Corey Ferreira & Braveen Kumar
A high-impact guide written for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
Introduction 1 CHAPTER 2
Why Email Marketing Is The Key To Ecommerce Success
3
CHAPTER 3
Choosing the Right Email Marketing Platform
9
CHAPTER 4
Growing Your Email List
11
CHAPTER 5
Segmenting Your Email List For Better Engagement
23
CHAPTER 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers
30
CHAPTER 7
Transaction Emails You Should Be Optimizing
39
CHAPTER 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns You Can Steal
50
CHAPTER 9
Email Analytics And How to Track Everything
64
CHAPTER 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
71
CHAPTER 11
Conclusion 79 ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Corey Ferreira & Braveen Kumar
80 i
Chapter 1
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
Introduction The first email message was sent in 1971, from Ray Tomlinson to himself. Today, over 205 billion emails are sent and received every day according to technology research firm, Radicati. Email isn’t going anywhere and smart business owners know it. Your email list, on the other hand, is a business asset that no one can take away from you. It can always be saved and transferred between email marketing service providers as needed. Your email list is also something that you sell along with your business, since an email list adds significant value in several ways. It allows direct contact with people who have either already spent money on your business, are interested in your product or are very passionate about your industry or niche.
1
Chapter 1
Introduction
When it comes to the long-term growth of any business, building an email list should be a top priority. This guide will walk you through how to:
• • • •
Start building an email list for your ecommerce business. Accelerate your list building efforts through email. Drive more website traffic and sales with strategic campaigns. Improve your email marketing performance over time.
But first, let’s look at why email marketing is so effective for ecommerce businesses in particular.
2
Chapter 2
The Key To Ecommerce Success
CHAPTER 2
Why Email Marketing Is The Key To Ecommerce Success For many ecommerce businesses, a third of their website traffic consists of returning visitors as reported by MarketingSherpa. But the reality of website traffic is that most people who visit your website or online store are new visitors who will never visit again—unless, that is, you 3
Chapter 2
The Key To Ecommerce Success
do something to keep them coming back. Building an email list helps you get around this issue and retain more of the traffic you worked so hard to earn. But when it comes time to have a sales conversation and drive conversions, there’s one channel that continues to outperform the rest: good oldfashioned email. Your email list and campaigns drive repeat traffic back to your website by providing an incentive to return (either with discounts, valuable content, new products, etc.) and directly communicating it on a regular basis. According to recent research by the Direct Marketing Association: • The ROI of email is 3,800% (according to the Direct Marketing Association). • 72% of people would rather receive promotional material via email than social media • 38% of people say receiving special offers is the top reason they subscribe to an email list. In other words, if your ecommerce business hasn’t taken the time to adopt email marketing, then you’re leaving money on the table. And if these stats don’t convince you, here are five more reasons you should be building your email list. 1. EMAIL OUTPERFORMS TWITTER AND FACEBOOK FOR SELLING ONLINE Most businesses, small and large, know that social media is the place to be for distributing content and marketing messages. A McKinsey & Company study however points out that email marketing is still 40x more effective than Facebook and Twitter when it comes to generating a sale. The reason email is so much more effective at driving traffic and sales is because you get to take the conversation about your products and business to your customer’s most personal online space: their inbox. While platforms like Facebook and Twitter are great for free content distribution and engaging your community, they’re also noisy and your
4
Chapter 2
The Key To Ecommerce Success
audience may not be on them when you post an update. Your emails, however, are there waiting for someone when they open their inbox. 2. IT’S GETTING MORE DIFFICULT TO STRATEGICALLY CLIMB GOOGLE’S RANKING ALGORITHM Customers coming from both paid and organic search are extremely valuable to your business; however, climbing the search rankings in Google is getting harder and harder. For those that keep up with the latest in search engine optimization news, you probably know that a lot of the tried and true methods that SEOs have used in the past to gain higher keyword rankings are being devalued by Google. Algorithmic changes have (rightfully) cracked down on low quality content, keyword-based anchor text, paid links and many other linking strategies. This has put many businesses that have used these in the famed Google penalty box, and many more businesses in a state of constant fear that they may lose their rankings in the future. Most of the SEO strategies that are safe and work well (like content marketing) take time to build upon before desired rankings are achieved, leaving new businesses with only one option to get on the first page quickly: Google AdWords. This is why businesses are investing in PPC ads to build their mailing list. This way, instead of just getting a potential one-time click in search, they are opening the door to future communications with their target customer base, one where they don’t have to worry about getting penalized. 3. EMAIL IS CONTENT MARKETING’S BEST FRIEND Content marketing is a strategic marketing activity whereby businesses create and distribute original content that their audience finds valuable. Rather than paying to get in front of potential customers with traditional advertising, businesses aim to draw attention to themselves by delivering relevant education and entertainment which builds buzz for the brand as well as trust with the audience. That’s why collecting email addresses from your visitors is so important. It gives you a way to keep in touch and follow up with your audience over time
5
Chapter 2
The Key To Ecommerce Success
and ensures that all the time and money you’ve spent on creating content results in more than just one-time visits. 4. EMAIL DRIVES TRAFFIC AND SALES With the potential to communicate your messages to specific segments on your email list, you can use your email list to reach your customers in a wide variety of ways. Here are some ideas to get you thinking: • Newsletters provide your audience with the latest information on new products and updates to your business. • Drip campaigns are a collection of emails sent at strategic times with the intention of engaging and educating customers over time, until they purchase. • Special occasion emails for holidays, birthdays, and other personal events. • Abandoned cart reminders ensure customers complete the checkout process. • Reward loyal customers with exclusive discounts. • Re-engage customers who have not shopped in a while. • Generate feedback testimonials from customers. • Trigger campaigns send specific emails when customers take a certain action (Customer clicks ‘Men’s Wear’, ‘Men’s Spring Season Discount’ email is delivered 2 days later) You can engage your customers through email in much deeper ways and use it to drive traffic to your ecommerce website. 5. EMAIL ALLOWS YOU TO BUILD A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS AND POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS While social media and search are great ways to get discovered by future customers, email is the best way to maintain and strengthen that relationship over time. 6
Chapter 2
The Key To Ecommerce Success
Sixty-six percent of online consumers prefer to buy new products from brands that they are familiar with according to a Nielsen study. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to you if you do any online shopping. You’re more likely to buy from the websites and brands that you are more familiar with and have formed a relationship with.
