Revealing Customers Who are Ghosts

We deal with dozens of leading manufacturers faced with the conundrum of selling the majority of their products through third-party websites such as Amazon or through physical stores like Best Buy, Wal-Mart. Though there are manufacturer- and service provider-owned websites, buying direct from the manufacturer is the exception, not the norm.

In many cases, products like electronics, hard goods and more have only 5-7% of sales direct to consumer. While the third-party website is critical in the manufacturer’s sales strategy it provides no information about the purchaser.

As one manufacturing executive put to me: “When you buy from a third-party platform, you could be a ghost to us.”

Without direct customer information, manufacturers have no way to follow up with a customer to build brand loyalty or market ancillary products that would be natural fits with the initial purchase. Customers remain ghosts,” unless these ghosts are exposed via post-market journey orchestration.

In reality, customers typically don’t provide any information to the manufacturer or service provider, so there is a blind spot for further customer outreach.

Many manufacturing execs know that post purchase is a critical element of a brand’s development of a long-lasting, profitable customer relationship, but one that is often overlooked due to too much focus on the initial sale or too much difficulty in gathering the critical customer data to nurture an ongoing relationship.

Such invisible relationships don’t give the manufacturer or service provider the critical detail needed to drive the brand’s post-market journey orchestration. The lack of this data diminishes the brand’s capacity to create meaningful interactions to provide exceptional customer service experiences, gather feedback or build rapport, all of which serve as the basis for long term relationships with the customer base.

To capture the critical information on these “ghost” customers, a brand can offer a perk to register, such as an extended warranty, a discount on a future purchase, or some other benefit. Many companies do this through loyalty programs.

By pursuing such a strategy, a consumer electronics brand was able to register 25% of its customers making indirect purchases, 78% of whom consented to marketing permissions. This provided a promising avenue for expanding the brand’s reach and maximizing engagement with the customer, a gateway to cross-selling opportunities, customer retention and enhanced customer lifetime value.

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The manufacturer used the initial interaction between the product and the consumer, the purchase of the product itself, as the initiation point for post-purchase journey orchestration. The company extended an invitation to consumers to download its app and register their product to receive the extended warranty.

With the registration, the manufacturer had the necessary information to personalize post-purchase journeys for each customer. The brand used targeted communications to nurture relationships and provide benefits for both the brand and the customers.

Using Customer-Led Marketing, the manufacturer was informed to provide each consumer with personalized experiences to drive engagement and enhance customer satisfaction by helping customers maximize their product experience.

The brand didn’t stop there. The manufacturer drilled down to understand more about its customers, uncovering their preferences and needs, putting the brand in a better position to deliver tailored experiences and build strong, long-lasting customer relationships.

Key in developing the post-purchase journey orchestration was Optimove’s Self-Optimizing Journey capability, which provides the ability to leverage AI decisioning to orchestrate hundreds of micro-moments for each journey, providing each customer with a personalized customer-led journey.

Optimove’s Self-Optimizing Journeys enable marketers to offer each individual customer the most adequate journey that suits them. Self-Optimizing Journeys take into account the history of each customer’s interaction with the brand and calculate the expected increase in lifetime value of serving each campaign, or none at all, to every eligible customer.

As the customer relationship continues to deepen and evolve, a company can use subsequent customer engagements to further enhance customer experiences, further improving customer satisfaction and further strengthening lasting, long-term engagement, and, importantly, building customer lifetime value.

Outstanding Results

This approach enabled the manufacturer to increase revenue per user by $3.5 during the first year after establishing contact. With hundreds of thousands of users, this contributed significantly to the brand’s bottom line. Additionally, the manufacturer’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) jumped by 50%, meaning that the increasingly satisfied customers were more ready to endorse the brand to friends and family and on social media.

The manufacturer’s experience highlights the impact of Post-Purchase Journeys in navigating the challenges of a marketplace-driven ecosystem. By leveraging innovative strategies to capture customer data and initiate personalized interactions, The manufacturer bridged the gap between marketplace transactions and direct engagement, fostering enduring relationships and driving incremental revenue growth.

Revealing these “ghost” customers and transforming them into engaged, known customers — not only deepened relationships — it also unlocked unforeseen revenue streams. Starting marketing with the customer is crucial to driving business success.

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