The 'Dirty Dozen' of e-commerce marketing emails that drive revenue
Email and e-commerce have created a powerful marketing and sales machine that is far more than the sum of its parts. Email is often the missing ingredient that makes your store's revenue grow rapidly. Even better, it’s out of proportion to the traffic growth that’s been created.
There are many powerful and strategic opportunities for emailing for eCommerce marketers. It can both increase sales to existing customers and attract new customers.
Just looking at customer acquisition costs is enough to convince any e-commerce executive that focusing on new customer growth is a foolish move. Obviously, the exception is for new or small brands looking to scale.
Are you using all 12 of these emails on your eCommerce store? Go through the list to make sure you haven’t missed any. This could be a costly mistake.
Here are the 12 most effective emails we’ve found for driving eCommerce revenue.
1 – Welcome
Build a relationship from the first contact so you can build trust and position your brand as the "go to" brand in your field. It also helps set expectations for contact. Make them look forward to your contact.
In fact, many studies have shown that customers do receive welcome emails. Give them. In addition, this is also a one-time marketing opportunity. The welcome email is the perfect time to introduce specials and other offers. It’s also a great time to include them in your newsletter, which is an impactful way to bring them long-term value and deepen your customer relationships.
Finally, it has been found in study after study that welcome emails are the most profitable emails you will send. That's the reason to use a...
Welcome Email Performance Tips:
Unless you only sell one SKU or have a narrow focus on a product line, don’t use just one welcome email. Customize your store's welcome email to better suit your customers, at least based on what was purchased. Adding more segmentation data points can often improve conversion rates.
2 – First Order
These features are very powerful. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to “Wow!” your new customers with an amazing initial customer experience. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and this is it!
This is also a great opportunity to:
Show them how to use their specific purchase
Tips and tricks for doing more with the things you buy
Cross-sells and upsells help them get more value from their purchases. (see below)
All of this creates value and helps deepen the customer’s relationship with your brand. Competition is fierce, and the stronger your relationship with each customer, the more likely they are to become a returning customer.
3 – Reorder Reminders
Recurring revenue is one of the most powerful business models ever conceived, but not if it doesn’t happen repeatedly! Don’t leave your reorders to chance. Reorder reminder emails can help your customers by preventing them from running out of products at inopportune times. They help your business by keeping repeat orders flowing.
When is the best time to send a reorder reminder? We use order gap data for each customer and AI to discover this. The time between orders may vary for each customer. Once you have enough data on each customer, you can determine the best time.
Among other things, reorder reminder emails are a win-win for both your store and your customers!
4 – Prospect and Customer Education
Edu email is powerful. Pre-sales, they help nurture leads, thereby increasing lead conversion rates. They help brand positioning by guiding customers to products that best suit their needs and increase customer satisfaction.
It’s crucial that if your brand is one that your customers are familiar with, your products are more likely to be the ones they buy.
After the sale, they value building by helping your customers discover more and better ways to buy.
Educational Email Performance Tips:
Use customer feedback to help them create content. Often, your customers will find value that you may have missed, which may be perfect for your other customers. After all, they have something in common with their audience. They have questions or passions that your product might be perfect for.
5 – Lead Nurturing
The sales process today is different than it used to be. On the customer side, a lot of research is usually required, while on your company side, a little more effort is needed before a buying decision is made. Lead nurturing series keep your brand at the “top of mind” of your potential customers, reinforcing your position with them and guiding them on the path to purchase.
Lead nurturing emails are part of your marketing automation workflow. They are usually event-triggered.
6 – Repeat Customers
Returning customers are return opportunities for your brand. Given that Stitch Labs marketing research found that repeat customers generate an average of 120% more revenue at just 1/7 the cost of a new customer, they represent a huge profit opportunity.
Additionally, when they previously purchased from you, you can “mark up” a little more. This is similar to how you would say things to a friend that you might not say to someone you just met.
Don’t overly hammer them over the head with “buy” messages. Poisoning their customer experience. However, ask to purchase other products that make sense (to them) based on their purchasing and browsing patterns.