Keep in Mind: Anti-Spam Laws Email marketing is the best example of “permission marketing” — a term coined by Seth Godin, marketer and bestselling author — which means people can opt in and out of their relationship with your brand as they please. Unlike traditional advertising and other intrusive marketing channels, it’s ultimately their choice to hear from your business. The relationship you build with your email list should be consensual; not just from a marketing standpoint, but a legal one too. There’s some red tape to be mindful of in the form of anti-spam legislation that applies to commercial electronic messages. If you neglect these laws, you could face some serious fines if someone were to build a case against you—starting in the thousands—depending on the country you’re marketing to (not just the country you’re operating in). While anti-spam laws will differ depending on where you’re marketing to, adhering to the following best practices is a good place to start: • Get consent: You’ve obtained express permission or opt-in from your list to send commercial email messages, and have explained the nature of the relationship you’re establishing. Make sure you have a record of this in case you ever need to provide proof. • Clearly identify yourself: Your messages must clearly identify yourself or your company as the sender, and offer some way to reach you—like a physical address or a website, usually in the footer of your emails. • Offer a way to opt out: Every email needs to provide a way to unsubscribe that lets the recipient remove themselves from all future communication.
7
Chapter 2
The Key To Ecommerce Success
Check out The Definitive Legal Guide to Ecommerce for a deeper look at anti-spam legislation for specific countries around the world. Don’t be intimidated. These laws are based around best practices that ethical businesses should be following anyway. Now with that out of the way, it’s time to start building your email list.
8
Chapter 3
Choosing The Right Platform
CHAPTER 3
Choosing the Right Email Marketing Platform The first step is choosing the email marketing service you’ll be using to collect contacts and send emails. There are a lot of different email marketing services out there. Ultimately, you’ll want one that you feel will work best for your business and your goals that can integrate easily with your website.
9
Chapter 3
Choosing The Right Platform
Here are some popular email marketing platforms to consider: • • • • • • • • • •
MailChimp Klaviyo Aweber Constant Contact Emma Campaign Monitor Soundest Rare.io Kevy Remarkety
These email marketing platforms offer a place for you to keep your mailing list as well as a automate the production and sending of your emails. Here are five key aspects you’ll want to consider when selecting the right email marketing platform: 1 Email templates. Are there templates you can use or do you have to start from scratch? Can you customize templates or add brand new ones? 2 Audience segmentation. Is it possible to organize your audience into different groups based on activity and behavior? 3 Opt-in forms. How easy is it to embed forms into your Shopify store? 4 Detailed analytics. Can you get all the information you need to make informed decicions? 5 Pricing model. How does the company charge you? Per email sent? Per contact? What works best with your business’ cashflow? There are free versions (MailChimp is popular for this reason) or free trials to let you get a taste of the kind of value to expect from different platforms. Once you’ve selected your platform, you’ll need to consider how you’ll start building your list. The first thing you’ll want to do is think about where to place your opt-in forms.
10
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
CHAPTER 4
Growing Your Email List This is when you start getting creative. To grow your list of future recipients, you need to make it easy and exciting for anyone to sign-up. Enticing offers need to be clear and concise with a simple action item: the opt-in form. One of the most important elements for driving opt-ins on your website is strategically placed opt-in forms. Opt-in forms are just a fancy word for those email sign-up boxes you see on almost every site.
11
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
Popular email marketing software solutions will have handy opt-in form generators that will provide you with a snippet of code that you can just paste into various places around your site. While it may sound excessive to add multiple opt-in forms to your website, it’s really not. If you had eyetracking analytics monitoring every visitor to your website, you would see that they do not look at every inch your website from header to footer. They may look at the content on a blog post or your about page, your navigation menu, or your sidebar. Hence, you need to make sure that any one spot they look at has a conversion point for your mailing list: the opt-in form.
Where to Place Opt-In Forms So where should you place an opt-in? Here are good places to consider. YOUR HEADER OR NAVIGATION BAR Your opt-in form can be as simple as an email field that uses the filler text as a call-to-action.
12
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
YOUR SIDEBAR You can also place an opt-in form in their sidebar with a sentence to “sell” your free incentive or what your mailing list has to offer. It’s a good way to use this real estate on your website.
YOUR ABOUT PAGE After telling visitors about your business and the benefits of your products, you might have created enough interest to entice them to connect and learn more by subscribing. This can be just an email field, or a name and address field with a few sentences about why people should subscribe.
13
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
INSIDE YOUR BLOG POSTS If people make it to the end of your blog post, chances are they enjoyed your content and are ready to take action. Having a strategically placed form here gives them a clear path as to what to do next.
YOUR WEBSITE FOOTER Let’s say your visitor bypasses all of the above fields. If they do make it to your website footer, they’re still interested. Capture them as subscribers. It’s one way to use this often-ignored space on your website.
14
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
YOUR CHECKOUT PAGE One of the best ways to build your list is to simply make sales. Most email marketing services can be integrated with your store, either using a builtin integration or through a third party app, that will allow you to add customers to your email list after they make a purchase. POP-UP FORM
As controversial as pop-up forms are, when they’re done right, they work. The best way to drive opt-ins is to put the opt-in form in front of every visitor. If you have something of value to give away, you have every right to show it to every new visitor. If you’re using Shopify, check out the App Store for popup apps. SumoMe also contains a free suite of tools to help you build your email list, which includes a popup tool called “List Builder”, as well as a full-page “Welcome Mat” that displays when a visitor lands on your site that you can use to capture emails from visitors. OFFLINE OPT-INS Also, if you run a brick and mortar store, don’t forget about offline opportunities to build your list. Email service providers provide apps that allow you to capture subscribers in-person. One such app is Chimpadeedoo from MailChimp, which lets 15
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
subscribers enter their email address on your iPad or Android tablet. Even if you’re offline, it will collect the email addresses and import them into your MailChimp account the next time you're online. Growing your email list will be slow in the beginning. That’s why it’s important to incorporate “lead magnets” into your strategy to incentivize opt-ins and accelerate your list building efforts.
Accelerating Sign-Ups with Lead Magnets How do you go about getting people to join yet another newsletter — let alone actually buy your stuff once they've signed up? At the end of the day, you need the right mix of incentives, signup forms and high quality, valuable content to send out. Let's take a look at how to put all these ingredients together so you can drive more signups and sales. STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR INCENTIVE The first step to building your email list is choosing the right incentive, or “ethical bribe”, to offer people in exchange for joining your list. These are traditionally called “lead magnets”. There are many options to choose from, but the key is to make it worth the price of admission: an email. Offer exclusive deals and discounts For most ecommerce businesses, a compelling lead magnet is usually an immediate discount or the promise of getting future discounts and information about future sales.
