How to Double Your Customer Repurchase Rate in 2025 - EP 40

Make sure that your product is actually delivering what it's promising. Bad initial transaction, a bad product cannot out-market. Number 1, your product itself. Look into customer service. The offer itself. Talk with your media buying team and see which offers, which promises, which angles have higher retention. Just group all these ads and then correlate them with retention. See what works. Ideally, you will double down on what has higher acquisition rates, and better retention rates down the line. Work with your media buying team. Positioning your initial offer as a starter kit is something that feels more premium. It makes you feel like what I've paid for, it's much, much lower than what this is worth. Overwhelming them with additional value, with freebies, with communities, with things that eventually tackle the 5 key questions. Is this right for me? Is this value for money? Are the claims believable? Can I trust this brand? And what is out there available out there? At the end of the day, the question in the Their mind should be not, should I cancel this? But can't imagine what my life looked like before this.

Theremin?

It's midnight. Midnight. My wife is sleeping. The baby is asleep. I'm awake and I'm—

Got it.

Rock and roll.

All right, well, we appreciate you jumping on the pod here. We are live already, so we're gonna go ahead and jump right into it so we can get you to sleep, dude.

Yeah, let's do that.

All right, we're talking about how to double your customer repurchase rate with Thomas in three, two, one.

From the open to the click, they're the masters of the flow. Just watch your list grow and your leads turn to go. Did we retain you so far, or do we have to extend it? If you want results, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah, you know you gotta send it. Yeah. You know you gotta send it.

What is up everyone? Welcome back to Send It, where we discuss anything and everything retention marketing, specifically in email and SMS marketing and e-commerce. My name is Jimmy Kim and I'm here with my co-host.

Chase Diamond.

Chase, today, episode 40, we're talking about how to double your customer repurchase rate. And we've got a very special guest in the house, Thomas Lawless. Chase, you wanna do the honors and do a little formal introduction and then we'll let Thomas actually do his own?

Yeah, of course. So Thomas, excited to have you here. For everyone listening, Thomas is a retention expert who's worked with 11 category-defining CPG brands, brands you probably know of like Everyday Dose, Physician's Choice, Rise Superfood, Avi, and a bunch of others. And he has 15 years of marketing experience. So the first 8 he spent as an operator and then 7 years specifically in DTC. So he focuses on helping health and wellness brands with subscription-first models, and he's currently working as a fractional director of retention, and he's actually working on an upcoming book on retention systems. So Thomas, excited to have you here.

Yeah, it's wonderful. You know, big fan of everything you're doing. Thanks for spreading the good word of, uh, email marketing retention and really excited about this.

Yeah, someone's got to do it out there in the market, man. Someone's got to talk about this stuff. So we're out there, we're talking, preaching the good word. Some might find it boring, but we find it way too interesting. So here we are.

It's not boring. Retention is the future.

For as much revenue as retention brings to the ground, a lot of people don't take it as serious as they should. And that's why we're out here talking about it. So guys listening here, Thomas is going to join us and we're going to work on 4 things here today. This pod, we're going to do 4 things and the 4 things we're going to do, and I'm going to kind of read it down and we'll jump into it, but The number one thing we're going to do is we're going to talk about the billion-dollar question, why ecommerce brands can't get the buyer from order number 1 to order number 2. You guys know how much we preach about this, Chase and I. We talk about the importance of this, and this is literally your job. Like, your number one job is getting that second order and the third order and so forth. We're also going to jump into what an 85% repurchase rate offer looks like and how to create one. We're going to talk about why the first 14 days make or break your retention make or break your retention strategy, and that's going to be backed by some data. And then of course, last but not least, based on the show title, we're going to tell you how to double your repurchase rate. So Thomas, we're going to start off and we're just going to jump right into that first question. We're going to talk about why e-commerce brands can't get their buyers from order number 1 to number 2. Talk about it. Tell us your theory here. We'd love to hear it.

