The whole idea of sending personalized emails to each and every one of your customers sounds time-consuming, this is why automated emails are about to become your best friend. Simply, set it and forget it.
Automated emails are set up to sit within your sales cycle and capture your audience at certain stages on their journey on your website. Once a person reaches a certain stage this will trigger an email to be sent to them with your predefined content. Getting confused? Let’s simplify this for you.
Every business, especially in eCommerce, share four stages that require your intervention and they are:
Sign up welcome emails
Abandoned cart emails
Order purchased follow up emails
Inactive customer emails
These four stages are places in which you need to strategically communicate with your customers. Let’s dig into some more detail about the four simple and easy automated email campaigns you SHOULD be running.
1. Welcome Emails
You have acquired a new, qualified, lead. Time to welcome them. Welcome emails have high open rates (50-60%). The aim is to help engage a new customer. Welcome emails should be value-added and not sales focused. Added-value increases loyalty and loyalty leads to sales.
The first automated email in this campaign series acknowledges the sign-up with an instantaneous email of gratitude including relevant, yet minimal information about the company and/or products. Sign-up incentives include a one-time coupon for the first purchase. Follow up welcome emails continue periodically until first purchase.
Personalize content to reflect the pages the user has browsed and add tips that they may find interesting. Add social links to your welcome series to allow the new customer to share their new-found love with their friends.
2. Abandoned Cart
The abandoned cart email are the most important automated email campaign aimed at recouping lost revenue. A recent Shopify study suggests that an amazingly high 67.45% of all carts are abandoned before the purchase stage. You are losing a huge chunk of revenue by not targeting these customers and enticing them back.
Abandoned cart campaigns are designed to re-engage the customer at three different intervals. Within an hour of cart abandonment remind the customer their cart is waiting, include clickable links back to the awaiting cart. Follow up 24-48 hours after cart abandonment, content should include products and recommended products. Your final follow-up is sent up to a week after cart abandonment and should include a sense of urgency. Add a time-bound incentive giving the customer a reason to click through and complete the purchase immediately.
3. Order Follow-up Emails
The follow-up email campaign aims to continue engagement and build a relationship. These emails are the perfect opportunity to add value with no sales spiel. Your customers will gratefully and willingly open emails if they add value to their purchases.
Follow-up automated emails begin with confirmation of the purchase. Thank the customer and provide relevant information including delivery details. Additional follow up emails ideas include: suggesting products that will compliment a purchase, giving product-care/usage information, such as how to care for their new washing machine, or you may request a product review offering some form of completion incentive.
4. Inactive Customer Emails
They came, they purchased, they disappeared, there is no loyalty in this World. Building a relationship takes time and effort and this is where your inactive customer emails come into play. There are many reasons why a customer goes AWOL: not happy with a previous purchase, no longer have any need for your products (very frequently a problem in the time-limited baby consumer goods world) or your competitors are offering them a better deal.
Segment your inactive list by distinguishing what type of shopper your customers were. Customers that were frequent purchasers over a 12-month period and have suddenly disappeared differ from the customer that made one small purchase 4 months ago. Each of these variations need to be targeted with relevant content and relevant sized incentives to entice them back to your store.
Contact us today for your 1-1 email marketing demo and let our email professionals help you set up the perfect campaigns for your site!
The whole idea of sending personalized emails to each and every one of your customers sounds time-consuming, this is why automated emails are about to become your best friend. Simply, set it and forget it.
