How do I follow up with customers after they buy?

A simple way to gain referrals and repeat customers

Most times after a customer purchases something from a business, the business stops talking to them and neglects to keep in touch.

That's unfortunate because one of the easiest times to get someone’s attention is after they've shown they like you enough to spend their money with you.

Even more, it's the biggest opportunity we have to make someone who's a customer want to come back and become a repeat customer.

I recently read a book called “Giftology” by John Ruhlin. The book gives a full guide on how you can use gifts to keep in touch with your customers and make them wanna keep coming back. The rest of this article will explain how I've been using what I learned from the book, and how you can use it too.

Note — While I’m writing this article in the context of gifting a customer, these lessons also apply when sending gifts to members of your team. This increases the connection that your team members feel to the place they work.

Step 1 - Pick a good gift

“What would make a great gift for (insert person)?”

For people like me, this can be a tough question to answer. That question has terrorized me at times because I just don’t know the right answer in most cases. But luckily the “Giftology” book gives a pretty straight forward list of the things that make up a good gift:

• Get gifts that the person can use again and again. Ask myself “would this person use (insert gift. likely an item or service) 5+ times in the next month?

• When you give a gift, try to give one that the person & their whole family, friend group, or work team/staff will benefit from or enjoy too — not just them

• No food or beverages. There’s a lot of ways that could go wrong and get a negative response, so manage risks and just avoid that for the most part

• No gift cards(too basic)

• If you’re giving a gift to someone working on your team or one of your customers, it shouldn’t have your company logo on it. That says “I wanna give you this so you can advertise my company” more than it says “I care about you and I’m giving you this without expecting anything in return”

To think of a gift that fits the criteria above, I’ve found it useful to copy and paste the following bolded text into Chat GPT or a similar AI app:

Please give a list of gift ideas for my customer considering the rules and notes below:

• Rules — The gift must be something they’ll use 5+ times in the next month. Will the gift benefit the customer’s friends or family members too? No food or beverages. No gift cards. Nothing that seems like I’m “gifting” a branded or promotional item

• Did they mention having any goals, problems, recent accomplishments, or special occasions? — (insert your answer)

• What do I know about their background? — (insert your answer)

• What are their likes and interests? — (insert your answer)

• What's their gender(that they I.D as)? — (insert your answer)

• What's their age or age range? — (insert your answer)

Wherever you see “(insert your answer)”, please type any answers you might have to the correlated question.

Finally, generate the list of gift ideas and pick the one that you think best fits the criteria.

Step 2 - Always make your gifts as personalized as possible.

The easiest way to make a gift feel special to the person receiving it is to make the gift personal. Now that you've picked the gift you wanna send to your customer, here are a few tips to make it as personal as possible:

• If you can, opt to get the person’s name or a short message printed onto the item. For example, don’t just get a generic mug. Get them a mug with their name or nickname, or a funny quote that they always say printed on it

• Always send a hand written note with anything physical. If it’s not a physical gift, still send a nice personal note or message over text or something

• If at all possible, don’t get something shipped directly to the person from the store or site you bought it at. For example, try not to just get an Amazon box sent to someone. Instead, get it shipped to yourself first so you can make it personal(maybe wrap the box or add a nice note or something). Then send it to the person

Step 3 - Decide when you'll send or give the gift

This part is pretty easy. Just pick a day. But before you do that, keep this rule in mind: Don’t send gifts on the obvious dates like holidays and birthdays. Gifts are much better received when they’re unexpected.

• Avoid November 15th to January 1st. That’s holiday season, and it’s the easiest time for your gift to get lost in the shuffle. Besides that, don’t send a gift within 30 days after a major holiday or their birthday. They might be receiving a lot of other gifts at this time making it harder for yours to standout

• A good number of times to gift a person in a year is 2 to 4 times(once a quarter, or once every other quarter). More than that can seem excessive

• Don’t send a gift to a customer right after they made a purchase or bought from you because that seems more like a transaction than just giving out of care for them. It says “you bought from me, so I’m sending you this ‘gift’ in return” more so than it says “I was just thinking about you”. Instead, set a reminder on your calendar to send the gift a month or 2 after the purchase so it’s unexpected

• That last tip also applies to gifting a member of your team that helped you or did a favor. Again, if you gift them right after they helped you, it seems transactional(you helped me, so now I’m sending you this “gift” in return).

Once you've decided on a date and sent the gift, you're done. All that's left is for your customer to open it and feel appreciation for you.

One thing I can see being a concern for many people is “What if I can't afford to buy gifts for all my customers?” To deal with this cover:

• Use (1)creativity and (2)focusing on fewer people to overcome what you lack in money or a “gifts budget”

• In the AI prompt provided in Step 1, change the the first sentence from “Please give a list of gift ideas…” to “Please give a list of free gift ideas…”

• If you have no budget for this at all, just send a personal thank you note to your customers and make sure it’s hand written. That goes a long way.