Yeah, so this is both a theory, but also backed with numbers with my 8 and 9-figure clients. And I realized that there is a set of questions that have to be answered in the buyer's mind so they can feel safe to buy again. So most brands, I guess they just relax when they get the first order coming in. They craft all these beautiful journeys, wonderful ads, you know, amazing narratives, and then they get the sale and then cool, we're done. Right? They feel like the buyer now knows us. They trust us. They will buy again. They know everything there is to know about the brand. You know, Paul, the reality is that a lot of questions that are still in the buyer's mind, they're actually very skeptical. You know, like, is this right for me? Question number one, like, have I made the right choice? Is this going to solve the problem that I want solved? Is this Value for money. Like, have I overpaid for this? Is there anything else that is much more affordable that can do the same thing? You know, it's a question like, have I made the right investment out of so many products out there? So this is question number 2. Is this value for money? Are the claims believable? Okay, so I'm going to get rid of the pain in 14 days. Is this actually doable even? You know, so can I trust this brand? Is the 5th question is, are all these reviews real? Is this AI? Are these real people that have got the problem solved? And then, like, what are my other options? You know, is there any better brands? Anything? Can I just drink water, you know, and solve the problem? Like, you know, what is— can I just go back to what I was doing before, like regular coffee? Am I getting actual benefits from this new coffee? You know, All these questions. And now with the internet, we can't actually figure out if these answers are true or not. ChatGPT, you know, now with sponsored posts in them, you know, it's going to get polluted. And then you see AI-generated content and you don't even know if it's actually factually correct. And all these questions. So now the brands actually believe That they got the first sale and, you know, it's going to lead to a second, third sale because they got the buyer locked in. But the reality is the buyer is more confused than before. It's a trial. The new trial is the first purchase. You know, it doesn't mean they are going to stay loyal. So the big question.

Yeah. You know, Thomas, the big thing about, you know, how brands often think about it is this really big attraction to getting customers, not retaining customers, because they assume that the customers will retain automatically. And look, You know this as much as I do. If you have a really good product that does exactly what it's supposed to do and everyone loves it, the retention repeat rate was going to naturally fall into it no matter how good or bad your marketing is. But to your point, the people who understand that there is a formula in how you're really driving retention to come out are going to be the ones that actually can actually move the needle and increase that relevance and increase that retention rate, which is what people ultimately want, right?

Yeah.

And you know what? I mean, there is even a, to your point, there is a natural point where you've solved the problem. You know, the pain is cured. It's your energy is back up. You know, you've slept enough. You don't need the product anymore. You've graduated from the product. So no retention or loyalty is forever. You know, even if you solve the problem of order 1 to order 2.

That's correct.

It's still the long-term, you know, uh, loyalty is sometimes bad, you know, like cigarettes, for example. They create this addiction where you don't need them, or sugary drinks, but you're loyal because you're addicted now, you know, and this is not a good thing.

Yeah.

So overall, the Billy Donald question is, how can I make the buyer basically go from, I'm skeptical, I just tried this, I'm not quite sure, To, I can't imagine how my life was without this.

Yeah.

So now this is a second purchase and maybe third, fourth, and so on.

Oh, that makes total sense. Chase, what are your thoughts on this?

Yeah, no, it makes a lot, makes a lot of sense. And it leads me to, I'm dying to know what is, what does this 85% repeat purchase rate offer look like that you're talking about and how to create one like that? That's absurd, right? Almost, almost as close to 100%, I think, as you can get. Will you walk us through this? Hey there, it's Chase. Just quick 15 seconds of your time because I have something really fun to share. Did you know that between myself and Jimmy, we have over 20 years of experience in email marketing specifically? And recently we put our minds together and created a certification program that takes all of our knowledge to share with you. It's called Ecom Email Certified. It's an end-to-end course and certification program that's designed to take anyone, regardless of whether you're a newbie or an experienced marketer, founder, executive, agency marketer, et cetera, and really teaches them everything we know about email and SMS marketing. And it really covers the full A through Z, everything from deliverability, AI, copywriting, design, strategy, you name it, we cover it. And it's loaded with over 175 modules. Yes, that's correct. We have 175+ modules and counting, and it's 25+ hours of education combined with quizzes and a community all designed to educate, test, and certify you or your team members to be a full-fledged email marketer for e-commerce. And since you're listening to this pod, we really want to hook you up for your loyalty and hook you up with a $200 off coupon code of the certification. So jump over to ecomemailcertified.com/ You'll find the code over there. And with that, we're now back to the pod.