16
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
You can position your call to action so they’re opting in to receive membersonly special offers delivered by email. Run sweepstakes or a contest Running sweepstakes and contests can potentially bring in a lot of sign-ups, but they might not be interested in receiving promotional emails from you or buying your product. There are a number of email marketing and incentive-focused apps and services you can use to help make this step easier. Just remember that you should be looking for quality signups versus quantity signups. Give away free content A better incentive is a free piece of content that contains irresistible value for your target customers and would put your subscribers into a buying frame of mind.
17
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
Here are a couple of ideas to get you started: • Women’s clothing store can create seasonal fashion guides to help women learn the latest trends and how to coordinate outfits and accessories — specifically, outfits and accessories that they sell. • Booksellers can offer sample chapters of their best sellers. • Musicians can offer a free MP3 download of their new song. • Photographers can offer a free high-resolution wallpaper download. • Guitar stores can give away a free chord book to help new and intermediate guitar players. The best converting lead magnets offer something that visitors can immediately consume and get value from. Having a visitor subscribe to your email list after they get their lead magnet, gives you permission to market to them. From here, you can start to develop a relationship with your email subscribers and promote your business to them. STEP 2: BUILD A DEDICATED LANDING PAGE FOR YOUR LEAD MAGNET Once you’ve decided on your incentive, your next job is to create a landing page; a page on your website that is 100% focused on getting people to subscribe to your mailing list. It has no distractions and no other objectives.
18
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
Your landing page content should include: • • • • •
A persuasive headline A testimonial to establish social proof Some text or a video about your incentive The benefits of joining your mailing list And, of course, an opt-in form
Everything else that could steal attention — like your sidebar — should be removed. STEP 3: DIRECT TRAFFIC TO YOUR LANDING PAGE You can create a killer lead magnet, but it won’t do you much good if no one sees it. Luckily, there’s no shortage of ways to drive traffic to your lead magnet in the hopes of converting subscribers and growing your list. Here are some proven methods you can try:
19
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
Add a link in your social profiles Pinning a Tweet or a Facebook post lets people see it at the top of your Twitter or Facebook Page’s feed, making this a prime spot to showcase your lead magnet. Facebook pages also allow for call to action buttons. Be sure to take advantage of these and add a link to your landing page.
Get creative with how you share a link to your landing page on social media. Pique people’s interests by using images and attention-grabbing headlines.
Advertise using Google AdWords and Facebook Ads If you’re struggling to get traffic, the quickest and easiest way is to pay for ads. If you’ve never created ads before, or have little experience in running advertising campaigns, you’ll want to read up about online advertising before taking the plunge and putting money down.
20
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
Ideally, your ad will address a pain point your customers might have and provide your lead magnet as the solution. For example, if you run a guitar store and your landing page is offering a free chord book for new and intermediate guitar players, you would be targeting new guitar players struggling to learn chords.
Link to it in blog posts or use it as a content upgrade Using this same guitar chord book example above, a guitar store creating blog posts or videos to teach new guitar players should include a link to the guitar chord book landing page within relevant blog posts. This is also called a “content upgrade�. If your incentive upgrades the existing content in the blog post, your reader is more likely to click the link to the landing page and provide their email to download the incentive. For example, a guitar shop with a blog post teaching new guitar players proper finger placement for chords could include the free chord book as a content upgrade in exchange for information.
21
Chapter 4
Growing Your Email List
Link to it in your emails (within the body or your email signature) It’s likely you are sending and responding to a lot of emails as an online store owner. This creates an opportunity to include a link to your landing page and get a lot of people to see it. The email signature is an often underused piece of marketing real estate— one you can use to include a call-to-action and link to your landing page and latest offer to capitalize on every email you send. If you want to make your email signature stand out, use WiseStamp. As you collect a massive list of emails, it’s important to start thinking about how you’re going to use it. This is where list segmentation becomes your best friend.
22
Chapter 5
Segmenting Your Email List
CHAPTER 5
Segmenting Your Email List For Better Engagement One of the biggest mistakes many businesses make with their mailing list is sending the same email to everyone, every time. If you think about it, not every subscriber on your mailing list is equally engaged. On top of that, if you sell items in different categories (for example, women’s clothing, men’s clothing, and kid’s clothing), not every subscriber will be equally interested in every product category.
23
Chapter 5
Segmenting Your Email List
Do you want to send the same message to every person? Of course not. You want your emails to be relevant to the recipient as often as possible. While you can’t customize an email to cater specifically to every individual subscriber on your list, you can create emails based on specific criteria using segmentation in order to increase engagement and conversions. Segmentation essentially sorts your contacts into different lists or “buckets” based on their engagement and the information you have on them. You can differentiate your contacts in the four following ways: Customer Type, Interest, Location and Behavior.
Segmenting Your List Based on Customer Type Wouldn’t it be nice if, when people walked into a store, they had a label on them that indicated whether they were new to the store, had visited but never purchased, have purchased once but not again, or have purchased many things on a regular basis? If people had labels like that, the salesperson that greets them would probably say something different each time. Luckily, many customer databases do have these labels. If yours does, then you should consider segmenting your list based on: • • • •
Potential customers: those who haven’t made a purchase yet. New customers: those who have just made their first purchase. Loyal customers: those who have make purchases on a regular basis. Inactive customers: those who haven’t made any purchases in a while.
This way, you can target your emails in a way that will specifically convert potential customers into actual customers, first time customers into loyal customers, and loyal customers into brand advocates. It can be as simple as offering discounts for new customers or a free gift with purchase to your most loyal customers.
24
Chapter 5
Segmenting Your Email List
Segmenting Your List Based on Interests Another way to segment your list, especially when you sell a range of different products, is to target specific interests. The key thing to keep in mind is that a contacts’ interactions with your brand are often indicative of their interests. Let’s say your online store sells pet supplies. You probably have dog owners, cat owners, hamster owners, new pet owners, elderly pet owners, and so on. Sending them all the same email campaign every time isn’t going to work. This is when interest-based segmentation comes in handy, which lets you segment subscribers based on: • Products they click on in your email. If the subscriber clicks on a dog leash, then you can segment them as a dog owner and send them emails about new dog products. • Lead magnets they opted in through. If your online store offers free guides for different breeds of dog, and your subscriber chooses the guide to Chihuahuas, then you can segment them as a small dog owner and send mailings about new products for small dogs. • Items they purchased. If your customer tends to buy ferret toys and hamster wheels, then you can segment them as a small animal lover and send mailings about new products pertaining to little critters. Find out which option works best with your customer database, email marketing platform and strategy, and start sending targeted emails based on specific interests. For example, here’s an email Nordstrom sends to subscribers they know are interested in menswear.
25
Chapter 5
Segmenting Your Email List
By segmenting your emails based on interests you’ll increase your open and clickthrough rates and lower your unsubscribe rate, simply because you’re not blasting products to people who are not interested in them.
