Great article on https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/emai...ting-ecommerce
Some solid advice, excerpted here:
Crafting a complete marketing plan
"A standard marketing funnel looks like this:
There's TOFU (Top Of Funnel) activities like ad strategies, content marketing, influencer marketing campaigns, and word-of-mouth referrals.
As the customer moves further down the funnel toward what's lovingly called BOFU (Bottom Of Funnel), the engagement picks up with conversion focused marketing like targeted email campaigns using that tagging and segmenting (discussed below).
You can easily 10X the results you get out of email by being more strategic about how you use it to move people through your funnel.
A basic funnel for your email subscribers might look like this:
A subscriber opts in through a discount pop-up form.
They get a confirmation email with that discount code.
They begin a follow-up sequence reminding them of the discount.
They're tagged as "prospect".
And added to your Newsletter segment.
Now here's where the funnel magic comes in.
Check out a potential product buyer funnel:
A customer buys a product through your online store.
They get the “customer” tag added to their profile.
The "prospect" tag is removed from their profile.
They're added to the “customer” segment.
The "customer" segment is setup to go straight into the "post-purchase" sequence (order confirmation and thank you, shipping confirmation, customer satisfaction survey, product review request, and more).
From there your customer can head down so many different paths. They can get funneled straight into a winback sequence (set to a delay) enticing them to come back and order more.
But what about those customers who don't ever finish their purchase?
Well this is where the very popular Abandon Cart email comes into play–with plenty of opportunities to make the most of that interaction.
Ready to roll your sleeves up with segmentation and recovering lost customers via email? Great!
Using triggered emails
Do you ever feel like you wish someone would really get you? That your likes and interests would be considered, noted, and then discussed with you? That someone would pay attention to what you say and do and act accordingly?
#dreamlife
Well it doesn't have to be a dream for your customers.
You can be that special someone when you use triggered emails in conjunction with the other methods shared here in this guide.
Triggered emails are emails sent after a recipient takes a particular action, like visiting a product page or watching a video.
The primary purpose of a triggered email is to gently nudge a prospect along the buyer’s journey until they become a customer.
And since a study by Experian found trigger emails generate as much as six times more revenue than other email campaigns, they're worth talking about here.
So what kind of emails are trigger-based?
Start at the beginning
The welcome email drives 3 times the transaction and revenue per email than any other promotional emails. It's the dinner party host of your onboarding workflow.
And it can be the perfect opportunity to introduce some follow up triggered emails.
Your welcome email could include a link requesting demographic information so you can send more targeted campaigns.
It might share a video of a product demo and you can tag the people who click through to watch that video as interested in that type of product.
Win them back
Email marketing lists naturally degrade by about 22.5% every year so it’s important that you re-engage subscribers who aren't taking action any longer. Not only is it good for your sales, it's also good for your email unsubscribe rates.
Triggered campaigns can kick off when a subscriber clicks on a link inside a re-engagement campaign. You can take this opportunity to remind those customers why they took interest in your product in the first place, ask questions, or show some personality. Try this:
Subject line: What happened?
Body:
We miss you.
It's been a while since we've seen you. We know you get busy but we'd
love to see you again soon. In fact, come back and visit us in the next
5 days and take 15% off your order.
[ Say hi! ]
A re-engagement campaign should, ideally, run on autopilot based on lead scoring, but you might need to run it manually depending on your email provider.
Order confirmation
Want to hit your customers when they're most interested?
Your order confirmation email can do so much more than remind them of the thing they just bought.
Sure, it's a digital receipt and you want to be sure that doesn't get lost in the mix, but your order confirmation email can remind them why they bought from you (and not a competitor). Like this:
Subject line: We’ve been waiting for you!
Body:
Hey {{ first.name }}!
We take two things very seriously over here at Get Cooking:
Kitchen supplies (obviously) and:
Our customers.
I just got a notification that you, {{ first.name }}, have made a
purchase and etched your name forever into our Wall of Customers We
Love.
Our team is carefully reviewing your order, boxing it up, and getting
it ready to send your way. You'll hear from them with an order tracking
number once it's ready to go. Until then here's what they're looking
at:
{{ receipt }}
I'm so glad you chose Get Cooking today. Welcome to the family!
Amazon and Walmart will very often be able to outcompete you on pricing, delivery options, and selection. You want your customers to make the purchasing decision on a battlefield where Bezos and his robot armies can't win.
If you're small, wear it like armor and then it can never be used against you. A store that sells everything loves nothing; tell them how you lovingly curated your collection. A store that serves everyone is the lowest common denominator; show them that you offer an exclusive experience to the discerning insider.
Promotional offers
Promotional offers can be site-wide or maybe they're for a particular product or line. And you can leave it at that with a single email, sure.
Or you can 10x that and segment your audience based on their history with you.
For instance, you probably have three types of customers:
Big spenders: For these customers you can send bundle promos full of recommended products or even a curated checkout cart all ready to go.
Discount seekers: These customers are typically buying only when there's a discount or when something is on sale. Promote your referral program or a big sale to this audience and watch those conversion rates go up.
