We collaborated with experts from the Friendbuy, Klaviyo and Narvar teams to put together the six post-purchase workflows every brand should have in place to increase revenue and customer retention. 

Feel free to watch the replay of the event or read the full transcription below.  Let's dive in!

Workflow 1: Use first party data to power better BFCM ads 

Ian Mahanes, Klaviyo 

The first workflow I wanted to speak to today is is using first-party data inside of Klaviyo to power better BFCM ads. If you aren't using loyalty or referrals program, first of all I would go speak to Friendbuy. They have a great platform with a stellar integration in Klaviyo. And why referrals and loyalty are so important is often those loyalty customers are going to have a high lifetime value (LTV). Those folks who are doing different activities that you set for them to get points towards that next purchase, and your referral customers are super important because Advocates bring in net new customers. 

You can then take all that data from Friendbuy inside Klaviyo to build different segments. And then take those segments and push them to your ads platform. Klaviyo has direct integrations into Meta so that's Facebook and Instagram. We also have a direct integration into Google and then Cretio and AdRoll. So you can take those segments and then push them, and build audiences specifically lookalike audiences to attract more high LTV customers who are going to have higher average order values (AOV).

This will help also increase conversion rates and then also lower your cost-per-acquisition (CPA). Something to consider here too if you're not using a loyalty or referrals platform is that Klaviyo has predictive analytics built in so you can look up things like predictive LTV and try to attract and build audiences based off customers with high predictive LTV. You can also build segments on customers who have high purchase rates, so might have purchased a couple different times. You can really try to identify those customers who are those true VIPs and then use those to build your lookalike audiences over Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

 Now another piece I wanted to talk to on this is actually creating segments of customers who may have purchased a couple different times and then driving those folks into your loyalty and referral programs. Often times I see a lot of brands doing like an exclusive event leading up to Black Friday/Cyber Monday where it'll be an exclusive discount and they'll get early access to those deals. So you can actually run different ads and even SMS and email campaigns to have people sign up for your loyalty and referral programs, and then extend them that VIP discount that'll drive more folks into those programs and help with LTV down the stream even beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

The final thing I'll touch on here is using retargeting campaigns for those folks. It's a great time to showcase those top discounts for those loyalty and referral customers to make sure they're aware and they're purchasing during this period. We actually had a really good question come in prior to the webinar around how do you keep really people involved in like the hype going beyond just Black Friday and Cyber Monday. So I’ve seen a lot of customers do this with discounting and so when you're thinking about discounting, think about ways you can do daily promotions on either collections or specific products. This can be really impactful because you actually have a lot of that data already inside of Klaviyo on who had purchased from that collection or that specific product. You can take those segments, build them in Klaviyo, and push those to the app ad platforms, and then target your creative all around that product or collection with that daily discount to really drive on that scarcity of the time period. You’ll be saying hey, this is a daily deal, you're getting a really good value - 30% off or whatever it might be and have that ad copy really mirror that collection or that product. 

Workflow 2: Turn shipping delays into positive experiences

Ian Mahanes, Klaviyo 

Workflow number two from me is really again using Klaviyo as a CDP. So Friendbuy set up a really cool integration with Klaviyo that allows you to take in any events from Klaviyo and use it as a rewarding activity inside of Friendbuy. Narvar has an awesome integration that sends around 18 different events across the post- purchase experience, so those are going to be different ones like shipping events, out for delivery, things of that nature. And then also on the return side, which is synonymous with the holiday season and is often a negative event, is around carrier delays. These are often inevitable this time of year due to weather, due to high order volume, but you can turn that experience into a positive.

So Narvar sends a carrier delay event to Klaviyo and based on that event, we can trigger a flow and then actually filter out folks who are part of your loyalty program. And now you can turn that negative experience into a positive one by saying hey we're so so sorry for the delay, we want to reward you 50 points towards your next purchase. And then with a web hook in the flow, Klaviyo can actually trigger those points in Friendbuy to that specific customer. So that’s how you can turn those negative experiences into positive ones. 

