383. 3 Places Revenue is Hiding in Your Customer List

Welcome to the eCommerce Badassery podcast, the place for scrappy entrepreneurs who want to learn actionable steps and strategies to grow the traffic, sales, and profit in your eCommerce business. I'm your host, Jessica Totillo-Coster, a 20-year retail veteran and former brick and mortar boutique owner who spent three years as the only employee of a seven-figure online store. That shit was crazy. I know exactly how it feels to do all the things and I'm sharing everything I learned the hard way so you don't have to.

I may have started this business by accident, but supporting badass bosses like you lights me the fuck up and I am so stoked to see you grow. Are you ready, babe? Let's roll. Welcome back to the eCommerce Badassery podcast.

I'm your host, Jessica Dottillo-Coster. I'm excited today to bring you a little sneak peek of some of the content that's shared in the SIP magazine. That's an exclusive monthly magazine for lounge members. In last month's issue, I talked about six different places to find revenue you already have in your business that you might not be tapping into.

If you're a longtime listener of the podcast, this might sound familiar because I did a similar episode about the money hiding in your back end operations. That's episode 365 if you want to take a listen. But what we're going to cover today is more about your marketing strategy and where you're allocating your efforts. Because when it comes to growing your e-commerce business, while the majority of stores out there and clients I work with do need more traffic, that's not the only way to grow.

So today I'm going to share three specific places where revenue is waiting for you from customers you already have and give you a super actionable email marketing strategy you can use to reactivate them. Number one are first time buyers who still haven't come back to make their second purchase. Getting the first purchase from someone in your e-commerce store is typically the most difficult because it requires building trust not only as a company, but that the product you sell is going to be the right one for them.

So when you do finally get that first purchase from someone, that is a really great sign and something you should celebrate. But if you don't have a strategy for turning that first purchase into a second one, you're constantly working to replace customers instead of increasing the value of the ones you already have. So that's why every few months, I recommend you make a conscious effort to turn first-time customers into repeat ones. And of course, the easiest way to do this is with a targeted email marketing campaign.

So here's how you do it. Pull a segment of customers who have made their first purchase in the last three to six months. You could go further out if you have a longer repeat buying cycle and who haven't been back since they made their first purchase. Create a three-part email campaign around a best-selling product or unique product recommendation.

Say if you're using Klaviyo, it can do this for you automatically. If you have a larger than average size email list and you want to break this out into different groups so you can be more specific about the product you recommend like basing it on what they bought in that first purchase you can absolutely do that That gonna work best if you have at least 1,000 people per group or if you sell wildly different product categories where you actually need to separate them because bestseller A is not gonna be enticing to customer B, you know?

If you have a small list of people that fall into this group it's probably not going to be worth the extra effort to make all those different groups. So I would just focus on one bestseller. Maybe you have to exclude first-time purchasers who already bought the bestseller and you just create those two separate groups. So you have to figure out what's going to work best for you.

I just don't want you to be creating six different email campaigns that like 50 people are going to receive because the time, energy, and effort it takes to break all those people out and set up all those emails, you're just not going to see a big enough return on it. In this campaign, you can test an incentive like free shipping or a free gift, but it might not be necessary. Maybe it's something you want to A-B test. Most of the time, relevance and or just showing up in their inbox can be enough.

The key here is you want to make sure that you're really taking the time to sell the product that you're featuring. Most of the time when I talk about sending weekly email campaigns, I really want you to focus on the click, right? The email is just about getting them to click and go to your website and then your website does the selling. But if these people have already been on your list receiving emails and they haven't made their second purchase yet, well then that might not be enough.

They might need a little bit more hand-holding before they're ready to take action. So don't be afraid to make these emails a bit more long form, make them feel more personal, focus on overcoming objections, answering frequently asked questions, putting social proof in there, like really sell the benefits of the product in the email directly. And remember, you're doing this in a three-part series. So you don't have to have all of that content in all of the emails.

You can break it out so it just feels like a real natural progression. And then always invite them to reach out with questions. The second strategy is to identify your best-selling products that don't have a post-purchase follow-up. Now your best-selling products are going to generate the highest volume of customers, which makes them one of the easiest places to increase repeat purchases.

A customer who just bought is often the most qualified person to buy again, especially when you can help them get better results from their purchase and or introduce them to a complementary product. So if you don't already have an automated post-purchase email strategy, now is the perfect time to get that set up. So here's how you do it. Start by identifying your top three to five best-selling products or categories, depends on your product assortment.

