How do you make your Etsy Shop stand out among the rest? Here are a few Etsy seller tips that I’ve used myself to facilitate repeat customers in my Etsy shop. With these Etsy marketing tips, you don’t just get new customers, you will get repeat and loyal customers as well. Believe me, this is a game-changer!
Customer Experience is Key
How do you stand out amongst the crowd?
There are so many things you can do to stand out on Etsy. The one we’re going to discuss today is related to customer service.
I recently read a book titled “Hug your customers.” I’m a hugging type of girl, but the challenge is, “how do you do this online”? How do you provide such incredible customer service that gets people coming back again and again?
Based on my experience, if you are selling to someone who has already purchased from you in the past, it is so much easier to sell to them again compared to selling to new customers.
If you treat every customer you have like they are the most important part of your business, I think you’re going to stand out among other sellers. They will notice something different in your Etsy Shop. That’s one way to create repeat customers.
It is important to leave a great impression on someone who has purchased a product from you. If you do that, they will eventually come back to see what else you have to offer. There’s also a bigger chance that they will refer you to their friends and family.
So how do you leave an impression and provide great customer service?
It’s really about having character and integrity – it’s not something that you can fake. It comes out sincerely from your heart when you truly care for your customers.
As I’ve mentioned, I have a lot of Etsy seller tips that you can do to stand out on Etsy. But first, let me discuss with you a few things you CANNOT do on Etsy.
Things you CANNOT do on Etsy:
1. If you get a notification that somebody favorites your listing, you can’t message that person with a coupon code or a promotion. Etsy can send marketing promotions for you but you can’t reach out and market to them through email yourself.
2. You can’t send an email or a message to customers who purchased from other shops but not from your shop. That’s against Etsy’s rules. You can only message customers with transactional emails.
Those are the two big no-nos when it comes to sending a communication on Etsy.
Transactional Emails on Etsy
There are four times that you can send an email to customers after they buy from your shop on Etsy. But these four times gives you an opportunity to develop an email message that will include your personality and the things that will draw your customer to you and help you give over-the-top customer service.
Here are the four different emails you can send to your customers.
First Contact: After the Sale Has Been Made
Immediately after the sale has been made you can contact your customer and say, “Hey, I got your order. I’ll be shipping it out soon. When I do, I’ll let you know.” You can say it that way or you can craft an email exactly for this purpose, according to your personality and character.
Second Contact: When You Ship the Item.
Etsy automatically sends customers an email once their orders are shipped. But these are kind of dry and general transactional emails. What you can do instead is you can send them a very fun, personality-driven and personalized email that has some things packed into it that can help with your customer service.
Third Contact: When Item is Delivered
You want to make sure that the item is delivered, there’s no issue with the shipping and that the item did not arrive damaged. So, create an email with just that purpose in mind.
Fourth Contact: After customers post a review
After a customer posts a review on your Etsy shop, take the time to craft a short email message showing appreciation for them taking the time to post a review on your shop.
Why is no one else doing this?
What’s interesting is that I purchase products from other shops on Etsy and I rarely see anyone doing this even though it’s one of the easiest Etsy seller tips to implement. You see, I always post reviews for products I buy, but they rarely reply back and thank me.
One thing I realized is that one of the reasons why people may not do this is because they don’t want to send too many emails or spam their customers. That is a valid reason.
However, if you craft these emails in a certain way, it really helps your customers feel loved and cared for.
I have templates for you to use inside my Etsy Shop Makeover course. This will really make you stand out because not many people do this and it makes customers feel special.
I’ve had customers tell me, “Oh, I feel so loved and cared for, thank you so much. I’m going to post a review right now.” And they’re so happy that I’m staying in communication with them and showing appreciation for them.
Doing this, sending them communication even though Etsy already send emails to them, is essentially letting them know that I appreciate their business.
If you don’t know how to do it or where to start, I have a PDF with the templates and the exact emails that I have come up with and that I’m using in my Etsy Shop. You can download this in my Etsy Shop Makeover course. You can check out the course here: yourcreativeadventure.com/etsy-shop-makeover/. I will also send these emails to you when you purchase something from my Etsy Shop.
The Etsy Saved Snippets
Now I will let you in on one of my best Etsy seller tips. You can do something that makes your customer feel special and cared for while keeping it simple for yourself.
How?
There’s a feature on Etsy that allows sellers to save templates or any commonly used text that you will use in your conversations with your customers. When it’s time to send a message to your customer, you can choose from the drop-down list of the snippets that you have saved on Etsy and it will automatically paste that snippet to the conversation box.