Segmenting Your List Based on Location Location can be an important way to segment for several reasons. For starters, if you have both an online store and a physical location, you may want to send emails about sales that are happening in-store, but only to people in your region. If you have customers from various countries, you
26
Chapter 5
Segmenting Your Email List
may want to send country-specific promotions on shipping like Deals Direct in the example below.
Most mailing list service providers will have an option to segment based on location. The location is usually determined when a subscriber signed up for your mailing list. You can also use your customer database to find the current location of your customers based on billing and shipping addresses.
27
Chapter 5
Segmenting Your Email List
Segmenting based on location can also mean segmenting your list between customers who have purchased your products in-store or online. This way, if you have a promotion that is only available in-store, you can avoid sending it to those who are unable to take advantage of it.
Segmenting Your List Based on Engagement Last, but not least, you will need to tailor messages differently based on the subscriber’s activity. You’ve likely gotten emails from brands saying, “We’ve missed you!” These were probably from businesses whose emails you have not opened in a while. Most email marketing providers will allow you to create segments based on subscriber activity like Mailchimp does here:
One reason you should create a separate segment for inactive subscribers (those who have not opened emails in a long time) is because most email marketing services are priced according to the size of your subscriber list, and some even according to the number of emails you send every month. So why pay for subscribers who are not engaging with you? 28
Chapter 5
Segmenting Your Email List
The strategy usually goes like this: 1 You create a segment of subscribers that have not opened their emails in a certain timeframe, say three months, six months, etc. 2 You send just that segment of people an email that asks them to reconfirm their subscription, either to confirm they want to continue receiving your emails or to get a special discount code or a free resource. 3 If the subscriber does not confirm within the next week or two, they are removed from your list. This is a great way to make sure your email list consists of people who actually want to get your emails (i.e. the people most likely to make purchases). This will always boost the ROI of your email marketing, as you’ll be paying less for your mailing list service and only sending emails to the people who want to receive them.
Make Sure Your Email Platform Has the Segmentation Options You Need Note that some of these segmenting options may or may not be available to you based on the email platform provider you have chosen. To find out what segmentation options are available to you, you will need to refer to the features offered by your provider. You can refer to the features listings and documentation guides for more information if you use the following email marketing platforms: Aweber, MailChimp, Emma, Campaign Monitor or Constant Contact. Or you can do a Google search for your software provider’s name plus “segmentation”, “segment your list” or similar keywords to learn more.
29
Chapter 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers
CHAPTER 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers Even though having visitors opt into your list gives you permission to market to them, you have to regularly provide your subscribers with value—via discounts or good content—if you want them to stick around and actually open your emails. Since not every subscriber is ready to buy, it’s important to include a healthy amount of nurturing emails along with promotional emails. Nurturing
30
Chapter 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers
emails provide subscribers with relevant content that keeps them interested in the brand. Promotional emails are more sales-oriented and often drive the reader to purchase. But first, let’s start with the basics.
The Anatomy of a Good Email With billions of emails being sent and received every day, it’s important to take the time to make sure your email stands out. Below are 5 key elements to consider when crafting your communication. FORMAT More and more email recipients are opening their emails on mobile devices, both smartphones and tablets. It’s vital that your emails are responsive to the size of the screen they’re displayed on. Quality email marketing platforms will provide previews and testing capabilities so you can see your email on desktop and mobile. SUBJECT LINE Your subject line is the first true contact point when it comes to email marketing. This is what’s going to get the recipient to open the email. It’s important to remember that the goal of your subject line isn’t about getting the recipient to go to your blog or to buy a new product. The goal of your subject line is to entice the recipient to open your email, no more, no less. That might sound easy, but cutting through the noise can be a challenge. • Keep your subject line to a maximum of 50 characters. • Be useful and as specific as possible. • When possible, use local references the recipient can relate to. • The word “free” often triggers spam filters, try “percent discount” or “this week only.” • When possible, customize the sender to a person’s name rather than a company.
31
Chapter 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers
BODY CONTENT Keep it short and make it visually appealing. Start off by ensuring the recipient understands how they can benefit - whether it’s a great offer or quality educational content. Only use graphics if they add value to your email (avoid funny GIFs, include clean product images). A detailed HubSpot analysis shows that while people say they like graphic emails, text-based email perform better. Instead of simply including images, use bullet lists to change the visual dynamic of the email. Try and keep your bullet list to 3 points; anything more runs the risk of information overload. CALL-TO-ACTION Now that the recipient has opened your email, understands the possible benefit, and has a few bullet point details, it’s time to get them to take action. Your email content may have multiple messages but focus on the primary action you want the recipient to take. Multiple action items can distract and confuse. A few other points to keep in mind: • When possible, use a button graphic instead of a text link. • Use action words and incorporate urgency “Download Now”, “Get Started Today”, “Continue Reading.” • Make your call-to-action visible early in the email rather than making your recipients scroll too much. DAY AND TIME Numerous email analyses from MailChimp and HubSpot have indicated that most email opens take place mid-morning on weekdays. Aside from that general rule, it’s important for you to learn your audience and identify traits through testing. Keep in mind the occupation of your core audience members, teachers won’t be on their emails during the day as much as a marketing professional. It’s also important to remember the time zone your recipient is in. You might be sending your email at the right time but your recipient might be receiving it in the middle of the night.
32
Chapter 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers
Nurturing Your Email List As you start growing your mailing list, you need to make sure you’re staying in touch with your subscribers. The last thing you want is to build up a great list, not email them for months, and then have them either not open your emails or unsubscribe because they’ve forgotten all about you and why they joined in the first place. When you send valuable, content-rich emails to your subscribers early on, they’ll be more likely to open up your promotional emails in the future, click-through and potentially convert. You have three options for keeping your subscribers interested in your business and nurturing them into potential customers. SUBSCRIBER NEWSLETTER Consisting of industry information, trending blog posts and non-sales product updates, your newsletter is the easiest way to maintain mindshare with your audience. Your emails will preferably include a mix of high quality content that has independent value outside of your products, but still has sales and conversions in mind. This option is best for businesses in a niche where there are always new things to talk about on a consistent basis. This is also a good option if your content is topical, current or trendy. While your sales may not skyrocket from the newsletter, brand awareness and recognition will benefit. DRIP EMAIL SEQUENCE The second tactic is to send members of your email list a series of emails, commonly referred to as a ‘drip campaign.’ Written and designed ahead of time, these emails automatically send over a period of time with the intention of nurturing and nudging the recipient towards a purchasing action. In practice, the sequence will look something like this: Email 1: Send subscriber the incentive you promised when they opted in: the discount, free guide, link to a download, etc.
