Successful second order push: How your new customers return… again and again and again
You are running ads on social media, maintaining your SEO optimized blog and maybe even paying for print ads – and it is working! New customers are coming and they are buying! Congratulations – you have already overcome the first big hurdle. So far, so good. But how do you ensure that these new customers come back and your efforts pay back a second or third time?
If your new customers do not return, the equation might not work out in the end. So, how do you turn these first-time buyers into loyal customers? That is exactly what we will show you in this article. Figure out how to achieve a second order push and how to use programmatic print as an effective performance channel, not just for profitability, but also for budget efficiency.
The right timing for your second order push
When to send a second order push depends on various factors: we all know the standard welcome sequence, where all new customers are equally targeted with prompts over a certain period. At first glance, it seems like the simplest solution. Some companies even distribute their “second purchase incentive communications” more frequently, sending messages to new customers who haven’t made a second purchase yet, for example, four times a year.
However, both approaches result in unnecessary costs that diminish your return on investment (ROI). In the end, not all customers have the same potential for a second purchase after their first one. The timeframe until the first and subsequent meaningful prompts can vary greatly. The following graph shows the number of second purchases over 24 months for a retail company in the fashion industry.
You can see that second order purchases can still occur after 6 or even 12 months. Of course, analyses like these depend on your product and industry. But you probably understand what we’re getting at with the example.
Classic analyses for new customer segments typically show that in the second year, only about 25% to 30% of new customers make a second purchase. After that, the decrease is even lower and can even stagnate, as the following graph shows:
One thing becomes clear: if you manage to reduce the loss rate in the first year, you can drastically increase customer value. That’s why the second order push is so important within your customer relationship management.
Forecast: Figure out when your customers are most likely to make their second purchase
Determining which customers have the highest potential (value) for a second purchase at a specific time can be done quite well using Predictive Models. This involves cohort analyses, where your target audience is automatically divided into groups based on a specific characteristic.
In our case, the characteristic is the potential for a second purchase. It’s recommended to reassess this potential at intervals of 30 days to create a tight network over the customer journey of new customers. At the time you send your second order push, typically only around 10% to 20% of your entire new customer target group has a value high enough to warrant communication. The following illustration shows how customers are distributed:
Based on their individual values, your customers are divided into so-called deciles, which are 10 equally sized groups. In the end, the best decile contains precisely the 10% of customers where the probability of a second purchase is currently highest. The light bar shows the estimated conversion rate. The dark bar shows the actual conversion rate after the second order push. It’s clear that it’s worth targeting only the top 10%. Each customer moves through the different deciles over time.
For example, if first-time buyers show early signs of seasonal shopping, they are likely to be found in the weaker deciles in the first months after the first purchase. Once their time comes, they move into the top deciles, and that’s when you need to reach out to them – flexibly, agilely, and promptly. And of course, with a relevant incentive.
The right triggers for your second order push
Once you know when to target which customers, you initiate communication through your usual CRM channels, such as email, social media, in the app, or via print mailing, depending on your product and business model. By the way: you can combine everything – for even more revenue peaks!
It’s important to personalize all messages to each customer’s individual needs as best as possible. This also applies to print mailings such as letters and postcards.
The key: You don’t need an opt-in for physical mailings via post and you reach people through this channel who you might never have reached digitally.
Manually identifying the right customer groups every 30 days and then addressing them with personalized mailings is, of course, not effective. The effort would simply be too great and would make the entire campaign inefficient. Fortunately, modern CRM is data-driven, and processes like regularly sending out a print mailing as a Second-Order Push can easily be automated with solutions from optilyz.
Once your automation environment is set up, you just need to “simply” monitor the workflows and pay attention to which components need updating or optimizing when.
Checklist: Key elements of hyperpersonalisation
This checklist identifies and summarizes three key elements of hyperpersonalisation.
Example 1: second order push in the fashion vertical
Let’s say you have an online shop for fashion and you want to motivate your new customers to make a second purchase with personalized mailings at the right time. For your second order push, you opt for a Maxi postcard because this format best conveys your message due to its size.
Your message reads: “Thank you for your first order! Come back and save 15% on your next order with code ‘IQAXSKF’.”
Since your shop offers both women’s and men’s fashion, you segment your audience into “female” and “male”. The optilyz software automatically prints images from the women’s summer collection on the postcard for female first-time buyers, and images from the men’s summer collection for male first-time buyers.
To automate the mailing process, you’ve integrated optilyz into your system. This way, all necessary customer data for the segments is automatically transferred. You use volume as a trigger for the campaign: the Maxi postcards are automatically sent out whenever 4,000 recipients meet the following criteria:
- First-time buyer
- High Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- High Conversion Chance
With your volume trigger, you ensure that you benefit from the cost-effective dialogue post postage while not letting too much time pass before targeting customers with a high likelihood of purchase. This likelihood of purchase can decrease over time, which also reduces the conversion rate. Address first-time buyers four times a year? This approach is no longer contemporary. So, save your budget and reactivate only the customers where it’s most likely to pay off.
Example 2: second order push in financial services
Another positive example is Grenke, a B2B financial services provider specializing in leasing, banking, and factoring services for small and medium-sized enterprises. Many of these companies come to a product from Grenke through intermediaries and therefore initially don’t have a strong connection to the brand. For this reason, the financial service provider decided to directly address its new customers again after the purchase.
“With our after-sales communication, we create awareness for the Grenke brand among our existing customers, thus increasing customer loyalty,” says Isabell Rösch, Senior Professional CRM at Grenke.
The result? Compared to a control group that did not receive a second order push, Grenke saw a +28% increase in second contract closures in the target group.
Checklist: What consumer-centricity means for your CRM
If you don’t claim to be consumer-centric these days, you might as well pack up and go home. But getting beyond the buzz and putting existing and potential customers at.
The key takeaways on second order push
So, if you want to make sure you motivate your new customers to make a second purchase at the best possible time, regular cohort analyses, predictive models, personalized messages, agile print mailings, and automated workflows are recommended. With these tools, you can quickly create a second order push campaign that targets your customers exactly when the probability of them buying from you again is highest.
If you’re wondering which use cases are suitable for you, take a look at our summary of the most meaningful direct mail use cases or schedule an introductory conversation.