Workflow 3: Remind Advocates to redeem rewards via email & SMS

Samantha Samuels, Friendbuy 

Diving into workflow number 3, say you have a referral program and you're rewarding Advocates through that referral program. With Friendbuy and Klaviyo you can remind Advocates to redeem their rewards via email and SMS. For those of you that might not know, an Advocate is someone who refers their friends or family to your business.

The purpose of this workflow is to encourage those referers or Advocates to redeem the rewards they've earned. For this example we'll encourage an advocate to redeem their coupon code. So for the first step is to create a flow in Klaviyo where the trigger is a Friendbuy reward is earned, and that event is being sent to Klaviyo from Friendbuy. From there,  you'll want to set a 7 day delay, and then you'll want to set a filter that checks if they've purchased since initially earning that reward. So one way you can do that is to check if placed order is zero times in the last seven days. 

And then you can set up your email to remind your Advocate to use their coupon code using Klaviyo’s email builder. It's really easy to drop their coupon code directly in the email, so it's easy for the customer to copy and paste that and use it at checkout. Klaviyo has really great  merge variables that you can include in emails to dynamically insert  information that's included in the customer profile. 

Then if the advocate still hasn't redeemed their reward and you want to take this to the next level, you can add a 3 day delay before following that email up with a text message. The text would say essentially the same thing as the email, you might want to add an emoji or two  but you can remind the Advocate to redeem their reward and drop their coupon code in the text, and then link them back to your site to shop and use that coupon code. It’s a great way to keep your Advocates engaged and continuing to refer, especially once they know they can keep earning rewards for those referrals. 

Workflow 4: Ask customers to refer friends 4 weeks after delivery

Samantha Samuels, Friendbuy 

Next is workflow number. It uses Narvar, Klaviyo and Friendbuy together, which we love to see. This flow helps to drive referral program awareness by inviting customers to refer after their product has been delivered. So the first thing you'll want to do is create a flow in Klaviyo where the trigger is that the product has been delivered. That delivered event is sent from Narvar to Klaviyo through their integration.

 You'll then want to add a delay of maybe approximately four weeks or 28 days - this gives customers the chance to try your product and of course, fall madly in love with it. You can always customize the number of days after the product is delivered to account for the most common return windows, then you'll want to send an email through Klaviyo letting them know about your referral program and how they can get rewarded by sharing the news about how much they love your product.

Again you can drop their personal URL  - AKA their personal referral link - directly into the Klaviyo email. Fun fact, the referral link lives on the customer profile so all you need to do is drop in the Friendbuy referral link merge variable into that email. This makes it easy for customers to copy and paste the link and share it with everyone they know. Even if they don't copy and paste the link right away, it's important to send referral program awareness emails like this one around once a month so that when they are ready to refer someone, finding their referral Link in their inbox only takes a few seconds. 

Workflow 5: Reduce post-purchase overhead while tailoring future marketing campaigns

Claire Johnson, Narvar

So the two workflows that I will leave you all with are around the outbound order journey and what you can do to communicate during that time, and what you can really do with that information happening to the customer during that order journey. And then we’ll also look at the returns logistics side of the house as well. So in the event that a return happens, which is inevitable as we are going into return season, what can you do to retain even more revenue. 

So the Narvar and Klaviyo integration is really incredibly powerful, it's incredibly easy to set up, and what it really does is provide you in Klaviyo with all of those shipment related events that Narvar is getting from the carrier. So as the package is going through its shipment journey, from the time it's been shipped and left the warehouse until the time it gets to the customer, you can get all of those events passed back to you in Klaviyo. 

Above is a diagram to show you what that really looks like. You can then use those events to send messages through Klaviyo itself so you can let customers know their order has been delayed, if it's been delivered, and then more importantly you can actually take all of these shipment related events and use them to enrich the profiles that you have in Klaviyo as well. This means you can really tailor future marketing campaigns like Ian had walked us through, and really also speak to sentiment as well. 

So in the event that someone might experience a delay, you can offer them a discount for a future purchase like the workflow that Ian walked us through, or even maybe omit them in a few future marketing campaign. Again just helps to align the sentiment so it's incredibly easy to set up. I definitely recommend doing it going into Black Friday, as it's only going to enrich what you have today. 

