How Branded Order Tracking Drives Repeat Purchases

The Revenue Power of Post-Purchase Tracking

You spend weeks refining ad campaigns, testing landing pages, and streamlining the checkout flow. But what happens the second the transaction is complete? For most brands, the relationship goes completely cold. 

The customer receives a dry confirmation email containing a raw tracking code, which redirects them to a generic courier website. Instead of keeping that customer close during their moment of peak anticipation, you have handed them over to a third-party portal that does nothing for your brand. 

It's a frustratingly common gap in the ecommerce journey. Leaving customers in the dark about their delivery creates unnecessary anxiety, and it's the quickest way to drive up expensive customer service tickets. 

THG Fulfil's 2025 data study, which analysed c.40 million customer records, shows that retaining control of your post-purchase communication is one of the most effective ways to drive predictable repeat purchases. 

Getting customers to open standard marketing emails is harder and more expensive than ever. Yet, when someone is waiting for a parcel to arrive, they are highly engaged. They want to know exactly when their package will land on their doorstep. 

Because of this natural anticipation, post-purchase delivery updates achieve engagement rates that standard marketing campaigns simply cannot match. 

By continuously optimising delivery updates, THG Fulfil has seen performance that far outpaces standard retail benchmarks: 

• High Open Rates: THG Fulfil's post-purchase updates achieve an average 68% open rate, compared to a retail market average of 38%.
• Stronger Click-Through Rates (CTR): THG Fulfil's delivery updates achieve a 15% average click-through rate, whereas the typical industry average sits at 1%. That is a 15-fold increase in active customer engagement. 

When you have a customer opening your emails at a 68% rate, you have a valuable opportunity to encourage their next purchase. 

Rather than treating tracking updates as a technical necessity, you need to have complete control over the design and content of every post-purchase message. This means you can display tailored product suggestions, relevant loyalty programme details, or helpful usage guides right when your customer is most engaged. 

The commercial impact of this approach is significant. By incorporating personalised content and product recommendations directly into real-tiem delivery notifications, THG Fulfil has helped its clients generate an additional $19.4 million in revenue in FY24 alone. 

By treating the post-purchase experience as a commercial opportunity rather than a logistics task, you turn a standard delivery update into a highly profitable, self-funding marketing channel. 

Beyond generating extra sales, proactive communication is highly effective at lowering your customer support costs. The single most common query for any ecommerce customer service team is 'where is my order?' (WISMO). When tracking updates are unclear or reactive, customers call or email yoru helpdesk out of frustration. 

Providing real-time proactive updates directly to their inbox or phone keeps customers informed and reassured. This reduces the number of basic delivery queries reaching your team, leaving them free to handle more complex customer issues.