Katrina McKinnon
•
July 10, 2020
Many eCommerce businesses undervalue the effects of engaging with customers beyond a purchase. They fail to see the importance of following up with shoppers or thanking them.
This is unfortunate as positive engagement leads to shoppers returning to ‘friendly’ stores. It’s even more regrettable when you consider that there’s an easy and fast way of creating engagement:
Customer service response videos.
Sharing short videos with your customers is an effective way of building a strong rapport. Among other reasons, it shows that you care and it makes it easy for shoppers to remember you.
But these aren’t just any regular videos, they’re personal and unique. They take less than 20 seconds to record and share, and through them, you can easily increase retention. And it’s crucial to retain customers because getting new ones can cost between 5 to 25 times more.
Take the video below as a brilliant example of a personal post-purchase video done right. It’s friendly, directed specifically to the customer by name, and inviting them to engage. The customer is sure to return and purchase more from this store.
https://ecommercefuel-1.wistia.com/medias/5vodrglnpx?embedType=async&videoWidth=400
The customers that I don’t get to meet face to face have given fantastic feedback saying that they feel really connected, and as a result they have stayed a customer with us. It’s easy to get lost in that flood of emails coming to the customer, so Bonjoro is a great way to stand out from the crowd, and get your business noticed.” – Jane from Gathered Green on using Bonjoro
Here, you’ll learn about why and how you should create such videos to increase your conversions.
If you want a higher conversion rate, engaging your buying customers is crucial. Engaging them through videos is smart. Here’s why:
You need to ensure that you keep your customers coming back to increase your conversions. Purchase frequency means more sales from a loyal community and a better bottom line. It has to be at the core of your business.
Engagement allows you to build those loyal customer relationships, but you already know this. You send customers emails after they’ve made a purchase, thanking them, like countless other eCommerce professionals.
But you don’t want to be like every other store owner, you want to stand out. And that’s where post-purchase videos come in. Few sellers even think of doing this, but those that do are reaping the benefits.
When you create personal post-purchase videos, you ought to create a specific sequence:
Your videos should be in this order, both in terms of importance and sequence.
Here are four examples of showing how to use personal videos in a post-purchase sequence:
| https://ecommercefuel.wistia.com/medias/f4fk9rplgz?embedType=async&videoWidth=400
Thank you for purchase |
https://ecommercefuel.wistia.com/medias/250l1sosa6?embedType=async&videoWidth=400
Delivery follow-up |
| https://ecommercefuel.wistia.com/medias/iqibatffpe?embedType=async&videoWidth=400
Post-delivery testimonial request |
https://ecommercefuel.wistia.com/medias/zkp1k660zs?embedType=async&videoWidth=400
Final follow-up with an upselling offer |
Videos are great because they provide a better context than any other medium. And context helps people retain information better. According to a study by Doxee, “The average user retains 95% of the messages in a video; when it comes to text, this percentage drops to 10%.”
Short videos are more captivating, easily understandable, more personal, and more entertaining. If you record post-purchase videos, shoppers:
There aren’t many brands that share personal videos with their customers. This means that you’re more likely to stand out from other businesses if you use them. Online shoppers get bombarded with text-based messages from eCommerce stores every day. However, they’ll pay attention to the ones that grab their attention and dare to be innovative.
Engagement and recording personal videos are keys to eCommerce success. But they’re not the only ones. There’s a lot more you can learn about eCommerce and implement in your own business. Joining a community of like-minded eCommerce professionals helps you discover more.
eCommerce Fuel is that community. As a member, you get to learn new frameworks, tactics, and ideas on a regular basis.
Join eCommerce Fuel today and take advantage of the vast amounts of knowledge shared by your peers.
Now that you know why you should engage your customers through videos, let’s look at how to do it. What follows are tips and relevant examples you can use in your engagement.
You can find different customer service video software to suite your needs. It is, however, important to note that these aren’t videos you create on YouTube, Wistia, or Vimeo. No, those and others like them are long-format video platforms.
You need platforms that are specifically designed for instant micro-format videos. These platforms record your videos and deliver them to your customers on their phones. Some of the best micro-format platforms include:
Using videos can create the sense that you don’t have anything to hide and you run a professional operation. To gain customers’ trust, you should:
Because we’re constantly bombarded with content, customers have short attention spans. Your video has to captivate them immediately and keep them watching. You can achieve this by keeping your introductions brief.
People start losing concentration after 8 seconds. You have to include your most important information within that timeframe. Then you can elaborate on it further as you have their attention. But don’t make your elaboration last too long either.
There has to be a point to your videos that convinces customers to take a specific action. Give your customers the next step they’ll want to take after watching your video. Your call-to-action could be to:
Yes, your videos don’t have to be incredibly sophisticated, but they still have to be of a certain quality. No one wants to watch sloppy or grainy videos, and low-quality videos can hurt your brand. Avoid poor quality by:
A video’s thumbnail is what your customers will notice first. You want it to appeal to your customers so that they click ‘Play’. Otherwise, your customers won’t bother watching and will carry on with their days. Great thumbnails include:
To know whether your customer service videos are effective, measure key metrics:
To better understand the value of post-purchase videos, we’ll highlight a specific example with feedback from:
The owner we’ll focus on here is Carole Rains. Carole is an eCommerce Fuel member and she owns Emu Joy, a body-care brand providing products that are:
Here’s what she has to say about using the Bonjoro app for sending personalized videos:
Hi Katrina, its Carol. Thank you so much for asking me to participate in the development of this blog post.
