Amazon Follow-up Emails to Grow Sales: 3 Proven Templates

Acquiring customers is hard work. As Amazon is increasingly competitive and flooded with new sellers, every customer you can get is all the more valuable.

Since customers are scarce, you need to be getting as much value as possible out of each sale, above the value of the purchase itself.

This could mean:

• Getting a product review or seller feedback (which helps you rank higher and get more future sales).
• Making your customer happy, and therefore more likely to have a positive experience they’ll share with others.
• Engaging the customer, so they remember your brand and buy from you again.

These are all examples of additional value you can take away from a sale.

To make your business as successful as it can be (and thus make more money), realize that the sales process doesn’t finish when the customer clicks “buy”.

High-performing businesses will keep in contact and engage their customers well after the initial sale. Read on to see how your Amazon business can do this with these easy follow-up emails.

Email Marketing and Customer Lifetime Value

If you aren’t using email marketing for your e-commerce business, you’re missing out. Big time.

A study from Campaign Monitor showed a return of $44 for every $1 spent on email marketing. That’s an ROI you can’t ignore.

It’s only going up too. Each year more people shop and browse on mobile, which traditionally has better email open rates than desktop.

Admittedly, it’s a lot harder to do email marketing as an Amazon seller. But if you were able to achieve just a quarter of that ROI, it would be worth your while.

The main benefit of email marketing is to grow your customer’s lifetime value. That is, how much someone spends on your products throughout their lifetime.

If you’re selling products for $15, once a customer makes a purchase, they’re worth $15 to you. If you can follow up and get a review, you’ll have a little more value out of that one customer (however much you quantify a review as being worth).

If you market to them further and encourage them to buy from you again, you have the opportunity to extract even more out of that one customer.

People often quote the Pareto Principle (the 80/20) rule when it comes to business and customer retention. Essentially, 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers.

You might think this is hard to do on Amazon, since you can’t explicitly retarget past customers. However, this post shows an Amazon business making 67% of their revenue from the top 20% of their customers, and 51% of revenue from the top 10%.

This means it is possible to retain customers and maintain a high average lifetime value, even with the barriers Amazon puts in place to stop you from doing this.

3 Follow-ups for Amazon Sellers

Email marketing is a bit of a rabbit hole. It takes a lot of effort to get good at running email marketing campaigns.

You may not be ready to start killing it at email marketing and making huge ROIs just yet. But if you can put in place a few simple emails sent out after purchase, you can start to benefit and grow your business right now.

Here are a few different follow-up emails you can add to your Amazon purchase flow.

Review request

Reviews are so important on Amazon. It’s the number one problem I hear from sellers. “How do I get more reviews?”

Well, a great way to start is simply to ask.

Most customers don’t think to leave a review unless there is something extraordinary – good or bad – about their purchase. Customers who are satisfied don’t usually go and write a review saying so.

While it won’t convert everyone, a simple request for a review should result in more of your happy customers coming forward too.

A few things you should take into account when asking for a review:

• Don’t overload your customers or push them too hard. One kind email asking for a review is enough.
• Make sure you follow Amazon’s TOS when asking for reviews. Don’t ask for only positive reviews, and don’t offer an incentive for them to post a review. Read more about product review guidelines here.
• Don’t ask for reviews from heavily discounted purchases (purchases with 50% or more discounted). These purchases are ineligible for verified reviews, and too many reviews from high discounts can trigger a review block on your listing.
• Remember that they’re doing a favor by leaving you a review. Make it easy for them, and show your appreciation

Be thankful, try and highlight the good points of your product, and give the customer all they need (a direct link, or detailed instructions) on how they can post a review.

Amazon review email template

Check out this guide for more tips on getting Amazon reviews.

Customer service check-in

A happy customer is a valuable customer. Happy customers are more likely to buy from you again, more likely to share their positive experiences.

That means a simple check-in to see if they’re happy can indirectly lead to positive product reviews or seller feedback.

It’s a good idea to send a simple “thank you” after the purchase, and ask the customer if there is anything you can help with.

If the customer has a problem, you can catch it and make it right before they get to the point of leaving a negative review. Prevention is the best cure, especially with Amazon product reviews.

