Bonus Material: Retention Calculator (coming soon)
It costs way less to retain and expand your offering with current customers than to generate and close new opportunities. A general rule of thumb is to keep your retention rate above 95%, and your churn below 5%.
Just a few weeks ago, I walked into an Apple store near me.
I brought along a MacBook that had some serious issues.
After waiting in line, I explained everything to the nice man behind the counter.
And he said they would take care of it for free.
20 minutes later? I walled out a happy retained customer.
Additional cost to me? Zero.
Then, BAM! a few days later on Saturday, FedEx drops off our completely fixed MacBook.
Do you think I feel valued as a customer? You bet.
Think I’m going to keep buying Apple products? Yep.
That WOW ? feeling is what leads to higher Retention.
And Retention is what leads to higher Profitability.
Fun Facts:
Fact #1: On average, it costs 5x as much to attract a new customer vs. keeping an existing one.
Fact #2: Increasing customer retention by 5% increases profits by between 25% to 95%
Today I want to show you how you can WOW ? customers using an automated service nobody is talking about.
It’s something hardly anyone is doing except your grandma.
Except Gramma ain’t got nothin’ on this.
If you run a SaaS business, sold products online, or run a B2B business of any kind, pay attention…
Forty years ago (before this whole internet thing happened) mail was just like email.
Your mailbox was loaded with time-consuming messages like your email inbox is today.
Now, fast forward to today, where seeing if you’ve got mail is like running down stairs on Christmas morning.
It’s exciting.
We never get REAL mail from people.
It’s always a ton of ads, or a lump of coupons.
So, I got to thinking…
Wouldn’t it be cool if customers received an automatic “gift” in the mail?
Say, after pulling the trigger and buying something from me?
Getting personal and unexpected stuff in the mail is always cool
Time to make it happen.
I ran a full experiment, then set the address as my own personal mailbox.
A few days later an automated letter arrived at my home…from me.
I hadn’t printed, stamped, or mailed it.
But there it was.
And you know what? I was still surprised…
So, how do you make this happen for your project, event, launch, or storefront?
Well, the goal is to create an automated system for sending postcards or letters to people that have recently purchased your product through an online payment service like Eventbrite, Shopify, SamCart or Gumroad.
Doing this is surprisingly easy.
You’ll just need to make sure you ask for an address at checkout, or on a subsequent up-sell or thank you page.
Here’s how to WOW customers with snail mail automatically step-by-step:
Part 1: Some housekeeping (set up your accounts).
We’re going to link together a few services across the internet for this to work. You’ll need to sign up for 2-3 key services if you haven’t already. All the services outlined below are free and easy to sign up for.
The only paid part of this guide is the delivery of postcards which runs about 70¢ per postcard, all the way up to $1.50. (So assuming your margin is more than a few dollars the WOW ? factor is worth it.)
Step #1: Create a Zapier account
Step #2: Create a Lob account
Step #3: Create and set-up your Stripe account, then link it to your Lob Account. (This requires a few extra steps to link up with your checking account)
Step #4: You’ll need a cart to collect payments if you don’t already. For beginners I recommend Gumroad. It’s extremely easy to use, and the quickest to set up.
Got all those done? Then continue on!
Part 2: Create your “WOW” card.
Time to design the Postcard we’ll be sending.
You can use anything as long as you end up with a PDF and don’t go over mailing areas on the back (use the guidelines that Lob requires here).
Additionally, they provide a template for the back of the card, with areas to avoid (which we won’t be using)
Lob allows 4″ x 6″ Postcards, 6″ x 9″ Postcards as well as 6″ x 11″ Postcards.
For our purposes we’ll be using the smallest and cheapest: the 4″ x 6″
Step #5: Go to Canva (Or InDesign) and create a 4″ x 6″ Postcard (specifically a 4.25″ x 6.25″ Postcard – or .125 bleed on all sides.)
Here’s how to do that.
Go to Canva.com and select “+More” then scroll down to Marketing Materials.
Then select Gift Certificate. This should open a new panel with some “6” x 4″ options (the size we need)
Next you’ll want to select a theme to modify.
I chose the FREE HooRay! one.
After 10 minutes or so I ended up with this. (nothing special)
This serves 2 purposes.
Firstly, to say thank you.
Secondly, to keep them as a customer (Retention) and have them share it (Referral).
Handwriting Fonts used:
- Over The Rainbow
- Architects Daughter
In this case I’m using a handwritten font because:
- My handwriting is terrible.
- It feels WAY more personal and casual.
- I don’t have to write 100+ postcards, and can focus on running other parts of the business.
Finally, you’ll need to download the design as a PDF for Print.
This will add Crop Marks and Bleed so that the printer can cut your cards down to size, while removing any white borders.
It will also give you PDF which we’ll need for Part 3.
Part 3: Create the Zap to Deliver your “WOW” card
(Coming Soon ?)
Head over to Zapier.com and create a Zap.
(Note: if you have the paid version you can link multiple apps together. For this we’ll assume you’re using the free tier)
This will bring you to a Zap page where we can select a Trigger App.
Since we’re using Gumroad as our cart for our purposes, type “Gumroad” into the search bar.
Then select it from the dropdown.
After you’ve selected Gumroad you’ll have 2 options as triggers:
Trigger #1: New Product
Trigger #2: New Sale
You’ll want to select “New Sale”
This way any time somebody buys something from us Zapier is notified and we can do something with that information.
If it’s your first time connecting two different apps together, you’ll be asked to authorize account access.
It may also ask you to log in to Gumroad if you haven’t already…
Just keep saying “yes”
PAUSE || If you haven’t made a product on Gumroad (or another cart you are using), you will need to do that first.
Zapier will search for a product to gather data. If you don’t have a product, it can’t find data to use as a starting point.
So, if you don’t have a product head over to Gumroad and do that first, and make sure you are obtaining a billing or shipping address, then circle back to this section.
Eventually Zapier will ask you to “Test Gumroad”.
You can click “Skip Test & Continue” for now.
(Just be aware that tests may result in things getting triggered.)
BOOM!
Now you should have a Trigger set up.
Time to link up our postcard.
This will take the data and let us move it over to another app.
So, we just need to do the same thing we just did, only for Lob this time, and we’re good to go.
Side Note: An alternate way to do this instead of Gumroad > Lob would be Gumroad > Google Sheets > Lob so you have a record of everything. In fact, I would recommend you do it that way, I’m just doing this in the quickest way as an example.
Anyways, back to Lob…
For the Lob action, select “Send Postcard”
Fill in all of the information you can in the next section…
You’ll need the customer’s name, address,
You’re done!
At this point, you may want to purchase your own product using a 100% off coupon code to see if your card arrives in the mail as expected, or if you run into some kind of strange error. If you do, Zapier will let you know what’s up.
You can also throw any questions into the comments below.
If everyone did this, the world would be a better place.
Is 70¢ worth it to WOW ? a customer?
Carts like SamCart let you add in extra Address Fields meaning you could easily send a Physical postcard/letter to someone that purchased a Digital product.
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Source: Customer Acquisition Vs.Retention Costs – Statistics And Trends (http://www.invespcro.com/blog/customer-acquisition-retention/)