7 – Buy Now
Lifetime Customer Value is a number that needs to be understood and maximized. Sending a post-purchase email immediately after every sale is an essential component of maximizing LCV. Tracking is part of a top-notch customer experience, starting with the immediate post-purchase email.
Include information and special tips that help them get more value from their purchase. The more usage they get from your product, the more value it delivers, and the more likely they are to recommend your product and brand to others. They’re also a step up from buying another item from your store.
E-commerce giants like Amazon figured out early on the importance of showing customers products they might like based on similar customers and purchases. It can facilitate cross-selling and increase revenue. The immediate post-purchase email is usually the best time to include this type of message.
8 – Page Abandonment
These are sometimes called “browse abandonment” emails. Where are their bounce points? Your analytics can tell when visitors leave and which page they leave from. You should also be able to make this data easy for your team to process and benefit from.
Why did they leave?
Do certain pages generate much higher page abandonment percentages than other similar product pages?
In addition to providing valuable customer experience insights, it also allows you to send page abandonment emails at the right time and place.
Page Abandonment Email Performance Tips:
If they don’t have exactly what they want, stick with information about variations on the product they’re looking for.
Use these emails only for your highest profit and margin projects first.
Send 2 emails +60 minutes and +24 hours after they abandon the page.
9 – Cart Abandonment
More customers abandon their online shopping carts than actually purchase. This number is important. 60-75% depends on the industry and research you want to study. It's an ecommerce fact of life, but you shouldn't be alone. Analyze your checkout process, cart appearance and send abandoned cart emails.
A recent study found that the most effective cart abandonment subject line was “Offer,” “(Name), you left something behind.”
10 – Re-engagement
Sometimes, contacts start to ignore your brand. Gasp! No, really, it's true, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily gone forever. Re-engagement email sequences have proven to be effective in rescuing dying customer relationships.
It will not restore all customer relationships and may not work immediately. If it does, it may not have an immediate effect. Industry research shows that it can sometimes take months for your re-engagement emails to even be opened. If they're fully open, it's still a good send.
11 – Upsell/Cross-sell
Up-sell and cross-sell emails generate revenue directly. It's that simple. You sent an email and the customer bought; often immediately. Happy days are here again! Up/cross-sell emails are an extension of the shopping cart-like functionality, and like shopping cart suggestions, they work.
At the lowest level, it’s another opportunity to engage with users and reach out to customers. Like other types of touch, it can be creepy when done wrong and sends the wrong message. Don't be creepy.
Using a strong “BUY!” message basically screams the wrong thing to your audience. They know you want them to buy now. After all, it is a store. However, instead of helping to build a mutually beneficial partnership, this information puts your customers on the defensive. They hear “Give me the money,!!” and instinctively hold on to their wallets tightly to prevent you from siphoning off their hard-earned cash.
12 – Product Updates (Prospective and Existing Customers)
These can be large. This is another opportunity to create value for your customers and an additional sales opportunity for you. Whether it’s announcing a software update for a product they already have, a new version of an existing product, or a major feature release, these are very profitable emails.
They serve existing and potential customers. Existing customers can get more value from add-ons, feature updates, and new product releases.
Prospects that didn’t initially buy often reach a tipping point thanks to updates that make the product more tailored to their wants and needs. Maybe it’s missing a key feature that’s stopping them from buying it, or they don’t like the UI, or it now has that perfect color they can’t resist.
Don't worry about frequently updated products. Hug them. Each update is another opportunity to build deeper connection value with your customers and, of course, another opportunity to make a sale.
Product update email alerts:
You know exactly what your customers purchased, so when writing update emails, speak their language in a voice that resonates with them from the perspective of a product user. This can increase conversions and boost sales.
Whatever the reason, product update emails are too valuable for eCommerce marketers to ignore.
Data-Driven Emails Make You Money
Browse the B2B marketer's page and use customer, visitor and prospect data. You have the opportunity to collect a ton of data points that will contribute to conversions and revenue per customer. The use of data in a B2B environment is the norm, but it is rarely used among B2C marketers. Use it for your marketing automation workflows, email scheduling, and content.
All 12 of these emails benefited from data-driven optimization.
Another tip: personalize your emails and subject lines. With e-newsletters, you can personalize the necessary data, thereby increasing open rates and engagement.
