Retailers have always known that giving shoppers a little something extra after their purchase – product samples, coupons, invitations to friends-and-family events – is an effective way to build loyalty and encourage repeat business. Online stores are now replicating the experience with post-purchase advertising, allowing them to build customer relationships while generating incremental revenue. By partnering with non-endemic brands, these stores are turning post-purchase confirmation pages into high-impact commerce media ad inventory.
P.J. Triboletti, head of partner development at Fluent, emphasized that this approach should not be confused with retail media, which occurs on-site. Fluent, a commerce media solutions provider, focuses on post-purchase advertising, reaching customers with tailored offers as they receive confirmation of their online purchase. Commerce media monetizes those checkout moments and adds post-sale advertisements that function like the old gift-with-purchase at the department store.
The missed opportunity in post purchase
Don’t underestimate the importance of that post-purchase moment, when the shopper is already engaged and primed to shop. “Unless that retailer or merchant monetizes the post-purchase moment, it’s nothing more than exit traffic. It’s just: ‘Thank you so much for your purchase. Here’s your order receipt, and see you later.’ There are no additional opportunities for the customer to engage with the brand.”
Presenting a customer with a personalized offer makes them feel recognized, while allowing the brand to generate additional net margin on the purchase, Triboletti said, Fluent engages shoppers after they complete their transaction, offering relevant add-ons, services, or incentives that drive additional revenue and engagement. This gives the merchant the chance to increase revenue, build CRM databases, and monetize a moment that often goes unnoticed, said Triboletti.
“It’s the only media in the world where the customer has a credit card in their hand. The premium and the ability to drive that engagement is second to none,” said Triboletti. “Why not present shoppers with an offer as a ‘thank you’ for making that purchase, drive better loyalty to the brand—because that’s where they discovered the offering—and also make a significant net margin from a moment that is currently underutilized?”
Post-purchase ads bridge the gap between on-site retail media and off-site commerce media. By leveraging customer data, post-purchase ads can drive site traffic to other merchants, helping the retailer site generate additional revenue and deepen its relationship with shoppers through personalized offers. For example, Fluent worked with a major sportswear retailer that saw an increase of over 27% in the customer lifetime value and a 35% increase in revenue per transaction after integrating post-purchase ads.
Discovery not disruption
The trick is to put the customer back in discovery mode after the purchase by offering them a complementary product that aligns with their needs and interests, said Triboletti. Using first, second, and third-party data, with an assist from machine learning, helps refine the targeting so the consumer receives relevant offers. Triboletti noted that Fluent has generated more than 200 million first-party audience profiles that can be matched to merchants’ databases through its privacy-safe, proprietary identity graph.
These consumer profiles create opportunities for more accurate targeting and more relevant offers, delivering better results for the merchants and the advertisers they partner with, said Triboletti. “Having that level of precision is exactly how you want to drive further alignment with the brand, which is something more retailers need to invest in,” he said.
Data helps set commerce media apart from the “if you bought that, you might like this” upselling, which is common on many retail websites, said Triboletti. That merely adds to the friction that can turn off shoppers, he said.
“Cross-selling is essentially putting someone back into ‘I just walked through the door of the store.’ You’re having shoppers repeat a cycle of going through and rediscovering a new and similar product. That experience creates more potential for disruption,” said Triboletti. Instead, a trial subscription, loyalty membership, or another attractive offer is bound to be a more exciting opportunity for the customer”. Avoiding the disruption is “table stakes,” said Triboletti. ”No retailer or merchant ever wants to have any potential cause for disruption in the path to purchase. They spend a fortune on branding, direct response, influencers, and social, all to drive consumers to their site,” he said. For merchants, their partners, and the vendors in their tech stack, the potential of disrupting the path to purchase is “a massive mistake” and an expensive one.Post-purchase offers help to eliminate that risk.
“There are other places that you can potentially monetize, but most of the time, it risks disrupting the path to purchase,” Triboletti said. “I don’t think that juice is worth the squeeze—ever.”