Want it/Need it buyers: Not driven by discounts or hype, these customers are purchasing your product because they need and/or want it. They're often looking for something that's exclusive or new so make sure you let them in on special product drops or a VIP email list.
For example:
For Giving Tuesday (the Tuesday that follows Black Friday) you want to send an email out to those subscribers you know love a good deal who have also purchased from you when you’ve supported a charity in the past.
You might send them a message like this:
Subject: Today’s the day to give back and save
Body:
Today is #GivingTuesday.
For every order placed today, we'll donate 5% of our proceeds to
Benevolent Charity.
How does it work?
Just fill your shopping cart, hit checkout, and we'll funnel 5% of the
proceeds earned today over to our friends at Benevolent Charity.
Will you join us in fulfilling our pledge to give $10,000 to
Benevolent Charity today?
[ Shop (and give) Now ]
You don’t have to be cheesy or get overly-promotional either. Promo offers can be conversational and still create a big win for your business and your bottom line.
Reduce cart abandonment
Did you know that for every ten customers that put an item in their cart, about seven of them will leave the site without finishing their purchase?
Here are the stats:
The average percentage of online consumers who will put something in a cart on your site and then leave without ever purchasing that thing?
69.23%
58% of those shoppers were throwing things into their virtual cart with no real intention to buy but 41% will actually begin the checkout process like real legit potential buyers.
And what (hopefully) happens first in that checkout process?
You get their email address.
Once you have that, you can trigger abandon cart emails to help bring that customer back and complete their purchase.
Automations that add to your bottom line? Now we're talking.
What are abandoned cart emails?
The most powerful automated email for B2C retailers is the abandoned cart email, which receives a whopping average click-through rate of 40%.
To 10x your email marketing strategy as an e-commerce business, you need abandon cart emails.
What goes into an abandoned cart email campaign?
Here's a quick workflow for you:
1. A customer takes interest in an item and goes to add it to a cart
2. Your e-commerce system asks them to log in to add that item to their cart
3. They log in and, in that process, give you their email address
4. The customer then puts something in their cart
5. That customer continues to shop but eventually clicks away, leaving their items in their cart
6. Later that day, you send a reminder email, encouraging them to continue checking out
Now here you have a few options.
At bare minimum, you'll want that reminder email. Plenty of e-commerce stores report seeing strong results from a simple reminder email.
A reminder is better than nothing but, remember, we're 10xing our email strategies here. So you're going to do more.
Picking up where we left off above, you've sent the reminder email the same day they added the product to their cart.
But they still aren't budging. So you:
7. Send an incentive email
Some people send discounts. Others send a second reminder. Some send a countdown timer, letting the customer know the item will be removed from their cart when the timer runs out. Another option is to ask questions ("How can I help?" goes a long way here).
Before you land on the default choice of going with a discount or coupon code, a note of caution:
So many brands have implemented discounts in their abandon cart sequences that many customers are now trained to wait for that code. Training your customers to not give you money is rarely a good idea.
When you offer a discount, even one that expires, you train your customers to join those masses who wait for a discount on purpose. They'll never purchase at full price and you run the risk of them sharing this "hot tip" with their friends. Training your customers to tell their friends to also not give you money is also not a good idea.
If you don't know that a discount is what they want (and if they'd probably buy anyways without it), why offer one? Don't undercut yourself when you don't know the details.
Now onto Step Eight:
8. Final reminder
This should be a quick one. If they haven't purchased by now, their either no longer interested or not at all enticed by anything you sent as follow up (or maybe both).
Your final reminder is actually a great place for a little something extra:
Testimonials and reviews
Often reserved for landing pages and product pages, reviews and testimonials go a long way in this final reminder email.
Give those potential customers one last glimpse at what it's like to be an actual customer of your brand and make it impossible for them to say no.
Next level cart abandon emails
It doesn't mean you should throw in the towel if you can't convert all of your abandoning shoppers. But making an effort to reach out, ask questions, and learn from the results will only improve your entire customer experience.
You should always be testing all of your emails, and the abandon cart series is no stranger to those tests.
So what can you test with abandon cart emails?
Subject lines. A/B test the heck out of these bad boys (more on subject lines in a bit). It's the job of the subject line to get the email opened and if no one opens your emails then it doesn't matter what it says inside.
Time between emails. You don't really know until you test. Try a sequence of emails with one day between each email and test it against a bit more time between each one.
That discount. Maybe you need more or less of a discount. Maybe you don't need a discount at all.
Of course, you might have the opportunity to setup more than one sequence of abandon cart emails.
Let's call them "New Customer" and "Repeat Customer" sequences.
That New Customer sequence can actually take care of that tricky problem of training customers to wait for a discount. Your sequence could include language like "As a new X Brand customer, you get a special discount on your first order". This does two things: it acknowledges that you know that they are a new customer and it tells them not to expect discounts in the future.
Your Repeat Customer sequence then might have recommendations based on previous purchases or an opportunity to introduce a Frequent Buyer program. Show them that being part of the family has its perks and you're simply a guide on that journey.
