In the pursuit of closing sales and increasing revenue, online business owners often make the mistake of pursuing 'one night stands' instead of building longterm relationships with customers.

Just like in life, building longterm relationships is more difficult but much more rewarding than a one night stand. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is one metric we can use to quantify longterm relationships in business. The CLV is the total revenue generated by a customer through all of their purchases from a company.

Customer Lifetime Value is the key to sustained longterm growth.

Focusing on customer lifetime value has many benefits:

• Increased ROI on digital ads

• Built-in audience for future product releases

• Positive customer reviews for increased social proof

• Decrease dependency on digital ads

Improving the average customer lifetime value in your online business can be done at scale by creating a post-purchase email sequence that makes your customer feel like they're purchasing from another person and not from a company.

Personalize your order confirmation email.

We prefer to buy from people instead of from companies. Just think about buying vegetables at the farmer's market vs. grocery store.

We can facilitate a personalized experience for online customers by showing the people behind the company. This can be done pre-purchase through a well designed 'About' page and it can be done post-purchase through a well designed email flow.

The order confirmation email is the best opportunity to introduce yourself to your customer and to show your gratitude for their purchase. A personalized email written to sound like a real human is the first step to building the longterm relationship.

Continue to deliver value after you deliver the product.

Delivering the product they ordered is the bare minimum that you can do for your customer. The value you add beyond the product is what makes you remarkable.

Adding value to a customer's experience can come in different forms depending on the products you sell. The thing you want to keep in mind is that you are trying to delight your customer so that they feel a strong sense of appreciation and connection with you. A couple of easy ways to add value is through education or entertainment.

For example, if you sell kitchen knives you can send an email with recipes or tips to keeping knives sharp. Every bit of value you add post-purchase increases the quality of their experience which in turn makes them want to come back and buy again.

Follow up to make sure they're happy.

The worst post-purchase email sequence is an order confirmation followed up two weeks later with a request for a product review.

Product reviews are gold. You need them. But you can increase your odds of getting a review, and improve the quality of those reviews, by sending a follow up email before requesting the review.

Send an email to check in and see if you can answer any questions they may have about their new purchase. Give them the opportunity to ask a question or, better yet, give yourself the chance to solve their issue prior to asking them for a review. This is a great place to link to the specific FAQ page on your site for the product(s) they purchased.

It will always be easier and more cost-effective to sell to returning customers than it is to continually acquire new customers. Building a personalized post-purchase email sequence is the easiest way to grow those longterm relationships with your customers.