Yeah, of course. But also here, like a special shout out to Eli Weiss, who basically inspired this billion-dollar question in one of his newsletters. You know, he said the billion-dollar question is this. I'm like, yeah, sounds about right. Shout out, Eli. So the 85% repurchase rate I'm talking about is 30 days later, right? I'm not talking about, hey, you know, 6 months down the line, somebody's going to buy again. This is not what I'm talking about. Talking about somebody buys on day 0 and then day 30, they've purchased again, right? So actually I've worked with brands that have hit, you know, this, this kind of repurchase rate. And I've, you know, played an important role there along with an amazing team back there and amazing product. So it's not just like every single product can make it to 85%. But I've seen brands that have reached up to 95% repurchase, which is kind of like the unicorn, you know, like the utopia of e-commerce. Uh, I don't even know how to get that, you know, so I don't know what they've done, some kind of sorcery, but still 85% is pretty good. I think we'll all agree. So, uh, first of all, it has to do with the product, right? The product has to be something that you enjoy. And in order to find, to make this product quite perfect for people to look forward to buy again, it's not about trickery. It's about making them feel the sensory experience, the benefits, everything that people talk about in the customer service. So every time I take over a brand, I look into customer service queries to see what they're talking about, what their objections are. And then I might send surveys, I might put something together with the post-purchase experience where I collect data nonstop in an automatic fashion, but I try to solve these problems and I get back to the owner or the CMO and I say, hey, you know, the expectations here of what was promised or the quality of the product or solving the actual problem are not there yet. You know, so I've worked with brands where they expected me to solve their retention problem in In 3 months when the customer service, you know, tickets were full of people like, this is a scam. Like, this doesn't work. So there's nothing you can do unless the product is really good. Number 2, it has to do with the actual offer itself. You know, we're talking about an offer that leads to 85% repurchase rate. And it has to do with the promise of the initial ad that people see. Because imagine like you promise that the problem's gonna be solved in a week or 2, you know, and it takes 3 weeks, 4 weeks, which makes sense.

Sure.

You've just overpromised and people live and die on expectations. We have everything we need in the world, but now our expectations are stronger than ever to get what we want. Not just get what we want, but get it faster, more efficiently, cheaper, So if you promise something that the product cannot deliver, people will just hate you for this. They will just instantly cancel, right? Um, the, so it's all about the expectations. What I usually do is promote a timeline of benefits. Let's say there are health benefits in the product and the full benefits can be accessed in 4 months, right? I'm gonna give some imaginary numbers, 4 months. Then I break down Uh, the actual benefits you receive on month 3, month 2, month 1, week 2 even. And then I prepare people like, hey, if you feel nothing for the first 2 or 3 weeks, that's normal. 95% of customers have reported that they start feeling the first benefits by week 3, week 4, et cetera. So I break things down into milestones because this creates the feeling of accessing quick wins. But before they even receive the products of the benefit, what I usually do, and I'm pretty happy that I've kind of invented this approach, is I call it bite-sized premium masterclasses. Instead of just basically dropping information in their face and people call it onboarding, instead I chop it up into bite-sized pieces like 2-minute masterclasses that feel premium. And the buyer gets to know one thing each day that is 2 minutes. And then at the end it says, hey, congratulations, you've completed day 1. I'm stacking up small wins, quick wins before they even get the benefits of the product.

Right.

So it is, um, you, you get the first win, the second win, third win, then eventually you start catching up to the benefits of the product and then you start getting addicted to getting the benefits. And eventually hit the 4-month milestone. So this is what I do, just chop it up.

Yeah, and that's like a direct response type of learning that actually occurs in the market. I remember, you know, I come from a direct response background and we were taught that early on, like, you can't— consumers can't— if you give them a list of benefits, like 20 things, like they can't consume that. All they're going to do is consume the 1 or 2 things off that list that they do. And even trying to get them to remember this is just as hard. And what you're saying basically is, When you're mapping out the journey of retention and how to get them going, you want them to feel small wins continuously. So they're like nodding their head and agreeing with you along the way and not stuck in a, hey, I wanted all these to happen, but the realistic thing is you're kind of bringing them down. Now, I'll ask you this question, right? If you are doing that, which works, there's an alignment that has to happen on your front end with your media buyer, the person who's doing the acquisition. How do you work through that situation? Because Media buyers like to say a lot of things and they want to try anything and everything that comes into place. Yeah.

And sometimes, you know, hitting the ROAS, you know, it's just the goal, you know, getting the numbers, seeing the numbers that the CMO has dictated kind of. Usually when I take over retention for a brand, I become the glue of all departments. So I get in touch with media buy, I get in touch with customer service. I get in touch with the email team, the existing retention team, the CMO, et cetera. So there is alignment, but usually I will talk with media buyers and we'll map out a few promises that we need to make, you know, and some types of creative that will sometimes push acquisition because there are acquisition goals that need to be met, obviously, but also at the same time offering packages, bundles, starter kits, offers that align with retention based on my experience. So we always A/B test things, you know, we always run small budgets into specific offers and then we just have to wait a bit. The downside of retention is that you have to wait.

