E-Commerce Growth Strategy: How to Convert First-time Buyers into Repeat Customers with Email Marketing

If you’re chasing ecommerce growth numbers in Singapore, here’s a hard truth: getting someone to buy once is the easy part. Getting them to come back is where the money is.

A good repeat purchase strategy is crucial for ecommerce brands. There are multiple channels you can pursue for it, but email marketing remains one of the cheapest and most reliable options.

That’s why today’s guide will focus chiefly on it. We’ll break down a practical repeat purchase strategy that local online sellers can use without needing a big marketing team or budget.

Why Use Email for Customer Retention?

Social media algorithms change all the time, and paid ads seem to get pricier every quarter. Email has remained rock-solid through all of that, however.

Email goes straight to a customer’s inbox without being subjected to the ever-changing churn of trends and algorithms. Industry analyses consistently rank the channel among the highest-ROI ones available.

This makes it a potentially high-efficiency, high-return path for marketers who want to make the most of every dollar they invest in a channel.

Email Marketing Strategies for Repeat Purchases

Optimise the Welcome Email

The welcome email is your first chance to turn a one-time shopper into someone who comes back. It can also be automated so that it goes out the second someone makes their first purchase or sign-up.

A good welcome email should do several things, if possible: 

• Thank the customer

• Set expectations for what they’ll receive

• Include a small incentive for their next order, like a promo code

This acknowledges their purchase while also giving them a clear reason to purchase from you again. 

Also, Singaporean shoppers tend to respond well to time-limited offers. This could range from exposure to flash sales on platforms like Shopee and Lazada.

To capitalise on this, try including welcome discounts or offers in your first email that have an expiration date. This can nudge people back to your platform faster than those with no deadline.

Build Your Strategy Around the Post-Purchase Window

The period after someone gets their order is when they’re most engaged with your brand. That’s why it’s also the best time to send them care tips, recommendations, and the like.

Let’s say someone buys a set of skincare products from you. A follow-up email with a routine guide for those products adds value to your communication. At the same time, it reminds them that your shop is there for their restocking or even other skincare needs.

You can even craft a sequence from this that covers delivery updates, product tips, or even suggestions for related products.

Segment Your List

Every email marketer worth their salt will tell you to do this. And rightfully so! 

Customers aren’t all the same. Blasting your entire list with identical emails is one of the best ways to get ignored or sent to the Spam folder. 

Segment your audience instead according to the points that make the most sense. Do it by purchase history, for example, or browsing behaviour. You can even do it by the recency of their last order.

This allows you to send the right message to each person at the stage they’re in for the customer journey. You wouldn’t send a first-time buyer the same message as someone who’s already bought your product five times, would you?

Win Back Customers Who Haven't Repurchased

Do you have customers who bought once and then vanished into thin air? Everyone does. And the best thing to do is to try to win them back.

Send an email to them after a period of inactivity. You never know who among them will return, and it’s a relatively low-effort way to reactivate leads!

Acknowledge that it’s been a while, show them what’s new, and then sweeten the deal with an offer. Do at least a couple of attempts. 

If they still don’t reply, let that segment go knowing that you tried. It’s better than risking your sender reputation with constantly unopened emails.

Reward Loyalty, and Do It Simply

You don’t even need to construct a complex points system for this. Just make your customers feel valued with something as simple as one of these: 

• An email thanking them for their third order or thereabouts, with a small perk or promo code 

• Birthday or account anniversary emails 

• VIP early access to special sales

Just tap into people’s pleasure at feeling recognised. This is a winning customer retention ecommerce strategy, as it can turn a one-time buyer into a true fan.

Recover Abandoned Carts 

Cart abandonment is common, and thankfully also pretty fixable! Set up simple reminder emails sent a few hours after someone leaves items in their cart.

It can help you recover a meaningful chunk of lost sales. If you add a small incentive to a second follow-up email, you might get a surprising number of customers to continue to checkout.

Just don’t do it for each customer who abandons a cart, of course. You have to control the frequency, or you’ll demolish your own margins.

How to Tell If It’s Actually Working

Sending nice emails is one thing, but knowing if they’re moving the needle is another. Are you actually getting decent customer retention? To answer that, you need to know a few key numbers.

• Repeat Purchase Rate - The percentage of customers who buy from you more than once. This is a direct sign of retention efforts paying off if it goes up. 

• Customer Lifetime Value - How much revenue a customer generates over their entire relationship with your brand. It helps you justify spending more to keep them around.

• Purchase Frequency - How often the average customer buys within a given period. 

• Time Between Purchases - How long the gap is between each customer’s purchases, which can be useful for timing email sequences.

• Email Engagement Rates - Opens and clicks. These act as supporting signals.

Invest in a Strategy That Has Customers Coming Back

Ultimately, a solid strategy here can reap dividends for your business. Repeat customers aren’t just “nice to have”. In some cases, they can even become your most reliable source of revenue!

Need help setting up a system for this? That’s exactly the kind of thing we help Singapore businesses with, among other digital marketing strategies. Reach out to us for a chat so we can help you figure out what you need.