I am quickly becoming a major fangirl of Bonjoro. My results have just been wonderful so far and in fact, it’s really reenergized me on my business because I developed such a better rapport with my customers.
And getting this constant, daily feedback from them is just wonderful and makes me, you know, really think about the ‘why’ of why I did my business. It brings it all really home and makes it real to get these replies from my customers.
So, what I’ve been doing is I have it hooked into my Shopify account, and when an order is placed, Bonjoro just sends me a little email saying, “Here are your Bonjoro’s to do.”
I just have to click on into the website and record a quick video. I can see what they ordered; whether they ordered before; and I can tailor my little video specifically to them. And you know welcome them to the website or thank them if they’re coming back as a repeat customer and offer some tips on how to use the products.
And then I also use it as an opportunity to get information from them and great Intel. I frequently ask them what specific conditions they’re going to be using the products for and also how they found out about Emu Joy. And that’s been really helpful to get that kind of information. So that has been a big positive impact for me. My results have been great and I will send you screenshots.
I’ve only been doing this for even a few weeks. My open rate is 71% and that is so much higher than the open rate for my traditional, you know “Thanks for your order,” email flow. So for some reason, people are, I don’t know, they’re just more intrigued.
And 67% have watched them, 28% have opened and replied, 13% have clicked over to the website because there’s a call to action on Bonjoro. So, you know they’re coming back to the site to take a look around, maybe place another order. Any kind of activity to the website is a bonus so I’m happy about that too.
And you know, once I had made a few of them, they became really easy. The first few I had to redo a couple and I was watching before I would let it go. Now I just record it, they’re between 30 seconds and one minute, no more than one minute. And I pick one of the thumbnails and I tend to pick a thumbnail that’s not necessarily all that flattering but it’s maybe a little bit quirkier, that shows that I’m, you know, in the middle of speaking. I want it to not look all that polished.
I wanted to show these people I’m real and, you know, so it doesn’t matter if, I, you know, don’t look glamorous – which I never do. But I think people like knowing that, you know, that the person they are hearing is not that different from them.
So I pick a thumbnail that, you know, just is kind of almost a little bit you know goofy looking sometimes, and the response has been so good. So, I will also send you a bunch of replies that I’ve gotten.
And it’s so heartwarming you know people are just so excited to get these little videos. They’re so appreciative. And it takes, you know, literally less than a minute of my time to do each one, and it makes the customers really happy. So, I know this is going to be you know paying off quite a lot in the long run, and just from the feedback that I’ve gotten from people.
Um yeah, so, another thing that I do is sometimes give them some suggestions on how best to use the products or tell them you know what other little goodies are going to be in the package so they can you know look forward to receiving it at some point.
I’ve only used it as a welcome and thank you for your order, I haven’t done it for any other campaigns or announcements or review requests or things like that. But I am meeting with the guy who created Bonjoro. I guess tonight we’ve got a meeting and I imagine he’ll be talking to me about a lot of the other ways that I can use it so I’ll probably be adding some of those as we go along.
Carole uses Bonjoro’s branding and call-to-action features brilliantly to effectively engage her customers:
You can clearly notice the Emu Joy logo and products in the background, while her CTA is displayed evidently next to her message.
We asked Carole what has surprised her the most about this new technology:
The ability to create a conversation with the customer. Barely anyone ever replies to standard ‘thanks for your order’ emails, but they are happy to reply to the videos and give you all kinds of information. Sometimes we go back and forth several times. Talk about establishing rapport!” – Carole Rains, Emu Joy
As you can see from her Bonjoro screenshot below, her results are impressive:
With a 71% opened rate and a 68% watched rate, personal post-purchase videos are effective in engaging customers. People truly appreciate these direct messages and it makes them happy.
We asked Carole whether she was still having success with sending personalized videos, and whether she could share her latest figures with our readers.
As you’ll note she’s still sending more and more post-purchase videos and maintaining a high engagement and success rate.
Here’s feedback from Carole’s customers that illustrates customer excitement perfectly:
Thank you, Carole, for taking time to send me the message. I’m touched. – Anon.
What a treat to receive the personalized video. You are amazing and so is your company! Thank you. – Margaret
That was so kind of you to send the video! I actually have used your emu lip balm before and loved it! So much so much I had to order more. – Melissa
Thank you so much for your message it truly meant a lot. – Anon.
Thanks for your personal message to me. I love dealing with someone like you. Keep up the good work. – Sandy
Thank you Carole for your message. I feel very special receiving a message just for myself. – Aileen
Hi Carole, I really appreciate you reaching out to me. It made my day! – Larissa
You should communicate with your customers because engaged shoppers return to buy more.
You can do so through videos because they’re more captivating than other mediums. Customers enjoy them more and retain more information through them. Videos also help create a strong rapport between you and your customers.
To ensure you’re sharing the best possible videos, you need to:
Start recording and sharing personal videos with your customers today to increase retention and engagement.
Photo by Pexels from Kaboompics .com