Investing thought and time into your cart abandon email sequence can transform your entire buying process ...
Supercharge your sales with segmenting
Sure, there are some common ways to segment your customers like:
demographics (age, gender, location, etc)
interests and preferences
purchase history
And segmenting can be incredibly powerful with those basics in place. But think about what impact email will have on your business with a bit more advanced segmenting. You could use segments to:
Send an email after processing a refund to ask if there is anything that could have been done better.
Place VIP customers (those who purchase certain amounts or more) into special automation routines with better discounts and offers.
Send an email to cross-sell products that a customer didn't buy but would be interested in.
Here's another example from Get Cooking for you:
In addition to basic supplies, you also sell stand mixers and other high performance kitchen appliances. You have this brand new mixer that has a ton of cool features and your production team has put together a powerful demo video to show those features off.
Or...
You could add an email opt in form to the page with the demo video (even requiring the email address to watch the demo vid) and collect emails from those highly interested potential customers. Then you'd build a segment that would include past mixer customers, some of your very best customers (read: frequent purchasers), and anyone who signs up on that demo video page.
Using that power segment you can:
Send an email offering a coupon for that new mixer.
Curate an email sharing other kitchen accessories that would compliment what you might make with that mixer.
Request written feedback on the demo video via email (this encourages them to watch the video again and gives you another opportunity to follow up after they submit that feedback).
Can you see how thinking strategically about tagging and segmenting gives you so many opportunities to connect with your customers?
If you're building more than one sequence for different subscriber segments, you'll want to set it all up so that they can co-exist without spamming your subscribers.
There are several considerations here:
You don’t want the same visitor to be part of multiple sequences simultaneously. These should be mutually exclusive to reduce spam.
If a visitor subscribes to your main email list and then gets through part of the process but doesn't end up purchasing, you might want to tag them appropriately so that they get content that is specifically designed for higher-value subscribers instead of leaving them in a more generic sequence.
If you're sending promo codes in your email sequences, you'll want to remove them from that tag or sequence if they complete the purchase before receiving that promo code email. I mean, doesn't it suck to get emails with promotions for something you've just purchased?
Keeping track of all of this manually is not only boring, it's unnecessary - automating subscriber segmentation is the way to go.
Writing subject lines that convert
Luckily for you, there are few psychological triggers you can employ to make your email subject lines the most interesting thing in their inbox.
Be useful
This might seem obvious but your email subject lines need to show your customers how useful you are to have around.
Make them curious
As humans, we're naturally inclined to want to help each other. One way we do that is by answering questions asked of us (it's why Facebook asks "what's on your mind?")
You can build curiosity on the reader's part by asking questions like:
Are these the glasses you've been looking for?
Or you can imply curiosity on your part with a subject line like:
What do you think of this new kid on the block?
But questions aren't the only way to build curiosity. You can bake it in with those enticing (and popular) subject lines like:
You're gonna want to see this
Don't forget your invitation
Big news just dropped!
Shhh... don't tell these secrets to anyone...
Whatever you write to build curiosity, make sure that you deliver on the promise. No one likes a bait and switch and your emails will get marked as spam faster than you can say SALE.
Get personal
If you've opened your inbox lately, you're likely already on to the fact that personalization in a subject line is a big trend right now. But it's so much more than a trend... there's data behind it.
Compared to the mean open rate in 24 billion emails (yes, billion) emails from the retail industry who used a first name in the subject line saw a 0.14% lift in open rates. It may not sound like much of a lift but when you consider that every single opened email gets you closer to a sale, that tiny number can be music to your e-commerce ears.
Request reciprocity
Reciprocity is a powerful psychological trigger because it's starting with a small request and then eventually moving toward a larger one (like making a purchase).
When you ask for something small, like an email address or a free trial or a low price point product, your customers are more likely to respond to a larger request later on.
Gain the respect and trust of your customers with small asks in your subject lines. Try something like:
Do me a favor
Can I show this to you?
Don't miss your extended trial
A word about… words
It seems silly to say that words matter but it's an important point here. Subject lines are another place where you have to test what works for your audience and you're slightly at the whim of those dreaded "promotion" and "social" tabs in Gmail (one of the most popular inboxes). But there are some cold hard stats you can take with you as you go to write your next email subject lines:
Free
Research shows that people in the medical, retail, and travel industries should avoid using the word “free,” but restaurant and entertainment industries can get away with it.
Urgent and Important
Words like "urgent" and "important" showed dramatically higher open rates than the average but you have to be careful that what's inside that email is actually urgent or important.
Announcement and Reminder
Two more words that affect open rates are "announcement", clocking in with a 0.46% lift, and "reminder", which showed a 0.29% decrease overall."
Great post,
Also worth checking out if you want very detailed ways to apply this to your ecommerce business - https://www.nerdmarketing.com blog and podcast run by Drew Sanocki.
Even the free content is better than most paid courses, and his paid courses on email marketing have paid for themselves many times over for me.