09 Feb Thanking your customers with no CTA will improve customer engagement

Do you remember when you were a child, how often you would hear the phrases ‘don’t forget your manners’, ‘where’s your manners’ or ‘what do you say?’ I heard them regularly, and now as a parent I find myself saying them constantly!

At such a young age, the words please and thank you were instilled in all of us. Yet, unfortunately we haven’t always applied them in later life. We recently conducted a significant piece of research ‘The Unspoken Customer’, which revealed that six out of ten customers are rarely or never thanked after making a purchase. Quite shocking isn’t it?! 

Back to basics

Brands are investing copious amounts of their budget into creative customer acquisition campaigns, yet when they get the customer through the door, it seems many are failing at the basics. Our research taught us that whilst customers are not being thanked – they are being asked for their feedback. Nine out of ten customers to be precise. What precedence does this set? From the offset, brands are putting themselves above their customer. Tell us how good we were, would you recommend a friend? will you come back? etc.

It has to stop.

Why wouldn’t you thank your customers? After all, they chose your brand over the many alternative options that were available to them. We regularly talk about the moneymoon period – the best time to engage your customers. Recognition is the very first step of the path to repurchase. A thank you goes a very long way!

But no CTA? Seriously?

Yep! Nothing!

For marketers, the CTA is one of the most important factors of the comms they share with their customers. They’re constantly trying to encourage/influence them to make another purchase/refer a friend/provide feedback. Don’t even get me started on the feedback reminder comms – they take shocking to the next level. What I’m saying is there’s always some form of ask or request of the customer. What if every now and again, you contact them without asking for anything in return. Nothing. No special offer, no sale announcement, no feedback request – just a simple thanks, or recognition of their loyalty. You’d be surprised the difference it can make.

It’s been tried and tested

We originally discovered the effect of the ’thank you/no ask’ a few years ago. We were working with a well-known national QSR franchise, helping them to improve their moneymoon. Following several A/B tests to learn which post-purchase comms proved to be most effective, one of our Data Scientists made the suggestion of removing the CTA. We were astounded with the result! For the customer group who received a simple thank you and nothing more – we saw a reduction in the time between their first and second purchase reduced by 34 days. It was phenomenal.

Since then, we continue to recommend this approach and continue to see the results. 

A customer first approach

So there you have it – something that’s so simple and quick to implement, yet incredibly powerful and guaranteed to improve customer engagement.

Put your customer first, recognise them, appreciate them, respect them. Put them on a path to repurchase. Your first communication with the customer post-purchase should be about them, not your brand. Then the next time you contact them, they are much more likely to listen to what you have to say. 

No call to action from us – just a very big thank you for reading. Have a great day! 🙂 

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