Similar to what we're talking about with outbound post-purchase order journey communication, these emails have incredibly high engagement rates, so your average marketing email sees a certain amount of open rates, but these specific transactional emails see on average about a 70% open rate. So people are highly engaged, they obviously want to know what is going on with their packages that they are anxiously tracking. 

What you can do in this specific email is help mitigate the calls that might come to your call center and make customers incredibly informed throughout that process. How you structure this email is incredibly important to that, so through the emails that you might be sending through Klaviyo or Narvar or any other ESP that you might be using,  these are three quick recommendations that we would make to ensure that you are providing your customer with all of the information that they need to successfully track that package. And also keep them out of your call center,  so you're really mitigating again those contacts that are coming into your probably overwhelmed and maybe understaffed call center. So you can see here one of Narvar’s customers, Sephora, they do a really great job of surfacing all of that order related information to the top of the email so if you have a tracking software or service that you're using and you're kicking folks to a track page or maybe it's a carrier page, surfacing that to the top is really incredibly important. 

Same with this second example and with Golf Galaxy, they do a great job although it's very small and you might need your magnifying glass to see it, of calling out when multiple shipments are at play. So I know a common call that might come into one of your call centers  might be around one package being delivered, but they ordered three things and want to know where everything else is. So again creating that call to action and letting customers know you have multiple packages coming and to not panic, and let them know when it will be delivered. 

Workflow 6: Retain returns revenue and win customers back

Claire Johnson, Narvar

And then onto the final piece of this, so in partnership with Klaviyo like a we had mentioned, you have the ability to ingest the shipment related events that are occurring inside Narvar to Klaviyo. You can actually also ingest returns related events as well, once a return is on its way back to the warehouse. So here we have a really great and successful winback campaign that one of our joint customers set up in Klaviyo using Narvar shipment related events. So once a customer had already made a return, this retailer was thinking how can I go about retaining more revenue and soliciting a sale from this customer in the future. So once they found out that returns had made it back to the warehouse using those shipment related events, they set up a winback campaign in Klaviyo that allowed them to retain not only just a little bit of revenue but actually they were able to generate $364,000 in one year through a winback campaign. They offered customers a discount code for a future purchase after a return had been initiated. So just something for you to start thinking about as you're thinking about that winback strategy that you might have going today, and how you could potentially incorporate returns into that winback flow as well. 

And speaking of revenue retention, how can you also make it so that your customers are spending again with you in the future given a return might be inevitable. So we at Narvar every year do a state of returns report, it's available on our site today, where we pull over 6,000 consumers globally and ask them a general amount of questions about returns so we really hear it from their perspective. And then we put it into a very actionable report for you to use in asking them different questions about store credit and returns. 

In fact, 61% of consumers when they are issued store credit say that they use it immediately in the next two weeks, and they also spend more than initially credited. So I hate to use the term girl math, but this is really girl math at play for those of you that are in on the TikTok trend. Using a gift card is essentially monopoly money and any additional dollars that they spend are sunk costs at that point. But either way in your returns flow today, we definitely recommend whatever returns platform you are using, offer your consumers a gift card instead of refunding to the original payment method, and even incentivize them to do this.

Maybe you waive a shipping fee, or waive a restocking fee, in lieu of them taking a gift card over refunding to the original payment method. Just knowing what's on the other side of them using that gift card is adding additional revenue as well to that sale. 

Then finally, the final workflow is something that can be done in both Narvar and then in Klaviyo aswell. So in the event that you have those returns related shipment events flowing back to Klaviyo from Narvar, the better thing you can do than some sort of winback campaign is let customers know they might have free shipping on their next order. 

Or in the Narvar platform itself, you can also offer customers maybe a discount code on a future purchase. Or in the above case you can see our customer Orvis is offering their customer free shipping on their next order after a return had already been initiated. 

So in this specific use case Orvis was actually able to recapture $185,000 in lost revenue due to returns, and then they saw a lift in post-return order volume from customers who then used this code. So again just little ways that you can go about retaining even more revenue and really turning grains of sand into a mountain when it comes to incentivizing for the future.