Yeah.

It's not like what the media buyer is going to unlock, you know, right away, it's going to show in retention. And I've mentioned this on LinkedIn. The anecdote is that there was a great offer that included a seasonal product as a freebie along with the main product. It took off. People really wanted this, it seemed.

Sure.

Because a month later, the CMO saw this amazing acquisition unlocked and they pressed more budget in it. They made it sitewide. But then a few days later, you know, as the new month was being pushed, we got the retention numbers and everything had dropped. And people started canceling almost right away because they want freebie. They want the seasonal thing, not the main product.

Sure.

You know, so eventually everybody panicked and just took it down from the website, stopped pushing, you know, budget into these offers. And they were like, okay, that was a mistake. So not everything that unlocks acquisition actually is great for retention. So yes, this is what I do. Long story short, I talk with the media buying team. We outlined some offers. that we've seen traditionally work well in terms of retention. And then it's always a matter of getting the action numbers with the brand. Retention takes some time.

Yeah, no, that's cool. And, you know, one of the things Chase and I, we talk about all this time is like, you know, we see the evolution. We've been talking about this for a while here. Like, you can't just be an email marketer anymore. You've got to be a retention marketer. And when you're a retention marketer, you're no longer stuck in just this email and SMS program that a lot of people sit in. People are looking for people that are starting to open their mind. I'm almost taking the The idea of like email, SMS, and now layering it into business, layering into customer service, layering into every little part of the departments and really having a better understanding of what's going on. And that sounds like what you're basically saying is that's what's making you successful in your roles that you've had ultimately. Yeah.

Yes, of course. I mean, it's always about evolving, you know, and for me, when I was an offer creator, a business owner transitioning into like getting rid of this side of me, you know, the identity that I've forged around being a business owner into being a service provider. You know, I had to start somewhere. Nobody knew me as a marketer. So I started with content, then with email, then with strategy, and then creative execution, and then analytics, and then eventually all the roles that I'm taking part in right now. But, you know, you gotta learn the ropes and the actual work it needs Um, it takes to create content, you know, for till you become the director, let's say, of all retention. Otherwise you just give orders. And I've seen this with many people, give orders for things you have no direct experience on and they make no sense for, for the person executing and there is misalignment in the team.

Yeah, it makes sense. Um, I want to talk to you now about kind of the, the first 2 weeks, the first 14 days, right? Can we talk about why these first 14 days really make or break your retention? And you mind kind of sharing some of the data that you have here? Hey there, it's Chase, and I hope you're enjoying the pod so far. I want to quickly talk to you about one of our sponsors. And yes, sales tax. I know no one wants to hear this. However, if you are selling online, you're probably spending way too much time, money, and stress on something that needs to be automated. Enter Kintsugi. They're named after the Japanese art of turning raw pottery. Into something beautiful and resilient. And that's exactly what they do for your tax chaos. Their AI monitors, files, and optimizes your sales tax automatically across all states and jurisdictions. We're talking about saving you some serious time. Their average customer saves 9 hours every single month. That's over 100 hours a year that you're going to get back to focus on actually growing your business. And here's where it gets really good. No longer will you have to have expensive tax professionals that eat into your profits. Uh, Kintsugi's AI handles compliance with a 98.3% reduction in errors. That's practically bulletproof accuracy. And they have many one-click integrations with your existing systems. That means the setup is painless and their white glove support team has your back every step of the way. Sales tax headaches? Consider them eliminated forever. And it's for e-commerce, SaaS, and even agencies. Really anyone that pays a sales tax needs this and they need Kintsugi. And we have a very, very special offer for you. So if you mention myself and Jimmy, you'll get 3 months completely free. That's 3 months of automated tax filing, perfect compliance, and getting your life back. Visit trykintsugi.com and mention Jimmy and myself for your 3-month head start.

