[INFOGRAPHIC]
DECEMBER 22, 2014 – 12 MINUTES READ
After Search, Email marketing is the most effective e-commerce marketing channel. In fact, it has a proven track record of more than 4300% ROI. Now, why is that?
Because, email inbox is a customer’s “personal” environment online. Anything stepping in there, needs a prior permission from the customer. Hence, if you have, at some point of time, managed to attract his attention, you need to respect his “personal” space and strive to keep your offerings as close to his persona as possible.
That’s the driving force behind the current wave of personalization in ecommerce these days. A little time spent on personalizing your email would ensure that they continue to receive a distraction-free consideration, which is impossible even through paid ads on social media.
Still, at one point with all the surmounting data and statistics, it does get a bit complicated to come up with innovative ways of designing conversion-focused email campaigns. Hence, we have designed an infographic summarizing the 9 ways in which you can deliver a better and more personalized service to your subscribers.
Use them as a checklist or as a guide post and let us know what helped you best and in what ways. Read on!
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Courtesy of: Targeting Mantra
9 successful email marketing campaigns you can use to boost your product sales
1 Incentivize customers via email to review the product they’ve bought (FigLeaves)
It is not hidden from anyone the kind of positive influence product reviews have on customer buying process. Taking this into account, FigLeaves ran an email campaign for their shoppers insisting them to review the product they have bought in exchange of a discount or free credit. The campaign was a huge hit and they found a 12.5% increase in conversion rate on products with reviews than those without.
What’s more, the products that garnered more than 20 reviews brought them more than 84% increase in conversions.
How you can do it:
Set up as an automated personalized email that’s scheduled to customers a few days after they receive their product and reward them with discounts.
2 Use A/B Testing To Optimize Open & Click-Through Rates (US Presidential Elections)
A/B testing is essential for the success of any campaign. Without testing properly the click through rate, it becomes hard to predict the success and analyze the results later on.
During the last presidential elections in US, Obama’s team found that one subject line outperformed the other by generating more than 84% of donations. This was some major finding further boosting the 80-20 rule of marketing and sales.
How you can do it:
Ideally, everything in the email should be tested, and for every email sent in the series. However, overall A/B testing should be done on – Subject line, From field, Content, Delivery time. Just make sure, you test only one parameter in one set of emails – subject line A or B, then test with “from” field A or B, and so on.
3 Soften those deals that were just abandoned (SaleCycle)
While website and shopping cart abandonment still remains the toughest nut to crack, there are ways to retrieve back the lost traffic. One of them obviously being the emails.
This has been an observation by the re-marketing team of SaleCycle that every 8th cart abandonment emails is clicked and the average order value (AOV) of purchases from basket abandonment emails is 19% higher than typical purchases.
Now that is some really cool statistics considering 68% cart abandonment data and various factors that can put a customer off right in the end, since 75% of gone ones never come back.
How you can soften such deals:
Setup Cart abandonment emails to identify bugs – ask customers why they didn’t complete their transaction & improve your Checkout conversion rate.
Just in case you need a tip here: Send the shopping cart abandonment emails within 20 mins and do not forget to include images of abandoned products.
4 Reward Your Most Loyal Customers (Howards Storage World)
What Howards Storage World did here was that they categorized their customers into five categories based on engagement and loyalty. Then, they targeted certain categories with gift card incentives based on their level of activeness and past purchases. What did it earn them? An increased revenue by $250,000 !!
So, how you can increase your revenue like this:
Segment your customers by loyalty and target them with campaigns that are relevant to their level of activeness. For instance, you can choose to send some customers in the loop of “reward emails” who spend 25% above average order value.
5 Reactivate Dormant Customers with personalized newsletters (Eventful)
Once you create cohorts of your customers, you will also get to know the dormant ones. Figuring out why they left or have been inactive can be tricky, but not impossible. Eventful’s survey revealed a 400% success rate in reactivating lapsed customers.
How you can wake up your sleeping subscribers:
Design an automated (event-based trigger) reactivation sequence for those who have’t purchased anything within 12 months and fill it with incentives.