33
Chapter 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers
Email 2: Would be sent a 2 or 3 days later, following up with the subscriber, asking how they liked the incentive in case they’ve yet to use it or have forgotten about it. Email 3: After a few more days, this email would let subscribers know about some products and services that will be of interest based on the free incentive they received. ...And so forth. You get the idea. You’ll want to have a good ratio of content to promotional emails in your sequence for best results. As always, test your email frequency and mix of messages to discover what works for you. RSS TO EMAIL The third option is great for store owners that actively create content for their blog. Most email marketing services allow the option to have emails automatically sent out to your email list every time a new blog post is created, using your blog’s RSS feed. If you’re creating content daily or several times a week, you need to be careful using this option as you don’t want to overwhelm your subscribers’ inboxes. Some RSS to Email options allow you to automatically send a “weekly digest”. This sends your email subscribers a weekly roundup of all the blog posts of the past week. This is a much better option if you post content to your blog on a more frequent basis.
Sending Promotional Emails The ultimate goal of email marketing is to increase sales and repeat purchases in your store. So after collecting emails and nurturing your list, it’s time to start sending promotional emails to entice people to purchase. Shopify lets you embed Email Buy Buttons in your promotional emails to take customers straight from email to checkout. The less clicks, the more likely customers are to purchase.
34
Chapter 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers
Here are some ideas for emails you can send to market your business and products. NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES When you have a new product or feature to share, your email list is a great way to broadcast it. These announcements keep your list in the loop — plus, the prospect of something “new” is always an enticing proposition. SALES EMAILS These emails are direct and to the point: their sole purpose is to make your subscribers aware of a sale. Whenever you put a product on sale or plan to have a store-wide sale, it’s a good idea to let your subscribers know, especially if you’ve built a relationship with them. SUBSCRIBER-ONLY DISCOUNTS Whether you send a regular newsletter or set up a drip campaign about special promotions, you can always include discount codes for your subscribers to boost their motivation to make a purchase. Offering a feeling of exclusivity and membership is a great way to introduce emotion into your marketing. For your ‘exclusive offer’, generate a single discount code that can be used an infinite number of times, but is only available for a limited time. If you do this, make sure to mention in your email copy that the discount code expires on a certain date. This type of limited-time offer creates a sense of urgency that encourages subscribers to purchase something now rather than waiting until later.
35
Chapter 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers
HOLIDAY & SEASONAL PROMOTIONS A more traditional form of email marketing is to notify subscribers of special offers based on upcoming holidays or the time of year. You might want to let your subscribers know about a Black Friday sale, an afterChristmas sale, or a spring clearance sale. You can also remind people about upcoming holidays like Mother’s Day.
36
Chapter 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTESTS & GIVEAWAYS An email list can also be leveraged to give a nice boost to your social media presence. Let’s say, for example, that you’ve invested in advertising to drive traffic to a landing page and build up your email list, but you don’t yet have as many social followers as you’d like. To achieve your goal of increasing your social following, you can hold a giveaway. Once the contest is underway, send an email to your subscribers letting them know that they can enter the draw for a free product or gift card by liking your Facebook page or whatever social platform you’re working on. This strategy helps to engage your email subscribers in yet another interaction with your brand, which can not only help those subscribers move down the funnel closer to a purchase — it can also help your subscribers spread the word about your products to their own friends and followers.
37
Chapter 6
Converting Subscribers into Customers
Exposing your brand to the social media networks of your email subscribers can help your brand reach even more people and draw them into your email list. MILESTONE EMAILS FOR BIRTHDAYS, ANNIVERSARIES AND SPECIAL OCCASIONS Sending a milestone email is a mix of both a nurturing and promotional email. To do this, you will need to collect more information from your customer when they opt-in, such as their date of birth, if you are interested in sending something like birthday emails and promotions. Other milestones could simply be an anniversary for your business or a special occasion.
38
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
CHAPTER 7
Transaction Emails You Should Be Optimizing When most online retailers think about email marketing, they often just think about sending monthly newsletters or information about sales. But email marketing is so much more than that. In fact, every email you send to a potential, current, or former customer is an opportunity to get value as you provide value. Transactional emails are those sent during the checkout and purchasing action.
39
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
The following are examples of different transaction emails and how major ecommerce brands are using them to boost their sales during the buying process. Let’s take a look at what they do right and what would could be better.
The Shopping Cart Abandonment Email According to ecommerce research firm, Baymard Institute, the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.63%. That’s a lot of dollars being left on the table. So, what can you do to get those customers back to your checkout page so they complete their order? For customers whose information you already have, such as those who have created an account on your website, you can send them a friendly email reminder that they left something in their cart. Here’s a great example of this kind of email from Kerastase:
40
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
How this works is typically within 12-24 hours of your customer entering their information and abandoning their item(s) in your store, you send them a reminder that they still have items waiting for them. In many cases, customers just wanted to get to the last step in the checkout so they could see the final charges with shipping costs included, or they simply got distracted from their shopping experience. The example email above in particular is great because it shows the product the customer added to their shopping cart (with an image) and gently nudges them back to the store. It’s also personalized and adds a little extra incentive with the ‘same day shipping’ offer. Finally, it uses a great call to action button which makes the desired action crystal clear. However, there is one flaw to this email’s design. A lot of email services will hide images in an email until the recipient (your customer) tells it to display them. If they don’t allow their email service to display the images for this email, all they will see is this:
As you can see, without images, this email at first glance conveys almost zero information.
41
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
In other words, you need to have the main message included in the email in text so that the customer will see it immediately when they open your email. Walmart, on the other hand, takes the approach of a mostly text based email for people who abandon their shopping cart after logging in to their account. Even without images enabled, customers will know exactly what the message contains and where to go next:
But this email isn’t perfect either. It doesn’t tell the customer what is in their shopping cart. This makes them miss the opportunity to get their customer excited about the item(s) they were so close to purchasing. Thus, the keys to a successful shopping cart abandonment email are the following: 1 Provide the main message in text so customers will see it right away without having to enable images. This includes a link back to their shopping cart. 2 Remind the customer about the specific item(s) in their shopping cart, awaiting purchase so they can get excited about them again. 3 Provide a specific incentive message, such as free shipping or limited availability. 42
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
4 Have a clear call to action (“Complete Order”, “Buy Now”) Note that when it comes to incentives you offer in your shopping cart abandonment email, you might want to think carefully about offering a coupon or discount. Why? You might unknowingly train your customers to put items in their shopping cart and leave so they can get money off of their item(s). An alternative, if applicable, is reminding the customer that the product is currently on special for a limited time. This leverages the power of scarcity and will hopefully motivate them to return and make their purchase quickly. Shopify makes it easy to configure automatic emails for abandoned carts.