You could also include a brief introduction to your brand’s story, to make the customer feel like they’ve just joined in on a journey with you. If you’re focused on brand building, this can help your brand stick in the customer’s mind, so they come back and buy again.

Customer service email template

Repeat order

This doesn’t apply to all products. However, consumable products (supplements, beauty care for example) have incredible lifetime value potential.

Most people will use them up and buy again. And you want to make sure they buy from you.

Customer retention is hugely important for consumables. If you have a supplement that is $20 for a month’s supply, you can multiply your customer’s lifetime value by 12x in a single year, if you get them coming back.

That’s a lot of money from repeat purchases, so don’t leave it up to chance that they find your product again when they run out.

You should have an idea of roughly how long it takes for someone to use up their product. Not long before the customer is set to run out, send a follow-up email encouraging them to re-up.

You may even want to offer a coupon on the customer’s first re-order from you, to build a relationship and turn your customer into a loyal, repeat buyer.

E-commerce superstar and the brains behind Smart Marketer, Ezra Firestone, suggests sending a sales email every six weeks. Sending occasional sales emails increases product sales and a six-week time frame is long enough to not overburden customers with pushy offers. Between those six weeks consider sending other types of content.

Repeat order email template

How to Send Follow-up Emails

We’ve dealt with the “why” and the “what”, but the “how” can be tricky for Amazon sellers.

Amazon doesn’t give out customers’ email addresses. As far as they’re concerned, it doesn’t matter who the customer buys from the second time, only that they keep buying on Amazon. And they’ve got capturing repeat customers down to an art.

There are a couple of ways you can do it. You can send automated follow-up emails on Amazon, or capture contact info to do this on your own channels.

Amazon autoresponders

Most sellers use autoresponder tools to do exactly what we’ve talked about. These tools integrate with Amazon’s buyer-seller messaging to send messages based on specific triggers (such as x number of days after a sale).

Popular autoresponder tools include Jungle Scout’s Launch, Helium10’s Follow-Up, and Feedback Five from eComEngine.

It’s a great option to automate your customer outreach and ensure that you’re not missing any opportunity to provide customer service or get product reviews.

Autoresponder tools can’t quite do everything for you, however.

The problem with autoresponders

Autoresponders aren’t a perfect solution. While linking the tool to Amazon’s API helps you automatically send emails after every sale, it also limits you in some ways.

You can’t link to any promotional sources (including your Amazon storefront or Amazon listings). This means you can’t send discounts or promotions in Amazon messages.

You can’t use your own email (the message will show as sent by something like 1234abcd@marketplace.amazon.com). This hurts your brand image, and your ability to communicate with the customer in the future.

Amazon customers now can also choose to opt out from receiving Buyer-Seller messages, which means you won’t be able to contact them at all with things like review requests or customer support inquiries.

Amazon autoresponders are still useful. But to go further in email marketing, you’ll need something else.

LandingCube’s email follow-up tool

LandingCube has added a tool to our app that helps Amazon sellers send email follow-ups more effectively. With this tool, you can send automatic follow-ups, not bound by the restrictions of Amazon’s messaging system.

By running promo campaigns with LandingCube, you can send real emails to your customers. Offering the best customer service, and maximizing your marketing potential.

In the process, you build an email list, which helps you get a step ahead of the competition who are only advertising inside of Amazon.

Note that you’ll need to offer a single-use promo code to be able to capture emails.

You can enable a follow-up message in the “Integrations” tab of your LandingCube promo page. Here, you can:

• Set the time delay before your email is sent
• Set your “Reply-to” email (make it look like it’s from your own email – no generic @marketplace.amazon domain)
• Add your sender name (using a real name here is a nice personal touch)
• Customize your email copy
• Add a link to your own site

While you can’t automate based on specific on-Amazon triggers as you can with autoresponders, you can nurture your customers and build an audience you own by doing this.

Amazon Follow Up Emails: In Summary

Don’t think that it’s mission accomplished once a customer clicks “buy” on your listing.

There is almost always more you can do to generate more value out of that customer. Whether it’s getting a review, getting a repeat purchase, or positive word-of-mouth about your business.

Autoresponders are a good way to follow up on your organic Amazon sales. But for the best results, capture external traffic with LandingCube and send follow-ups with our own messaging tool.