The 3‑Email Post‑Purchase Flow That Builds Lifelong Customers

Retention Begins at Checkout

One of the biggest mistakes I see brands make is treating the customer journey as if it ends at the checkout. But in reality, this is exactly where retention begins.

Over the past few years, my team and I have generated over $50 million in email-attributed revenue. And one thing I can tell you for certain is this: the best brands don't just market better, they educate better. And that's exactly the topic of this video: the post-purchase flow.

The best brands help customers get the most out of their purchase, answer questions before they're asked, reduce buyer's remorse, and build trust from day one. That's exactly what a great post-purchase flow is designed to do. So, in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how we build one.

Keep the Post-Purchase Flow Simple

All right, so I'm just logging into one of my actual clients' post-purchase flows that we've built out. And I can tell you that for 99% of brands out there, you really don't need to overcomplicate this. You can keep it super simple.

The one point I want to drive home in this video is the post-purchase flow should not try to sell more products and aggressively upsell, cross-sell, or downsell. You really just want to make sure they actually get a good experience with the product.

Of course, our goal as email marketers and retention experts is to increase repeat purchases and lifetime value over time. But the way we do that is not by aggressively selling. We actually want to make sure they enjoy their product and get the full experience out of it. And that's going to give us the best likelihood that they actually come back and buy again.

So, I want to give you context to the post-purchase flow and the psychology behind it, why we build it the way we do. We want to keep it super simple. This is a pretty simple flow for a smaller seven-figure brand. And like I said, it's going to work for the majority of you guys listening to this.

Flow Filters and Reviews

We want to have a simple trigger. If anybody's placed an order since starting this flow, we want them to be filtered out. So, we want to set the profile filters to “Placed order zero times since starting this flow.”

I also want to give context to this video. For this brand, we already have a third-party reviews system in place. So, we're not going to go over reviews in this, but reviews are an essential part of the post-purchase journey.

Whether you're using a reviews platform like Reviews.io or Smile or something like that, you should implement it in some part of the customer life cycle journey. It doesn't necessarily have to be in your Klaviyo account, but it's very important.

Email One: Thank Customers Based on Their Purchase History

The main thing here is we want to separate customers that are first-time, existing, or super loyal. And we've done that with three separate emails that all basically say the same thing.

For our new customer journey, we're actually going to go into it right here. This type of email is sent out to any customer who is making a purchase for the first time.

One of the main points here, because they're a first-time customer, is we want to, of course, give them their order back to them. Say, “Hey, thanks for purchasing this.” We want to confirm it, just give them that certainty.

We also want to welcome them to the community. This is the first time that they've bought something from the brand. Now they're a part of the brand itself, and we want to make them feel at home.

So, just sending an email something like this. We want to send them a heartfelt note from the founders, and then they can actually view their order if they click.

Now, if they've placed a second order, you could just do two or more over all time. I like to do two and three-plus, just because if they've made three separate orders, we know that they're probably going to make another one. Really, getting from one to two is a lot harder than it is to go from two to three.

So, if they've placed two orders exactly over all time, then we want to send them this sort of email. Again, very simple, guys. This is not meant to convert. It's really just to thank them. In this one, we want to welcome them back and really thank them again for where they're headed next in their journey.

Again, same type of idea. We really want to drive home the fact that we are grateful to have them coming back to the brand. Have some sort of button here where they can actually go back and see their order. This is going to be really important.

Once I exit out of here, if they're a super loyal customer, same sort of idea. We just want to send them another simple email: “Thanks again for your order. We love seeing your name in the community.”

This email goes out to people who have been very loyal customers. Once again, we're not trying to convert them. Even though we know they're probably going to come back again, there's no point in trying to drive a sale when they just placed an order.

Please don't highlight bestsellers or anything like that. We really only want to thank them. Again, simple kind of message. They can view their order over here.

Timing and the Role of Sales Emails

Now, after this, we put a split here for 15 minutes. It doesn't have to be immediate. Anytime within the first four hours is good. But I like to do it sooner rather than later, just so they know they got their order.

Keep in mind, they're already going to be getting an immediate email from Shopify as well with their actual product details. So, we don't want to overwhelm them. Anytime between 15 minutes to four hours, in that threshold, is good.

Now, for the real retention types of emails, we only have two for this. And I'm telling you, that's all you need.

If you're a more advanced brand or you have a lot more customers entering your post-purchase flow, you can experiment with cross-sells. We don't have it in this flow specifically, but cross-sells, upsells, downsells—they are a good idea, but within context, right? We don't want to just be upselling and cross-selling everybody.

So, you should always have one standardized post-purchase flow. And the main goal here is just to build trust and reduce buyer's remorse.

Email Two: Educate and Build Purchase Confidence

All right, so email number two: they've already made their purchase. Now we're just trying to reduce their buyer's remorse, build a bit of trust. We really still don't want to be selling here. Keep in mind, they just placed an order. So, it's not important to already be pushing cross-sells, downsells, upsells, and so forth.

We want to just make their experience better with their product already. We want to educate them a little bit on how to use it and give them some feedback on what the product itself could be made of—anything that could give them a bit more insight into making their experience better.

With this email in particular, this is for a footwear brand. Our header here is “Made with purpose,” and we're actually going to show the client inside of the email what the product is made of.

We're going to scroll down a little bit here. We have a good image of the shoes themselves, what kind of materials they're made of, what those materials actually represent. And then we have reviews as well, how other people enjoy their experience with that product. Again, this is all to just give them more confidence with their purchase.

Email Three: Recommend Similar Products After They've Had Time to Use Their Purchase

And then email number three. This is where we actually want to delay quite a bit of time. It could be anywhere from seven days after, but we want to do it 30 days after for this brand in particular because we want to make sure they've already gotten their product and they've had some time, a few weeks, to actually use it. And for this footwear client, actually walk in their shoes as well.

With this client in particular, now they've already experienced their product, they've walked a little bit. Now we can actually start maybe recommending similar products. But 30 days is about the earliest I'd recommend doing so, unless you've already run some tests for something specific.

Our headline for this one is something along the lines of “Ready for what's next,” or “Here's some of our newer arrivals.” Here's something similar to what you purchased in the past. Now that we have context over what types of products they already like, we can actually recommend similar ones.

Again, we want to not be super salesy here. But if they do happen to be interested, they like their product, this is the hottest time that we could start recommending them similar products.

In this email in particular, we recommended different collections that are available on the site. And if they like them, it's very easy for them to just click here and explore. By this time as well, they should have already left a review.

Recommend New Products After a Review

Don't recommend new products until they've already reviewed their most recent purchase.

And honestly, guys, that is the post-purchase flow. Three emails. Nothing more complicated than that. Again, you can have a bit more nuance and segmentation and conditional splits with regards to upsells and cross-sells, but it's not mandatory.

Build Trust, Not Just Conversions

Keep in mind, your campaigns are going to be doing most of the selling. Post-purchase flows are not meant for conversion. They're meant for building trust. And once that trust is built, then they buy through other campaigns or other higher-intent automations that you already have set up.

So just keep in mind: post-purchase, building trust. Campaigns and abandonment flows, that's more for conversions.

Getting Leads to Their First Checkout

And so this is for when somebody completes their checkout. But if you want to learn how to actually get somebody to the checkout in the first place, I made this welcome series video right over here that shows exactly how to take your new lead from start to finish so that they can get into the post-purchase sequence in the first place.

Check that out if you're interested. And if you like the video, please subscribe and like it down below. Thanks so much, and I'll see you in the next…