The Order Confirmation Email The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% according to Marketing Metrics. This means that once a customer has made a purchase, there’s a better chance you can get them to make another one by using your order confirmation email as a marketing tool. GoDaddy does this well by including a coupon code for your next purchase in your order confirmation email:
What’s great about this email is the promo code is bright, bold, and above the information about the order you just placed. GoDaddy also offers related products to choose from based on your purchase.
43
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
While this can be a great way to increase sales, be sure that you carefully consider whether trying to sell again right away to a brand new customer is worth it. Your new customer probably won’t cancel their order just because you approached them to make another purchase, but they also might not take up the offer if they’re a first time shopper. This may be a better strategy for your repeat customers as opposed to new ones. As an alternative, you could ask first time buyers to ‘like’ your business on Facebook which may be a more palatable option for them at this stage in the relationship. The key takeaway is that order confirmation emails are an important opportunity to not only reassure your customers about their purchase, but also provide ways for them to extend the relationship with your business whether it be through another sale, an app download or a call to action to follow you on social media. To modify confirmation (and shipping emails as per the next section) in Shopify, be sure to check out resources on the Shopify website to learn how to do it.
44
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
The Shipping Confirmation Email Just like order confirmation emails, shipping confirmation emails are another opportunity for you to get creative. For example, instead of asking customers to make another purchase for themselves you can ask them to make a purchase for someone else. The shipping confirmation email is a good one because your customer is excited about the prospect of receiving their purchase. So much so, in fact, that you can ride this wave of excitement by getting them to consider gifting your product(s) to their friends and family. Check out how BarkBox does this:
45
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
Alternatively, you can always use your shipping confirmation email to encourage your customers to make another purchase for themselves:
The only drawback on the above email from Express is that the calls to action in this email are not personalized to the customer’s purchase. It would be much more effective if they noted the customer’s purchase was a pair of slacks, and the ads were targeted to shirts and ties instead of suits or women’s clothing. Thus, the keys to a successful email after shipping an order are the following: • Make it easy for your customer to track their order. Include the expected delivery date and tracking number linked to the shipping company so people can click once to see exactly where their order is in the shipping process. • Suggest that the customer forward a link to the item purchased to a friend. • Include product suggestions that match their purchase. Why is it so important to make the customer’s most recent order so easy to track? You want to do this to reassure them that their order is being
46
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
delivered (and that your business is trustworthy), get them excited, and make the customer happy - a happy customer is more likely to share their shopping experience with others.
The Customer Feedback Email One email that brands usually do not push marketing into is the feedback email after a customer has presumably received and used their product. Toys R Us, for example, includes a sweepstakes with their survey email.
47
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
And here’s a survey email from Moo, the printing company:
What’s the difference between these two emails? While Moo sends the customer to a third party survey tool for feedback, Toys R Us sends customers to a survey on their own website. This makes it easy to encourage their (hopefully) satisfied customer to start shopping once their review is completed. Thus, the keys to a successful email for feedback are the following: • Focus on customer satisfaction - not sales - so you can get your customer’s thoughts on their purchase. • Place the survey form on your website so the customer can be presented with offers and products after submitting their feedback. • Include the review on the product page as user generated content to help boost future buyer’s confidence. While encouraging future purchases from satisfied customers is easy, what about those who are less than happy with their purchase? Make sure that your system follows up with an email that offers to help make that
48
Chapter 7
Ecommerce Transaction Emails
customer happy. As mentioned earlier, it’s easier to make sales with existing customers than new ones, so focus on customer retention more than acquisition when possible.
Summary When you send an email to your customers, you’re having a conversation with them in their most personal online environment - their inbox. In other words, you need to make every email count. Getting creative with transaction emails can be an effective way to not only be transparent with your customers about their purchases, but also get them back to your store for repeat sales.
49
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
CHAPTER 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns You Can Steal Even with a healthy list of email subscribers, sometimes it can be challenging to think of creative and conversion-focused email campaigns to send to your list. To help you come up with some ideas, we’ve assembled seven high-impact ecommerce email examples for you to take inspiration from and put to use in your business today.
50
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
Take notice of how some these emails leverage fundamental principles of persuasion, such as exclusivity, social proof, scarcity, and urgency to entice clicks and promote purchases.
Petflow’s Social Proof Email Petflow is an online pet retailer that did $30 million in sales in 2012. They have over one million fans on Facebook, which has become a huge source of revenue for them. The folks at Petflow regularly borrow content from their Facebook page and put it to work in their email campaigns.
51
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
52
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
Adding social proof elements to your emails can be an effective way to boost trust and demonstrate that people are buying (and enjoying) your products. In fact, word-of-mouth is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchases, while 63 percent of online customers say they’re more likely to buy on sites with positive reviews.
Harry’s Order Arrival Email We recently profiled Harry’s as an online retailer that’s doing a lot of things right, and their emails are no exception. Harry’s is particularly good at making the most of their transactional emails and using them as opportunities to strengthen customer loyalty and increase customer lifetime value. The email below is what you get when your order arrives. Instead of simply sending a robotic order notification, they take the opportunity to build education into the email and set their customers up for success with their products – which ends up being a win-win for everybody.
53
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
54
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
Take a look at your own transaction emails and see where there are opportunities to make them more valuable - even if it’s something as simple as asking people to like you on Facebook.
STORQ’s Content Curation Email STORQ is a San Francisco based ecommerce startup that sells fashionable clothing to expecting mothers. They send a great monthly newsletter email full of curated content that relates to pregnancy, motherhood and parenting.
55
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
56
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
STORQ only carries a handful of products so this is a smart way for them to stay in front of their customers without sending repetitive product promotion emails. If you’re looking for an easy way to get started with email marketing, try using a tool like Pocket to save the best links and resources related to your industry, and then send your list a curated roundup of useful tips or cool content each month.
Huckberry’s Scarcity Email Scarcity is one of the most powerful psychological sales triggers marketers can use to get people to take action. Humans are hardwired with the fear of missing out. Huckberry, a popular men’s fashion retailer, puts this tactic to use in this example.
57
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
58
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
Offer limited time discounts, and incentives like time sensitive free shipping can be a great way to get people off the fence and over to your checkout page.
Banana Republic’s Exclusivity Email Everybody wants to feel special and everybody loves a good deal. Banana Republic clearly gets this as demonstrated by the email below.
59
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
In addition to offering an exclusive deal, they also pack on the value by offering free shipping and free returns. The lesson here is that making your subscribers feel special by offering them “subscriber only” deals can help you not only build customer loyalty, but also make sales.
