What eCommerce Businesses Should Be Sending to Their Subscribers (Continued)
In continuation of our previous blog post, we introduce “Email Marketing and eCommerce: More Must-Send Emails.” Email marketing is still king – producing one of the highest ROI’s in the digital marketing world. Creating email campaigns is a great way to connected with your customers, share relevant information and boost sales. With FireDrum email marketing, you have access to robust management tools and unique features that will help increase overall engagement and make email marketing worthwhile. To build trust with your customers, it’s essential to send these eCommerce campaigns!
Up-Sell Emails
Upselling, or the sales technique where the seller convinces the customer to buy more expensive products or to upgrade to the next best product, is a common practice for retailers and email marketers. When you up-sell a customer or subscriber, you’re helping them make a purchasing decision and are encouraging them to make purchases from you in the future. Not to mention, you’re boosting your company’s revenue and reducing the cost of customer acquisition.
When it comes to email marketing, there is a particular protocol you should follow for upselling. Since all of your customers are attracted to different products, it’s important to categorize accordingly. Think, price, product type, gender, etc. Once you’ve correctly categorized your clients, you can now construct your email campaign. What products do you want to upsell? What might go hand-in-hand with products they’ve purchased before? What are other popular products bought with the current product? By offering relevant, useful products to your customers, you can continue to nurture your relationship and increase overall sales.
When sending these up-sell emails, it’s vital that the content relevant and personal. Your customers might be confused – or even offended – if you were to send them non-relatable product suggestions. Keep the email sweet and to the point. Really focus on the design and relevancy to previously purchased products.
Loyalty Program Emails
In addition to sending “thank you for your loyalty” emails, it’s important to put an actual loyalty program into place. Loyalty programs help retain long-term clients and are relatively cheap to promote. How do I integrate loyalty programs with email marketing? Easy. Optimize your emails by categorizing contacts into a separate list and send rewards! Send special discounts, invitations, member-only exclusive offers and member-personalized up-sell emails. Who can refuse shopping when an exclusive discount is offered?
Cost Plus Word Market (a popular retail chain featuring specialty décor & food), has a solid loyalty program in place. Every member-rewards email they send out includes a 15% discount (for the entire purchase), on top of other exclusive discounts. By sending these discounts out Cost Plus World Market is influencing their subscriber’s purchases (in a positive way), and are preserving member benefits.
Alert (Flash Sale and Stock) Emails
Nothing stinks more than your favorite item being out of stock. If your website features a “back-in-stock” notification or wish list, it’s time that you take advantage of FireDrum’s automated email messages. Our automated email system can send emails based on actions that your subscribers take (triggered emails). This helps shorten the sales cycle and encourages your customers to purchase from you in the future.
The best time to send these messages would be:
- When a popular item they may have viewed (or perhaps abandoned in their carts), is back in stock
- The product they’ve expressed interest in is on sale
- A product they’ve added into their wish list is running low on stock
Tip: To capture more email address and increase sales, we suggest setting up wish-list for your online products. It’s a safe, organic way to build up your email lists and will please customers to have real-time notifications for products that they’re interested in. Make sure these emails are only featured the products they’ve expressed interest in, otherwise you might have some unsubscribes!
Incentive Emails for Inactive Subscribers
There are a variety of reasons your subscribers aren’t engaging with your customers, including:
- Spam-y looking content
- Emails are landing in their spam or junk folders
- They’re receiving too many emails from you
- They’re not receiving enough emails from you (this message may appear random or untrustworthy to them)
- Email address is outdated
- Subject line is confusing or is too long
- Email content isn’t relevant
- They didn’t opt into your emails
- No call-to-actions
No matter the reason, however, there’s a way to reconnect with these customers. It’s possible to re-engage these subscribers by segmenting them into a separate list and bringing them through a reactivation process. During this process, you will be reminding these subscribers of your email marketing goals, products that attracted them to your site and the benefits of being subscribed to your newsletter (discounts, sales, etc). Attaching limited-time only and exclusive deals to these emails might be an incentive for them to return (hint, incentive emails).
For subscribers who don’t engage with these emails, you will be able to filter them out from your email campaigns completely (improving your open and engagement rates overall). Also, by deleting the unengaged emails, you are protecting yourself from spam traps and increasing your deliverability rates.
E-Cards and Milestone Emails
Email marketing isn’t all about sales. In our previous post, “Increasing Sales with Lead Nurturing,” we discussed the importance of relationship building with our customers. One way to connect and build trust with your customers is to send milestone emails. Milestones, or birthdays, anniversaries, important events, ect, should be celebrated! Be sure to include a special discount or offer that expires a week or two after their birthday/event celebration is over. For inspiration on milestone emails or free e-card templates, explore free template library.
These milestone emails typically have a high open and click through rate, and generate a high ROI. Customers are connecting with your business on a personal and professional level – who doesn’t love that? Luckily, with FireDrum, it’s easy to schedule milestone emails. Under the “campaigns” navigation, you will see a separate “e-card” section where you can create personalized campaigns for subscribers who include specific dates during sign up. These campaigns can be changed and updated to your leisure.
Big Announcements
Like any relationship, celebrations shouldn’t be one sided. Make sure to send your subscribers milestone emails and big announcements involving your business (including, anniversaries, dynamic changes and birthdays). Thank them for being loyal and supporting you throughout these major events.
So, have you started integrating these eCommerce emails with your marketing strategy? Sending milestone emails, seasonal campaigns (and so forth) WILL improve your relationship with your subscribers in various ways. Although email marketing may seem like an outdated practice, we encourage you to try it. After all, email is still king!
Want more email marketing tips? Subscribe to our blog or contact the experts at FireDrum Email Marketing directly at experts@firedum.com.