Yes. Absolutely. So this is all, this is not anecdotally, this is the data that I've collected with multiple brands. And what I've seen is that the first 14 days basically are kind of the foundation of the belief of the person, whether they should buy again or not. Usually the trigger that makes them decide is the billing reminder. As we know, this is where the churn spikes. But the belief is forged in the first 2 weeks. And this is what I've seen, you know, based on collecting data. So let's assume that the first 4 to 5 days is all about fulfilling the offer, you know, sending the package, et cetera. Let's say it's 1 week and then the other week is just the initial experience. What I usually do is the pre-delivery, period is the place where I overwhelm the, uh, the buyer with a lot of perceived value and a lot of freebies. I position everything as a freebie and as additional value. So be it an SMS club, be it a health tracker so you know when you take your dose and you have a visual cue that you could print maybe and put a magnet on your fridge. Uh, some, some brands have even used apps where you lock in, you know, when you've taken the pill or when you've taken the dose, et cetera. The free community, a free community is the best freebie. I've correlated participation in a community and LTV and retention. It's always far superior for people that participate in communities. So if a brand can afford to have one person to to take over the community, this will bring huge ROI and repurchase rate and overall loyalty. So, um, I will offer all these upfront value that usually I don't even advertise. We don't advertise that, hey, you're going to be a part of our community and hey, you're going to get these freebies and digital downloads and, and this and that. This is something that surprises people. You know, you, you know, you're going to get all these freebies in the package, but what about Before receiving the package. And then a crucial element that for me, it's a no-brainer, but a lot of brands still, I have to install it for the brands. Where is my order reminders? You know, the, the AfterShips and the Wondermans of the Malomos of this world, basically just letting people feel safe that, hey, your order has shipped. You know, it's coming in a few days and here's where it is. And with branded pages, uh, with, you know, tracking pages, you can even upsell them or show them, introduce them to a new product or have a Q&A and answer their questions. So all these things need to happen before the product has even been delivered because buyers have buyer's remorse. They're not sure. We said the 5 questions. So now they've received it. And what I usually do, which works extremely well, is I, at the peak of their enthusiasm when they receive the package, I prompt them to either mention this in the Facebook group or the community, like share their enthusiasm with a video or a photo of, hey, I just received my package, I'm so excited. Or even better, direct them to an ad that is printing and stack up social proof below the ad, we've seen ads with thousands of comments of, hey, I just got mine. Imagine how well this, this ad is going to go when all these people are actually saying, hey, I just got it. You know, and it feels amazing.

No, that makes total sense.

So this is the first part and let's take a step back and then I'll talk about the second part.

Sure.

Any, any, any questions or any—

No, no, it's very clear what you're talking about. I totally understand. So keep going. I love it. Keep going. I'm intrigued by what the next part is like.

Yeah, the second part is all about shifting the gears of belief into them locking in their own mind that this is what I need.

Okay.

So we start with this education, with this onboarding, just like video games that they give you some easy quests to complete and then you're like, oh, you know, I'm already level 5, level 10, you know, let's keep going. And then it gets harder and harder, but you're already hooked. So these quick wins with a bite-sized premium masterclass. classes. Um, and what I've seen, which is— it was amazing to see and then see repeat again and again— is at the end of each masterclass, I offer a tiny upsell.

Okay.

More of the same product they bought. Or I will even ask them questions like, if they bought something about focus, I'll ask them a question, how was your sleep, um, in, in the last week, you know, 1 to 5? And if they say it was 1, 2, 3, even they're potential candidates for a cross-sell down the line. Ah, but usually if they like the, the product, um, they will take the, the upsell. And statistically I've seen that if they participate in one masterclass, 33% of these people take an upsell or a cross-sell. So eventually they become one of the most profitable, um, parts of the audience. So imagine my emails, these specific emails look like notifications and nothing fancy, like, hey, day 1 of your masterclass is here. You know, they click and it's like 10, 15% click rate. You know, it's just a lot of engagement. Eventually I found that about 20% of people in each cohort get somehow positively influenced by these masterclasses because even if they don't take the upsell, even if they just browse through 1 or 2 masterclasses, they will get some kind of value. So they will get positively influenced about the products. And I've seen that the correlation between participation in masterclasses and upsells obviously and retention, right? So 20% of people will have a positive impact on retention. And I think statistically it ends up being about 10 to 12% of people taking an upsell. So that's a big part, you know, of people upgrading. So this is, this is like 4 to 5 days. At the end, there's a graduation. Hey, you know, here's your graduation only bundle. You put something cool together. Uh, you send some reminders if they haven't accessed it. Uh, and then after that, on the day 7 or day 8 of post-delivery, this is triggered from the delivery event. You know, it's not like placed order trigger is delivery order delivered. Uh, trigger. And then on, on day 7 or day 8, they will receive a check-in, uh, from customer service or the founder.