Petflow’s Surprise Store Credit Email The folks at Petflow are pretty clever (and some would say aggressive) when it comes to their email marketing strategy. Just look at this list of subject lines they sent in a month’s time:
One of the more crafty emails they sent is this store credit email.
60
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
Instead of simply offering “15% off ” they offer a very specific amount of money for their customers to spend on their site. The theory being that it’s harder for people to “waste money” than it is to pass up a percentage discount. Next time you want to send a promotional email with a discount, consider testing this store credit approach. To offer monetary discounts like this in Shopify, read the Shopify resource on creating monetary discounts.
Whipping Post’s “Just Checking in...” Email I love this email from Ryan Barr, owner of Whipping Post. It’s friendly, helpful and promotional all at the same time.
61
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
The email is framed mainly as a thank you message that offers support but it also slips in calls to action for his website, his social profiles and even a request for user-generated product photos. I wouldn’t be surprised if people reply to this email with product testimonials as well.
Save Your Favorites We aren’t suggesting you copy these emails exactly but rather take the strategies here, along with others you see from companies who are marketing at you, and apply them to your own business. Email is one of the best ways to generate sales and coming up with effective and creative campaigns to send your customers is an important task every ecommerce entrepreneur should focus on. Create a folder in your email inbox and save
62
Chapter 8
Proven Ecommerce Email Campaigns
any emails that catch your eye. At the end of every month, do a quick review and see what principles you can apply to your next campaign.
63
Chapter 9
Email Analytics
CHAPTER 9
Email Analytics And How to Track Everything Your email analytics are a goldmine of insight and untapped opportunities. Besides the total number of email subscribers you have and are getting per day, you should be looking at: • Open Rate: The percentage of subscribers that opened your last email, sometimes shown as the overall open rate of all your emails.
64
Chapter 9
Email Analytics
• Bounce Rate: The percentage of emails that don’t make it into a subscriber’s inbox. This happens either due to a technical/server error or a subscriber’s email is no longer active. • Click-Through Rate: The percentage of subscribers that click a link in your last email or overall, depending on which click-through rate you are looking at in your email marketing service backend. • Opt-Out Rate: The percentage of subscribers that “churn” or unsubscribe from your email list, either from your last email or overall, depending on where this metric is being calculated from. But what exactly is a good benchmark to compare your statistics to? While it isn’t a good idea to obsess over or compare yourself to other companies (you should actually just be comparing between your own emails and constantly trying to improve), it’s good to have a grasp of what kind of open rates and click-through rates other email marketers are getting. Here are some industry averages as of February 2015, according to Constant Contact.
65
Chapter 9
Email Analytics
66
Chapter 9
Email Analytics
While traditionally there’s been a focus on optimizing open rates in the email marketing space, at the end of the day your emails are trying to get your subscribers to take an action. So prioritize your click-through rate as the metric to improve. Whether that means going to your store to buy a product, following you on Twitter, or reading your latest blog post. Your focus is to get those that do open your emails, to click the links in them. Most email marketing services are pretty good at providing you a lot of data and analytics out of the box. If you need help finding this data we talked about in this section, be sure to look through your email marketing service’s help center or documentation.
Finding The Optimal Times to Send Emails While there’s no shortage of data about the best days of the week or times of day to send an email to your list, these only offer a place to start — not a prescription. Every email list will be different and every industry is different. You should experiment with different sending dates and times to learn when you get the best results, especially early in your email marketing journey since you can afford to take risks. Conduct some split tests (A/B tests) to see which times get better open and click rates, which we’ll go into in chapter 11. A good place to start looking for your optimal email sending times, is your peak purchase times. This gives you some insight into your customer’s online habits. To track this information, ensure you have Google Analytics setup for ecommerce. We will also be talking more about tracking everything and analytics in chapter 10. If your customers are purchasing from your site in the late afternoon, then naturally, that would be a good time to send emails since they are already online and likely will see your email when you send it. Another thing to consider is that most email marketing services, such as MailChimp and GetResponse, have a “timewarp” feature. This allows you to send an email that will line up with every subscriber’s timezone. So, if you want to send out an email for 8am on Thursday, it will send out that email for 8am on Thursday in the timezone each of your subscribers are in. For 67
Chapter 9
Email Analytics
example, whether you have a subscriber in New York or in London, they will receive your scheduled email for 8am on Thursday in their timezone.
Track Everything You should have Google Analytics set up on your website and if you don’t, you can check out our blog post to get you set up. This blog post walks you through the steps you need to take and will ensure you are set up with ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics. Once you’re setup with Google Analytics, one of the first things you can do is track how well links in your email marketing campaigns are performing using UTM parameters. You’re probably wondering what UTM stands for; it’s Urchin Tracking Module. Basically, it helps Google track specific links to give you more insight to how users navigate your content. You can also begin to track what percentage of your traffic is opting into your email list. This will allow you to see what type of traffic is converting best (for example, traffic that found your website on Google is found to optin the most) and where visitors are converting.
To do this, you need to have a “thank you” page or sign up confirmation page, that your visitors are redirected to after opting into your list, with your Google Analytics code placed in it (as every page should).
68
Chapter 9
Email Analytics
Under the Reporting tab, go to Conversions, Goals and Overview.
You’ll be asked to “Set up goals”. Click it and click the button “+ NEW GOAL” to set up your first goal. Creating your goal is very easy. Give your goal a name, I put “Email list signup”, leave the Goal slot ID as the default, and for Type, choose Destination. Click Next Step.
From here, under Goal details, you will only need to put information into the Destination field. This will be the URL of your “thank you” page, or the page the visitor is redirected to after signing up. This won’t be the full URL. So if the URL of your thank you page is www.shopify.com/thankyou/ you will only enter /thankyou/ into this field. Everything else can be left as
69
Chapter 9
Email Analytics
default. Assigning a value or enabling the funnel is not necessary to track email list sign ups.
That’s it! You’re now tracking your email list sign ups. To keep an eye on how well your list building campaign is going, head over to the Reporting tab in Google Analytics, and look under Conversions and Goals in the left menu.
70
Chapter 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
CHAPTER 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies Before going into these tips, it’s important that you’re using email marketing software that won’t hold you back. Many of the tips in this post require integration between your shopping cart and email list, automation, and list segmentation. These are not ‘nice to haves’, but essentials for highly effective ecommerce marketing. The email
71
Chapter 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
marketing services suggested previously should provide the required features to apply most of the tips and strategies in this section.
