Email marketing has the highest return on investment compared to any other marketing channel. 84% of marketers think that email marketing is imperative for customer loyalty. Email marketing helps you build your brand and get better customers who spend more money with you. Email marketing helps you build your brand and nurture customers who spend more money with you.
There are several different email marketing campaigns that you should be running at any one time. All of which are used to encourage your customers to make their initial purchase, or to buy again.
Abandonded Cart
Each store is different, but approximately 80% of add to carts are going to be abandoned. It's inevitable, but we can help to reduce that number by running an abandoned cart campaign. How you choose to do this is up to you, but we recommend at least 3 emails - 1 hour, 24 hours & 48 hours apart.
These emails are used to remind the customer of the product(s) that they were interested in, but something got in the way. It's important to analyse why they abandoned the cart in the first place to try and reduce it in the future.
The other thing to consider is that you need their email to begin with. A lot of systems will automatically associate the customer with their email if it has been entered into the system at some point in time. So take every opportunity to gather these emails as early as possible in the customer experience. Unless people are absolutely in love with your brand or products, the likely hood of them handing over their precious email address for nothing is low. So increase those chances by giving them a small discount, or coupon to entice them, which can then be used in your abandoned carts emails.
Welcome Email Series
When people sign up to your mailing list, you want to reward them with something that they going to find value in.
The welcome series has a few goals, to welcome new subscribers, give them an incentive to purchase, set expectations, and push them to other social channels to connect.
Welcome emails have a much higher open rate compared to unexpected promotional emails. People are wanting to open these emails, so its a great opportunity to get your message across to the engaged audience.
Email Nurture Series
Lead nurturing is when you guide shoppers through each stage of the sales cycle, ultimately driving them to purchase. Up to 50% of your visitors are looking to buy, just not right now, they need a little more information to make sure your product is a good fit.
Use this sequence to achieve a series of goals
a. Educate your subscribers
b. Brand recognition - Get to know your brand
c. Convey your message
d. Follow up on site behaviour
This sequence should send the customers custom content based on where they subscribed, what lead them to subscribe and what their end goals are.
New Customer Series
New customers are great, getting them to buy again is even better. Focusing on that customers lifetime value is key to getting the most out of your email list. When a new customer buys from your store, make sure you make them feel welcome and that their money, time and effort are well placed in your product and brand.
A new customer should receive a set of emails, some of these may or may not work for you.
1. Welcome email - Send this one immediately, you should make this slightly different than your subscriber welcome email. As these people have committed to buying
2. Check in email - A few days later, ask them how everything went with their purchase, and give them an option to be able to provide feedback, options to get in touch and ask questions, and social media channels.
3. Product Check in - At this stage you should send out an email asking if their product arrived, if it arrived safely, if they have any problems, and briefly mention the returns/complaint policy. This is also a good time to ask for a review if you have a review process, either for individual items, or for the whole business.
4. Follow up promotion - Some people like to send a follow up promotion to entice people to buy again. This should be flexible, and dependant on your industry. Work out when customers usually buy again, and send out a promotion a few days before then to try and shorten the cycle. If you send it too soon, it will lose its impact, and likewise if its too late.
Transactional emails
Transactional emails get a ridiculously high open rate, approximately 70%. This is a perfect opportunity to entice people to take another kind of action. Some companies even go so far as to put an upsell in their email for such things as product upgrades, postage upgrades, gift card discounts and cross sells.
Most e-commerce systems come with these out of the box, and generally, they look shit. So go ahead and make some modifications to these to make them look extra special. It's always nice to receive a well branded transactional emails that wows the customer.
Win-Back campaigns
Over time, your customer interest rate may drop off. You'll see this in your metrics, and if you're lucky enough, they wont unsubscribe. A win-back campaign can help reignite interest. This series can get a bit tricky, but it consists of the following:
a. Compelling offer - Now is the time to be frugal with your offer. Keep your margins in mind, but offer a steeper discount than usual.
b. Subscription Removal - Kindly inform your subscriber that if they don't respond or make a purchase that they will be removed from your mailing list, and that they may miss out on any future offers. This isn't a threat to intimidate them, keeping them on your list and having them not engage is damaging to your reputation and could make a difference for other subscribers, especially if their emails start landing in the promotions tab, or worse, SPAM.
Put something simple in the email for them to click on as a response. This can be in the form of feedback in regards to frequency, or quality.
c. Unsubscribed - If they don't respond to your last email, unsubscribe them. Make sure you include a link to resubscribe to the mailing list if they genuinely forgot or missed your emails. This is also a good time to remind them of the final offer.
Remember, having bad quality contacts in your mailing list is bad for you. Quality > quantity.
Special Considerations
- Subject lines are important
- Optimise for mobile
- Use the preheader text to your advantage
We help countless businesses implement these strategies every day. It's important to find out which of these strategies are going to give you the best results and make sure your strategies align with your business model. E-commerce businesses should be implementing all of these, and with the right content and processes in place, they can see amazing returns.
If you would like any help or guidance implementing these strategies and processes, we are more than happy to help. We've got a lot experience having sent over 10's of millions of emails with great success. We've seen it all, and we'd love to share out experience with you.