Okay.

And usually this, uh, reveals who's gonna be a long-term loyalist or somebody that might churn. I found something very, very interesting. People that, that report that they feel early benefits as soon as like one week in, by month 5, they have double the retention of everybody else. So if by month 5 retention is 30%, these people have 60%. They stay, they're much stickier. And this has become kind of my, my own mission for, for my brands to control the perception of benefits or even direct their attention towards the benefits as much as possible so that people can feel the benefits much faster. Call it placebo effect, call it the red car effect, where when you buy a red car, you start noticing red cars all around just because you've seen yours and now you see it everywhere. You know, directing their attention. Let's say again, let's go back to sleeping better. Your product helps them sleep better, but they got caffeine, they got another pill they're trying, they changed their diet. Which one's responsible for their better sleep? You know, if you tell them, hey, pay attention to these little, you know, things. If they happen to you, most likely it's the product that is helping you and your body's adjusting and, you know, becoming calmer so you sleep better, right? So you direct their attention towards what you want them to feel or what you want them to notice. So this is what's happening in the first 7 days. You know, you educate them, you onboard them. You give them quick wins, you check in, and then you collect this data and you see how they relate to retention. Usually people that feel they rank higher at usual objections like taste or, you know, some other common objections, these people tend to have higher loyalty. But your opportunity is people that say 1, 2, 3 out of 5 for common objections. You can tackle this down the line now that you have the data.

Yeah.

With a freebie or with a solution, or you can send them, let's say, recipes if they don't like the taste, right? So you can find a solution. Or let's say you're selling a creamer. We've done this. You give away the creamer. All they have to do is add it to the next order. They, they, in order to access it, they shouldn't cancel, right? So, right. These kind of things where you personalize the journey based on your data. So this is what's happening in the first 2 weeks. There's a lot going on. Sometimes it's even daily emails or daily SMS, but it's all about personalizing the journey and this true lifecycle, true lifecycle approach.

Hey, okay, I'm disrupting the pod for just a quick 60-second break and a quick little shout out to our title sponsors of the podcast, Omnisend. Okay, for those that don't know, Omnisend is an all-in-one email and SMS marketing automation platform specifically designed for e-commerce brands. They make it super easy to engage with customers, drive repeat sales, and create those seamless personal experiences we're always talking about. Here's 3 things I love about Omnisend. First and foremost, they're trusted by over 125,000 e-commerce merchants worldwide that absolutely love them. With a 4.8 rating star with over 6,000 reviews on the Shopify App Store, it's an obvious choice for your email, SMS, and push needs. Secondly, I love great customer support, and Omnisend, they're absolutely nailing it. They're responsive, their help docs are great, and their team is absolutely fantastic. And third, they have great features and better pricing. Pricing matters just as much as features, and Omnisend, you're going to get both of those. And they have all the features you need for your store, and their pricing is absolutely fantastic. In fact, recently I just heard a story about 2 community members that made the switch. One reduced his price from $8,500 to $3,500 Which is huge, but even bigger, that $3,500 included SMS, which is absolutely wild. Then another agency I just recently talked to, they just switched their entire client base over, and he's been saving his clients anywhere from 30 to 60% off their bill, which is allowing them to take that money and reinvest it on the top of the funnel so they can make more ads and make more money. Omnisend nails these 3 things that I care most about: great support, great features, and fair pricing. pricing. Plus, I just helped Chase make the move to Omnisend with his own personal email list, and their migration was super easy. They even have a team to help you, support you, and they have a great automated tool to bring your contacts right over. So if you're looking to take your email marketing to the next level, I highly recommend checking out Omnisend. They got the tools, the automation, the expertise to help your brands grow and thrive. Head over to omnisend.com/sendit to learn more and start scaling your customer engagement today. Now let them know Chase and Jimmy sent you. Now let's get back to the pod. No, I love it. And you know, one of the things that I would say is that it does take a little bit of rigor and effort here. I mean, you know, a lot of traditional, and you have met this before with plenty of teams before with email and SMS teams, they're doing 900 other things and they have got this little side job of doing their retention. And obviously you've worked in some high-growth brands, so you've got more focused attention, but I think the struggle that people have is you've kind of given them all the micro steps of what to do, but the reality is they don't find the time to do that. And I think this is where like AI and different things right now are kind of hopefully offset a lot of this stuff. And hopefully into the future, we'll start to see more and more products and tools that can help you basically. I mean, you're basically talking about lifecycle and RFM, but micro, uh, getting really focused and asking and surveying and getting feedback loops and interactions with your customers. So that makes a lot of sense there. Thomas, how do we double our repurchase rate? What's the magic here? You know, that's the last part of this thing. And I would love to get into that and say, understand, how do we double your repurchase rate? Give our listeners something they can take away that they can go apply and they can figure out how to double it. Because if you can double everyone's repurchase rate, that is like the human magic that we can do in the market. And we can probably shut this pod down afterwards.