Incentivize Customers to Review the Product They’ve Bought via Email There are countless case studies highlighting the positive impact of product reviews. After running an email-based review promotion on 90,000 products, Argos found that products with reviews had a 10% higher conversion rate than those without. Figleaves also noticed a similar improvement, reporting a 12.5% increase in conversion rate on products with reviews compared to those without. Interestingly, they also noticed an 83.9% increase in conversions on products with 20+ reviews. While these numbers speak for themselves, gathering reviews is easier said than done. One of the best strategies to encourage them is to offer a competition-based incentive via email, similar to this brilliant example from Boden.
72
Chapter 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
This strategy works best when set up as an automated personalized email that’s scheduled to go out to customers a few days after they receive their product. You’ll want to experiment with the timing of this email, along with the prize offered, to get the maximum number of product reviews. This is where A/B testing becomes your best friend.
Use A/B Testing to Optimize Open & ClickThrough Rates If you’re not already convinced of the value of A/B testing your emails, consider that during his election, Barack Obama’s team found that one subject line generated $403,600 in donations, whereas another variation generated $2,540,866. Generally speaking, when we talk about email A/B testing, we’re referring to creating multiple variations of either the subject line or body content to identify which one has the highest engagement or conversion rate. Keep in mind that you’re testing the impact of a single, isolated variable at a time. This way your experiments yield real insights you can act on in the future.
In an ideal world, you would A/B test every email you sent out. In practice, this can be quite time-consuming, so you’ll need to figure out which emails would have the biggest impact on your bottom line if they had a higher engagement rate.
73
Chapter 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
For ecommerce sites, an obvious example would be to experiment with different upsells and cross-sells in your transactional emails, as well as A/B testing any major retail holiday newsletter campaigns.
Set Up Cart Abandonment Emails to Identify Bugs & Improve Checkout Conversion Rate Optimizing cart and checkout abandonment is typically one of the highest value areas to focus on when it comes to conversion rate optimization. After all, if someone has added an item to their cart, they’re an extremely well-qualified potential customer. So, how can you use email marketing to reduce cart abandonment?
If you’re using software that enables automation, you can quite easily setup a rule that detects whether a person visits the cart or checkout page, but not your confirmation/thank you page. When this criteria is met, an email can be sent to them (providing you have already gathered their email address) asking them why they didn’t complete their transaction. You can see a great example of this in action on the Flaviar website. After signing up to their mailing list, if you add any item to your cart and don’t complete the purchase, you’ll soon receive an email like the one below.
74
Chapter 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
This is not only a great way of crushing technical bugs, but when worded well, can also be a valuable way to collect customer objections, that you can then address earlier in the sales funnel.
Reward Your Most Loyal Customers For most ecommerce websites, an 80/20 relationship exists between customers and total revenue. That is, a large proportion of revenue is typically driven by a relatively small number of loyal customers. Howards Storage World found that by categorizing their customers into five categories based on engagement and loyalty, and targeting certain categories with gift card incentives, they were able to increase their short-term revenue by $250,000. Their most loyal group of customers had a gift card redemption rate of 34%, representing $105,000 of the total revenue driven from this campaign.
75
Chapter 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
Reactivate Your Dormant Customers Interestingly, in the same study as above, the results from the semi-dormant portion of their customer base were even more impressive than their most loyal customers. This group, who hadn’t shopped with Howards Storage World in over 12 months, represented a $108,000 increase in revenue ($3,000 more than the most loyal customers), and had an average spend 16% higher than the most loyal customers. There are a few good lessons in that we can take away from this case study. The first is to segment your customers by loyalty and target them with campaigns that are relevant to their level of activeness. The second lesson is that, somewhat surprisingly, it’s sometimes more profitable to focus on reactivating dormant customers than incentivizing loyal active ones. If you want to take this one step further, you could automate this whole process using event-based triggers. For example, if a customer spends 25% above your average order value, you could add them to a sequence of ‘reward’ emails. Alternatively, if a customer hasn’t purchased anything within 12 months, you could create a ‘reactivation sequence’ to incentivize them to make another purchase.
Be Prepared For Product Seasonality and Retail Holidays With a Newsletter Calendar Too often, marketers end up writing their Valentine’s Day campaign on February 13, and their Halloween campaign on October 30. Considering how much creative and commercial potential there is in these events, it’s important to have a system that ensures you’re always one step ahead of the competition. One of the easiest ways to ensure you’re never rushing to send a campaign out is to build a 12-month newsletter calendar that includes both retail holidays and events specific to your own business’ seasonality.
76
Chapter 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
While many email marketing tools have a calendar feature built in, many opt for a free tool called Trello. What makes Trello particularly useful is that different members can easily add suggestions and ideas for upcoming newsletter campaigns. On top of this, you can also set automatic reminders to ensure that you begin working on campaigns well in advance of their send dates. Below is a screenshot of the editorial calendar used by Qosy.
Take Your Email Marketing Beyond the Inbox Over the next few years, we’re likely to see a lot more ecommerce companies combining their email marketing campaigns with related social advertising. In a study where a leading retailer in the US targeted 925,000 email subscribers with both its regular emails and coordinated Facebook ads found
77
Chapter 10
7 Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
that subscribers who received both were 22% more likely to make purchases than those who only received emails.
The potential of what you could do with this strategy is mind-boggling. Imagine purchasing a product online to then find an advert on Facebook five minutes later with a popular upsell product. When they then visit their inbox, if they still haven’t bought the upsell you could send them an email with a discount on that specific upsell product.
Search and Re-apply If you need ideas for email marketing campaigns and would like to gather some intelligence, create a separate Gmail account and subscribe to the email lists of all of your competitors and online stores in your niche. They don’t need to be direct competitors, just websites that might share the same audience or customers as you. Alternatively, you can use MailCharts to track competitor emails.
78
Chapter 11
Conclusion
CHAPTER 11
Conclusion Email marketing is a powerful channel for nearly every ecommerce business. Whereas most channels—like SEO and social media—are volatile and subject to change, the email list you build over time will become a pillar of your business that continues to drive both new and repeat visitors to the products in your store. There are virtually no limits on how far you can segment customers, target them across multiple channels, and personalize your communication to speak directly to your customers. The potential for increasing sales through email marketing is NOT to be underestimated. Start collecting visitor emails today, identify segmentation opportunities and always provide value.
79
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Corey Ferreira Corey Ferreira is a passionate entrepreneur, coconut water lover and content creator at Shopify.
Braveen Kumar Braveen Kumar is a Content Crafter at Shopify where he develops resources to empower entrepreneurs to start and succeed in business.
Disclaimer: Any of the logos, design rights, trade, service or collective marks that are mentioned, used or cited in this book are the property of their respective owners. Their use in this book does not imply that you may use them for any purpose other than for a similar informational use.
80