Where Most Brands Fail - New Customer Journeys

How to 5X Your Return on New Customers

In the 12 years I have been working with brands, I have found only two ways to grow you online business:

1. Increase the number of orders your existing customers are making. 
2. Increase the number of new customers you are getting. 

Today, I’m going to show you how I have helped dozens of brands 5X their sales by establishing customer journeys. Best part, these are all automations, meaning they are set and forget. Oh, and I’m going to do it in under 5 minutes. 

Let’s jump into it. 

Overview:

In my experience, most brands do a decent job with maintaining their existing customers, but where they really fall off is with how they handle their new customers. 

Basically, brands I work with will run campaigns pulling in new customers but once the purchase is made, they stop communicating with this customer. The journey ends there. 

This is a huge mistake – Why?

1) One of the most expensive costs a brand has is new customer acquisition
2) One of the cheapest ways to increase sales is by increasing AOV and CLV of existing customers. 
3) Most of this can be automated so it only requires work upfront. 

So, I’m going to walk you through exactly how I handle new customer journeys and break down exactly how I do this with my clients. Consider these three categories:

Pre-Delivery:

Hot Audience:

Warm Audience:

Note:

If you want a document that outlines everything I do for clients, you can download at the link below. 

Also, everything I am going to discuss here has to do with customer tagging and email and SMS automations. I have created separate posts entirely dedicated to explaining how I do this and how it works along with recommended applications.

Pre-Delivery:

Initial Email:

First, I always send a nice email right after their initial purchase to get customers excited about their order. I show reviews of the product/service. I provide them with tracking information for their shipment. I make them feel confident and excited about their purchase. 

Order Shipped:

Next, I always send an email that lets customers know their order is on the way. This reduces the anxiety of new customers. This is built into stores like Shopify. 

Order Delivered:

Lastly, I always include an email that notifies customers that their order has been delivered. Again, this is built into stores like Shopify automatically. 

Hot Audience:

 

Now that our new customer has the product, my second-order clock is ticking. At this point, my main objective is now to increase CLV. 

At this point I need to determine a rough timeline on when it is appropriate to first touch base with the customer. With my clients, if the product is a consumable, I may create a tighter timeline than say something that is a seasonal product. On average, this is roughly 90 days.  

Regardless of when you initiate, I have at least 15 touch points with consumers after their initial purchase. Not 5, not 10 but at least 15. I have had clients with 50 touch points, and I have had clients with 15. It all depends on the philosophy of the brand and the value of the customer. 

I provide these touch points this through email, SMS and social advertising. I always recommend providing steep discounts and offers in these automations. Securing the second sale is hugely important. My objective is to try and recoup as much of the customer acquisition cost as possible. 

Warm Audience:

As with most of the marketing and advertising I do, I always have a last chance plan built in. And new customer journeys are not excluded. 

Via automatic tagging, I group all of my new customers who have not converted within that established timeline (for example 90 days). At this point, I kick all of these customers into a separate “last chance” audience. 

Now, these customers are getting emails at least twice a month every month for one year. Yes, one year.  This will be in addition to every email that regularly goes out. 

With this audience, I know I am staying top of mind regardless of why they didn't make a second purchase. 

Conclusion:

And that’s it, this is the exact way I handle new customer journeys for my clients. Obviously, there is a lot to discuss as far as creative, copy, discounts, etc. But all that is brand specific;  your focus should be on setting up these automations and creating the rest around your brand. 

Keep in mind that, all these recommendations rely on customer tagging and softwares that have automations. So be sure to watch my other video on how I set up tagging for customer journeys. 

See you in a week.