Yeah. So I think because we've mostly talked about every single element, you know, I'm just going to put them back together.

Yeah, put them back together and give us that tactical move there. What, what should they do?

Yeah, let's do this. So first of all, uh, look into your customer service and make sure that your product is actually delivering what it's promising. So this is number one, a bad initial transaction, a bad product cannot out-market You know, um, a post-purchase experience that sucks. So number one, your product itself, look into customer service. Number 2, the offer itself. Uh, talk with your media buying team and see which offers, which promises, which angles have higher retention. You know, just group all these ads and then correlate them with retention. See what works. Ideally, you will double down on what has higher acquisition rates. And better retention rates down the line, right? It takes time. So number 2 is this, work with your media buying team. Number 3, it's, I would say it's about the experience.

Okay.

Usually positioning your initial offer as a starter kit is something that feels more premium. It makes you feel like what I've paid for, it's much, much lower than what this is worth it. You know, so having a premium experience through a starter kit, I would say number 4 would be the pre-delivery experience, overwhelming them with additional value, with freebies, with communities, with things that eventually tackle the 5 key questions. Is this right for me? Is this value for money? Are the claims believable? Can I trust this brand? And what is out there available out there? After the delivery, this onboarding momentum with quick wins, with premium bite-sized masterclasses that are 2 minutes long, they have an upsell or a cross-sell at the end or a celebration.

Right.

So the first 5 days and then you check in to see if they felt already the benefits, you know who your superstars are. And then I would say down the line, It's all about reinforcing lifestyle and habits. This is what I usually do. I show the face of the founder. I will show recipes, stories from the audience and help them relate the product with their life. Because at the end of the day, when rebilling comes on day 27, 26, the question in their mind should be not, should I cancel this? But I can't imagine what my life looked like before this.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And then a little hack that I really like, but it's sometimes just a logistical nightmare to pull off, is instead of a 30-day billing cycle, having a 28, a 4-week billing cycle, because for most people will not make a change, but for the loyal ones, you get 8.333% additional LTV in a year, which is always great in the tough times.

I love that. That's a little small hack, but it's truthful, right? Like, that works since every 4 weeks is more realistic to human terminology than it is monthly because of the 30 or 31 or 28 days. So that makes sense. Thomas, what's this book you got going?

Oh, go ahead. I'm gonna drop one final thing.

Okay.

One final thing, which I keep fine-tuning. Ideally, I can outsource this to AI in the near future. I'm working on this with some of your friends, Aurelien, giving this a try. But since you're sending all these emails and all these touchpoints, but there's always a fallback version, you're collecting all this information. Now you have a lot of information to eventually, uh, either manually, which is what I do, I put them in buckets or through AI, you can tag people whether they're about to renew. So the loyal ones, or they're about to churn, or it's a toying cost in the middle. For people that are about to churn, they're predicted to churn. I usually give them a freebie they can claim with their neck with one click. And all we have to do is not cancel, right? Usually that's a no-brainer that keeps them for an additional month and giving them more time. Usually the product kicks in and now they're hooked because of the benefits, right? And they stay much longer. But if they are loyal, supposed to be loyalists, then usually what I do is I upsell them, uh, at a 3-month bundle.

Got it.

So you're accelerating the sale. Yes. Because what I found is that the churn point for most brands is month So if you get them past month 4, or if from month 1 you push them into having enough product for month 4, then you've kind of locked them in. Like usually it's the 80/20, 20% of churn happens after month 4, the majority happens in the first 4 months. So that's why usually I don't offer this to everyone because it alienates people, makes them feel like, I don't even like the product, why do you ask me to pay more? You know, but the people that really like the product, you reinforce their beliefs, you speak their language, you lock them in for 3 more months. And eventually this is more money upfront for you. That's the only time I offer a discount. And hopefully with Rayleigh or another service, AI will actually attach an individual prediction per person so we can have a truly individualized approach towards the billing cycle, end of the billing cycle. So. This is the little hack, you know, this is what I'm working on right now, AI and true data analysis. So yeah.