6 Skip arbitrary, start being specific with free credits (PetFlow)
Since, a gaining emphasis has been given to discounts and percentage based loyalty points, customers are getting used to it. It has been found that, arbitrary discounts such as 20% is one of the prime reasons customers leave the purchase incomplete at the last step. This happens due to miscalculations as they end up choosing products beyond their budget and regret at the end.
As a way around to this, PetFlow decided to surprise its customers by sending them an email with $4.25 of “free” store credit to use within 24 hours. The customers surprised them in return. It was a conversion spike higher than 50%.
How to do it:
Offer real monetary off instead of percentage based, point based or free shipping gifts.
Another expert tip: Add “limited time” before the free credit to cash on the boost up conversions by adding the element of urgency. After all, fear (loss aversion) is a powerful motivator!
7 Make Your Transactional Emails Count (Crate & Barrel)
Never let an opportunity to sell pass you by unattended – the fundamental rule of sales.
So in ecommerce once the purchase has been made, do not let go the transaction confirmation email just serve its basic purpose. Crate & Barrel added cross-sell recommendations in shipping confirmation emails which increased their transaction rates by 20%.
How to do it:
Send personalized and branded transactional email including seasonally relevant items for cross-sell and up-sell. Customers would feel you are providing higher value and you’d be able to tempt them to buy some more.
8 Get better at CRM by encashing personal milestones (Experian)
When we are discussing better personalization in emails, can we afford to forget celebration of personal milestones? We don’t think so. A survey conducted by Exeprian unveiled the fact that personalized birthday and anniversary mails had almost 6x the transaction rate of standard bulk mailings.
How to do it:
Setup milestone campaigns for Birthdays & Anniversaries and send them before (to push a prior purchase or condition them mentally) and on the d-day (to further make them happy).
9 Take Your Email Marketing Beyond The Inbox (eMarketer)
A study by eMarketer found that 53% of people are more likely to purchase a brand after following and engaging with that brand on Facebook than just email subscription. This should be your cue to take social commerce into account for your future marketing plans.
How to do it:
Up sell and cross-sell products through social media through ads and peer recommendations.
One last tip: Once your advertisement pops up on social media, send customers an email filled with discounts.
Let us now summarize what we just learnt.
Essentials of a successful email marketing campaign:
When they visit your store – Enhance buying experience on-the-go
How? Customize recommendations with Targeting Mantra’s personalization suite (including Shopify & Magento app)
When they make a selection – Provide unmatched email experience
How? Segment users based on their persona and send personalized emails through RetentionGrid
When they have made a purchase – Automate emails for up-sells & cross-sells
How? Run an event-triggered email campaign based on past purchases and available CRM data
These companies have nailed it. Your turn now!
Don’t forget to let us know the findings of your email campaign. Merry times ahead!
References:
http://www.shopify.in/blog/16113752-ecommerce-email-marketing-10-tips-to-boost-product-sales
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/ab-testing-email-campaigns/
http://kb.mailchimp.com/campaigns/ab-split/getting-started-with-a-b-split-campaigns
http://blog.ometria.com/the-anatomy-of-a-cart-abandonment-email-examples
https://econsultancy.com/blog/63466-nine-case-studies-and-infographics-on-cart-abandonment-and-email-retargeting
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/case-study/newsletter-reactivation-lift-personalization
http://www.silverpop.com/blogs/email-marketing/inactive-subscribers-whats-your-strategy.html
http://blog.getvero.com/guides/the-complete-guide-to-transactional-email/
http://www.experian.com/assets/marketing-services/reports/transactional-email-report.pdf
Tags: boost sales, email marketing campaigns, infographic
Paras Arora
Paras heads Product Marketing at TargetingMantra. He in an expert in Personalization and has consulted over 50 clients across the globe on conversion optimization, personalization and increasing customer loyalty. An expert in behavioral targeting, Paras focuses on helping clients in optimizing conversions and client engagement across all marketing channels including website, email, mobile, native apps and search. A serial entrepreneur from IIT-Guwahati and Indian School of Business, he loves to spend his time exploring new technologies.