And then if you have any post-purchase automations, go take another peek at them. If you have a general post-purchase flow, that great but a product and or category specific one is even better And that doesn mean you have to have a product specific one for everything you sell but it can be really powerful for, say, a handful of your top selling items or the ones that need that little bit of extra support to make sure that the customer is getting the best experience possible from that item so that they'll want to come back and buy from you again.

So it totally depends on your product assortment. I've definitely covered this on the podcast a little bit more in depth before. I'll see if I can remember what episodes there are. It's something I talk heavily about inside of Email Badassery about figuring out when do you want a generic post-purchase versus when it should be specific.

It's going to be unique to every single business and product assortment. So you just have to use your judgment there. So the goal of all of this is to create an automated post-purchase flow that helps customers get more value from their purchase and introducing a logical next step product. So an example flow might look like email one.

We'll have product education, usage tips, care instructions, FAQs, or just inspiration on how to use that product in their everyday life. Email number two can be a related product recommendation based on what they purchase. This is really important. It needs to tie back to that item.

And then email number three can be a review request once they've had enough time to use the product they bought. Then, of course, depending upon what you sell, the price of your product, how long it takes people to use it, how complimentary your assortment is, you might want to give a little bit more time before you pitch them another product. So you can always swap emails two and three. That's going to be unique to each business.

But the idea is you want those three topics. Email one stays the same, but then you want the other two emails as well. The order isn't as important as the content. And then number three is your elapsed wholesale accounts.

As our friend Kristen Fisher always says your wholesale customers are a lot like your end consumers. They're just working on a different schedule. That means just because a wholesale account hasn't ordered from you in a while, it doesn't mean they're no longer interested in what you sell. It could be because their buying priorities shifted or their budgets got tight, or maybe you just weren't top of mind when they were placing their last buy.

That's why it's just as important to stay in regular contact with your wholesale accounts as it is with your retail customers. And if you're listening to this in real time, it's especially important right now as Q4 buying season is here. So here's how you do it. Start by reviewing your wholesale accounts to identify who has been active in the last 12 to 18 months, but hasn't ordered in the last six or this year.

Reach out personally to check in and let them know what's new. You could share your latest collection, updated line sheets, bestsellers, products that have been performing well for your retailers lately. If you are participating in any upcoming markets or trade shows, make sure you mention that so they know how they can easily reconnect with you Keep the message short and sweet The goal is simply to restart the conversation and see if there is an opportunity to work together You not necessarily trying to get the sale You just wanna remind them that you there show them what they've been missing and hopefully encourage a reply.

And then you can absolutely follow up with them if you haven't heard back. When it comes to the wholesale piece though, I would take the time to reach out personally. This is a one-to-one email, not a blast that you're sending to this entire list unless you really do have a bunch of dormant wholesale accounts that you need to reach out to. So what are your next steps?

Well, as we know, none of these strategies work unless you do. So I recommend you pick one of them to focus on and implement it quickly. Once you put that into action, you can come back and try another one. I also want to level set your expectations here, especially if you have a small list.

This isn't necessarily going to revolutionize your business overnight or bring in a huge influx of sales, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth your time. Every customer you reactivate through this process could be someone that turns into a more reliable repeat customer whose value increases over time. So be mindful of how much time you spend putting these mini campaigns together. The larger your list, the more likely they are to generate a good chunk of revenue.

So the more time you can spend on that. But honestly, even then, I would just focus on progress over perfection, like just get it done. As you hear me say all the time about email, sometimes just showing up is enough. And even if you are sending your weekly campaigns two to three times, whatever it is you're doing, there's something very different about sending a targeted campaign to a targeted group of customers with a targeted message and potentially a targeted offer.

it just hits different. And if there's any part of you that feels weird, icky, or you're just hesitating to reach out to specific customer groups, especially when it comes to the wholesale strategy, since that's more of a one-to-one contact, I just want you to remember that being shy doesn't pay the bills. Lounge members, if you haven't seen June's issue of The Sip yet, make sure you check it out as there are three additional strategies shared in the Money Map article that weren't covered here in this podcast episode.

You can find the link pinned to the sidebar of the announcement space. Only the two most recent issues are published at any given time, but you've still got plenty of time to take a peek at this one. And that, my friends, is a wrap on this week's episode. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and I'll see you on the flip side.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you want to learn more about growing your e-commerce business, get started with my free resource library at ecommercebadassery.com forward slash free stuff and get an invite to The Lounge, my e-commerce marketing membership. When you're ready for one-on-one support, apply to work with me at ecommercebadassery.

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I'm on a mission to reach as many as I can and I could really use your help. Thanks so much in advance. Until next time, ecommerce friend, stay badass.