Oh, that's super cool. And I love that, right? With Raytheon especially, they're one of the— one of our sponsors of this pod as well. And they're a great partner of ours. I think that what they're doing over there is really attacking the dataset and making it usable. And that sounds like what you're talking about. So the question I have for you as we wrap this thing up, man, you mentioned a book. Is your book all about what you just basically shared with us here today?

I wrote the book about this, this very thing, but then I realized, you know what, I'd rather keep this for myself. I've worked on this for 7 years. I'd rather not make it available just now yet. There is, there is a pro— a project in progress. I'm talking with someone who might actually make it available for a lot of brands as an educational framework.

Okay.

More on this in the near future. Uh, but I started working on another book and I'm about to finish this and it's going to come out in, in August, I guess.

Okay.

And, uh, I've invited you to write the foreword and you're going to write the foreword. So overall, the book is about retention economics with the tariffs and unexpected hikes, uh, in, in, in costs and with CAC increasing every single month without fail, overall brands really need to understand that retention is the cure for every single problem. Just like in sales, having a pipeline is always the cure for every lost client. Retention is the cure for every single price hike.

100%.

So I've broken down a model. I've created a pyramid where it basically shows where your brand is. I've created a tool where you just input your P&L and it just diagnoses the situation in your brand. And it gives you personalized recommendations as if it was me doing it manually. So I took a lot of time creating this and I'm almost done with the book. So I'm really excited about this.

Cool.

Well, dude, this pod comes out, I'm looking at the schedule right now. It's scheduled for 7/22. So it should be right before your book comes out. So hopefully we give you a little pre-hype and people start looking for your book as we get to that stage.

Wonderful.

Amazing.

Great timing.

Well, Thomas, thank you, man, for jumping on so late to tell us that. It was really intriguing. You know, a lot of these principles, you put it in a different way than we probably talk about it, but we agree with you in a lot of ways. And, you know, obviously that education, listening to your customers, tying in your business goals, your inventory, and everything else comes into the retention is obviously spot on to the beliefs that Chase and I have. Within what we do every day and how we help brands and how we work with our community and so forth. So thank you for being on this thing. With that, I'm going to wrap this episode up and say that's a wrap for episode 40, How to Double Your Customer's Repurchase Rate. Guys, if you enjoyed this pod, as always, make sure you like, subscribe, follow, leave us a rating, and comment below and let us know what you thought about this pod. You can follow this show on X, LinkedIn, YouTube, IG, TikTok, and so many other places. As well. There's a couple ways to connect with us. Number one and foremost, if you want to connect with us on a newsletter level because you like newsletters, you like email, we have a newsletter that goes out every single day called ecomemailmarketer.com. We drop a newsletter daily about retention marketing. We do a ton of breakdowns. We do, you know, things around things that we're talking about and seeing in the market. We try to share that with you. Secondly, we have a course and a community available. If you're interested in learning more about that, look into the show notes descriptions and you'll be able to get that information. So, Thomas, where could they find you on social media?

I'm on LinkedIn every day. Thomas Lalas. I guess they're going to be linked down below.

Yeah, we will throw that link down below so you guys connect with Thomas. He is on LinkedIn. If you want to connect with Thomas, learn more, especially if you're in subscription, it sounds like that's where it could really shine. If you want to reach out, please reach out to him and talk to him and say hello. Or if you just want a copy of his book, find out where to get that from by following the social. Chase, where could they find you on social?

Most platforms, Chase Diamond, no A in Diamond.

There you go. Even on Threads and Facebook as well too. So I like to plug that because he's forefronting that for me and proving that I should be on there and I'm already late. And then of course, last but not least, myself, you can find me on LinkedIn, Next Year Today. With that, that's a wrap. We're coming back next week. We were going to come back this week with copywriting, but instead we're going to push that the next week. So I mentioned that last show, but Next week, we're going to talk about copywriting. That's Chase's favorite topic. We're going to break it down. We're going to talk about a depth of how copy needs to be at forefront just as much as retention and everything else you're thinking about. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you, Thomas, for joining us. Thanks, Chase, as always. And with that, that's a wrap. We'll see you guys next week.

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