process for steering clients through creating the lapsed purchase series.

We dig into a number of questions about lapsed purchase email automations:

How do you determine when a buyer becomes a lapsed purchaser?
When is the right time to send a lapsed purchase message?
What is the one element you should incorporate to prevent subscribers from tagging you as spam?
How do you decide on the right content for a series, especially if you don’t know the reason for a customer’s inactivity?
Why is it advantageous to ease in with a customer feedback slant?
Is it better to create a multi-message series one email at a time, or all at once?

About the Guests

Bahzad Trinos, Chief Denim Otaku, Naked & Famous Denim

Trinos is obsessed with fabric, its history, how it’s made, and the way it ages. As the company’s first employee, he has been instrumental in its evolution every step of the way. Trinos serves as general manager, develops the product collection, and leads the company’s branding and marketing efforts.

Danielle Heck, Senior Customer Success Manager, Omnisend

With experience in digital and email marketing, Heck’s key focus is on providing excellent customer service and proactive communication to her clients. She loves analyzing her customers’ business strategies and progress to help them realize their marketing goals and gain the most out of Omnisend.

Lucas Walker, Founder, Rolled Up Podcast Network