For example, when you need to send a response to someone who left a review for you, choose the snippet where you saved the template that you titled “Respond to Customer Review.” What happens is that the same exact template you saved will auto-populate on the conversation box and you can just add any personalization or customization that you want, like adding the name of the customer, things like that.
Here is a link to a tutorial on how to use these saved snippets on Etsy: https://help.etsy.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000344228-Saved-Snippets-for-Conversations
You can also find instructions on how to use this feature when you search “saved snippets in Etsy” on Google.
If you’re not using this on Etsy yet, go do it now! This is the very first Etsy seller tip that I recommend for customer service. It can be very short, straight-from-the-heart messages that have your personality and will show your character.
Etsy Seller Tips for When there are Issues with the Order or Items
When things go wrong with the order, what will you do? Let me share with you my own story from one of my orders.
I was sending out a print with bonuses to a customer. So it also had a “Broken Crayons Still Color” book and bracelet that went with it. I had a package of stuff going out and somehow the package came open during shipping and everything fell out, the book and the bracelet, except for the print.
So when it got to my customer, items were missing. And the worse part is, I sold out all the Broken Crayons Still Color bracelets so I didn’t have any more bracelets to give her. I was freaking out! I didn’t know what to do because this had never happened to me before. But here are some of the tips you have to keep in mind if your items arrive to the customers damaged or missing.
1. Make it right for the customer.
Do what you have to do to make it up to them. For this customer, I refunded her then I found another bracelet which has a different phrase on it. I offered to sell it to her on a discount and she ended up buying it! It all worked out in the end. She was so happy that I was communicating and talking with her about it.
Remember, it’s better to deal with any of these issues one on one than for them to end up leaving a negative review on your shop.
There are times that because sellers don’t want to pay any extra costs, they go back and forth with the customer without getting a clear resolution. But think about this. What is a bad review worth to you? Is it worth the few bucks that you save by not replacing something that is damaged?
If you have to spend an extra $20 to win that customer’s heart, make it right and leave a good taste in their mouth, do it. You’ll never know, they might end up buying from you again. But if you get bad reviews, it can potentially repel other customers from your shop.
2. Get insurance.
If you’re worried about damages in the mail, it’s best to get insurance. It’s not that expensive.
For example, if you’re using priority mail on Etsy, it already comes with a $100 of insurance. When there’s damage, the customer will need to send you a picture so that you can submit the claim to the USPS.
I especially recommend getting insurance if you are shipping expensive items or if you’ve created custom orders that take a lot of your time.
3. Offer things that you can do to make up for damages even if it’s not your fault.
One time I had a customer who messaged me on Etsy and said she received the Brush Strokes Workbook but the corner was bent. I think her mail carrier shoved it into her mailbox. So, technically that wasn’t my fault.
However, I offered to replace it but she refused, as it’s just the corner and it was fine. But I said, “Okay, how about this? I can send you the digital version of the book so you can use that and print that off as well.” She was over-the-moon happy!
You have to remember that even if there are times that they say, “It’s okay, it’s fine,” if they reach out to you, there’s always something you can do to try to make it right and to build in a repeat customer.
So those are three Etsy Seller tips that I learned from that incident and they are things that you can also take note of when it comes to shipping items from your shop.
Communication Gives Great Customer Experience
As we think about it, these emails and communication, in general, is very important in this business because it gives more assurance to your customers. You don’t leave them wondering and nervous when you don’t communicate with them about their order.
It’s a great way to provide excellent customer service and to stand out on Etsy and even on other businesses as well.
If you have not taken the Etsy Shop Makeover course yet, I highly recommend it. In it, I give you my templates for the emails I use and the step-by-step on how to optimize your Etsy shop and attract buyers. You can find it at yourcreativeadventure.com/etsy-shop-makeover/
Let me close this with a verse that greatly connects to our topic today.
Proverbs 22:1 says, “Choose a good reputation over great riches. Being held in high esteem is better than silver or gold.”
That’s what really our standard is. We want to be held in high esteem by our customers and we want to go that extra mile for our customers. As you do that, you will leave a good reputation and impression which is going to stick with you for a long time. And it’s worth more than silver or gold.
I hope you get a lot from this topic. Watch out for more Etsy seller tips on my upcoming blog posts.
I’d love to hear from you. Comment with your thoughts below.
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